Inside the ghetto, Anilevitz had tasted his dream of revenge, but, still, he became depressed. What now? He met with Zivia, Tosia, his girlfriend Mira Fuchrer （another brave leader who was supposed to have escaped with Hantze）， and other commanders to review the situation. There was no help from outside, and tenuous links with the PPR. Their campaign was over.
“There is hardly anything left to fight with or anyone against whom to have a war,” Zivia wrote. They felt the peace of fulfillment, but were hungry, awaiting a slow death. None had ever imagined that they would still be alive, clutching weapons, waiting for who-knows-what. The comrades turned to Zivia for encouragement, reassurance, and instructions. For all her pessimism, she was able to snap from her mood and spring into action. Warsaw’s extensive sewer system was her only answer.
Zivia accompanied the first group—fighters with Aryan looks, including Hela—as they left for a sewage escape mission, to set off from the “garbage collectors” bunker which was connected to underground cellars. She was going to convince the leader of the bunker and a guide to go through with the plan and escort the Jews out.
First, to cross the ghetto. The group was calm on the surface, joking, but comrades clutched their pistols and said, perhaps, their last good-byes. They wriggled out of Mila 18 on their bellies like snakes, yearning for a drop of daylight in the pitch black—would they ever see sun again? They breathed sooty, smoky air, listening to the guards direct them away from active shooting, their feet wrapped in rags to muffle any sound, walking through side streets, fingers on triggers, surrounded by the “scorched skeletons of houses” and by total silence but for a window banging in the wind. They stepped on broken glass and charred corpses, they sunk into tar molten from the heat. Zivia led them to the bunker at last, where she successfully negotiated with the leader and guide, who apparently knew fourteen routes in the canals.
The group was given a few crumbs of food, a chunk of sugar, and instructions. They left that very night. Zivia used all her strength to control her emotions; she heard water splash as each one jumped in, then fading steps. Two hours later, the guide returned to report that the group had made it to the Aryan side and climbed out of the manhole in the middle of the street. As instructed, they then hid in nearby rubble while Hela and another “good”-looking comrade went to find a courier girl. （Only later did Zivia find out that they were attacked by Germans. The guide took them to the wrong exit; Hela, who’d cleaned herself up, changed her stockings, and splashed water on her face, ran. She was the sole survivor.）
It was nearly dawn when Zivia, exhausted, was ready to set off for Mila 18 to report her good news to Anilevitz. But the comrades, in particular the fighter whom Anilevitz had placed in charge of Zivia’s safety, refused to let her walk outside in daylight. Zivia, always active, didn’t want to be seen as a coward, but after a long fight with Bund commander Marek Edelman, she capitulated.
That night, Zivia, her guard, and Marek left for Mila 18. Marek disobeyed rules and lit a candle, but it blew out immediately. They bumped into buildings and corpses. Suddenly, Zivia fell into a hole that had opened up between two buildings because of a collapsed roof. She could not call out for help, could not utter a sound. She immediately checked for her gun to make sure she hadn’t lost it. But now what? Somehow the men found her and pulled her out. “Limping and bruised, I continue to walk,” she recalled. She charged forward with her escape plan, excited by the prospect of seeing her comrades at Mila 18. She was even thinking of funny ways to tease them. So when she approached the building and saw that the camouflaged entrances had been opened and the guards nowhere in sight, she thought they’d hit the wrong address. Then it dawned on her that this must be part of a plan for more intense camouflage. She checked all six entrances. Uttered the password. Heart in her throat.
Nothing.
Then.
*
“Tosia and Zivia, heads of the Pioneer underground in Poland, fell in Warsaw in defense of the Jewish people’s dignity,” read Davar.
News hit the Aryan side. A telegram reached Frumka in B?dzin. She sent coded word to Palestine. “Zivia is always near Mavetsky [death] Tosia is with Zivia.” Their deaths made front-page headlines in the Hebrew press.