Groups of people ran from fire into the open ghetto, flames scorching their faces and eyes. Hundreds of fighters and thousands of civilians gathered in a remaining courtyard on Mila Street, begging the ZOB for direction: “Tayerinke, wohin?” “Dear one, where shall we go?” Zivia felt responsible but had no answe—what now? The ZOB’s plans had shattered at last; the final face-to-face combat they’d dreamed of was impossible. They’d been ready to wait it out, to shed Nazi blood one small ambush at a time. They had simply not imagined that they would be destroyed this way, with their killers at a safe distance. As Zivia stressed later, “It was not the Germans we had to fight, but the fire.”
Zivia moved into Mila 18. A few weeks earlier, Mordechai Anilevitz had relocated the HQ of the ZOB to this enormous underground bunker that had been prepared by notorious thieves of the Jewish underworld. Dug under three collapsed buildings, the bunker had a long corridor with bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room—even a “salon,” with a hairdresser chair in the middle, and a hairdresser who helped people prepare to go to the Aryan side. They nicknamed each room after a concentration camp. （At the Yad Mordechai Museum in Israel, named for Anilevitz, visitors can explore a reproduction of the bunker. The brick-lined space is full of wooden bunks, clothes draped over long ropes, basic pots and pans, a radio, tables, chairs, woolen blankets, a telephone, a toilet, and basins.）
At first, the bunker had a well and water taps, fresh bread, and vodka smuggled in by the thieves’ cronies. The heavyset gang leader, who respected Anilevitz, was in charge of all arrangements and rations—and he was fair. He sent his men to help the ZOB fighters, showing them German positions, back alleys and side streets, even when most of the area was destroyed. “Our hands have a knack for locks,” he told Zivia. The group’s central command lived there, as did 120 fighters who’d been forced out of their burning shelters, and civilians, too. Intended for a few dozen criminals, by the time Zivia arrived, Mila 18 housed more than 300 people, crammed in every nook. Now the stowaways really began to suffer from overcrowding, insufficient oxygen, and dwindling food supplies. In a letter to Antek, Anilevitz wrote that it was impossible to light a candle for lack of air.
During the day, Mila 18 was crowded, and fighters tossed and turned, yearning, hungry. （No cooking was allowed during the day, as the smoke would be visible.） Zivia lay next to Hela Schüpper, smoking rolled tobacco. At night, however, when the Nazis clocked off work? Vitality. Couriers connected with other bunkers; reconnaissance missions went out to find weapons, contacts, and any telephone that still functioned. （Until the fire, Tosia spoke with outside comrades each night; for months, the fighters had been using the workshop phones to update comrades on the Aryan side.） Others ransacked empty bunkers, looking for anything useful, even cigarette butts. More than a hundred fighters were desperate for weapons and knew the Germans were aware of their location, yet they still spent evenings talking about their dreams of Palestine. They ventured outside, stretched aching muscles, walked freely, breathed deeply, “even if it was the air of the ghetto where the crackling and whispering of the embers still pierced the darkness,” Zivia wrote. Ghetto Jews who spent their days inside sewage canals also came up after dark. The ghetto was nocturnally alive, “even in the midst of burning desolation.”
Zivia continued: “Then, with the rising of the sun, the Germans guards came sniffing around like hungry dogs in search of prey. Where are those blasted Jews, those last Jews?” Reprieves were short, to say the least.
*
Roughly ten days into the fighting, the ZOB decided to leave for the Aryan side via a limited number of tunnels and sewers. Several fighters had already tried this, to no avail: they were either shot or got lost underground and died of thirst and despair. But now there was no choice. The ghetto was nearly demolished, the streets were blocked by large chunks of concrete, and it was almost impossible to breathe from the smoke, not to mention the smell of scorched bodies. Zivia was afraid of tripping on whole families of corpses when she went out on missions.
The Nazis hunted to find every bunker, hiding and eavesdropping on Jews’ conversations, even taking tormented, starving Jews hostage. Every night, fewer people came out for air. The ZOB debated whether they should rescue civilians or themselves. They sent messengers, including a seventeen-year-old boy named Kazik, out through the ZZW tunnels to see if any hideouts had been secured for them on the Aryan side. （The ZZW had waged a great ghetto battle, waved its flag, and used its preemptively made escape routes to reach the Aryan side, where its fighters planned to join the partisans. Most were killed.） Despite Antek’s many secret meetings on the Aryan side, efforts were not progressing well—the fighters had no shelters to run to.