Suddenly he heard a female voice respond, “Yan!”
“Who are you?” Guns cocked.
“We’re Jews.” Emerging from around a bend: the surviving fighters. They hugged and kissed. Kazik told them that there was more help outside than they’d assumed. He followed them back to Zivia and the others.
On May 9 a group of sixty fighters and civilians gathered in the new HQ bunker, on the threshold of flight. Zivia was still devastated that the 120 fighters who had just been killed were not with them. She worried that there were additional fighters still in the ghetto who could not be reached in daylight. Some comrades were badly injured and could not move, while others could barely breathe from gas and smoke inhalation. People refused to leave, people were confounded.
Ultimately, “the big sister” had to make a snap decision to save whomever she could. She leapt down into the sewer. “I now felt the full meaning of the plunge,” Zivia wrote later. “It seemed as if you were leaping into the darkness of the depths, with the filthy water splashing and spraying about you. You are overcome by a terrible feeling of nausea. Your legs are drenched with the foul-smelling cold slime of the sewer. But you keep on walking!”
In the sewers, Kazik and the guide took the lead, and Zivia was the rear guard for dozens of fighters, single file, hunching through the slime, unable to see even one another’s faces. She held a candle in one hand （it kept blowing out） and her precious gun in the other. The canals were dark, her head was lowered. At some crossings, the water and excrement flowed neck high, and they had to hold their guns over their heads. Some parts were so narrow, it was hard for even one person to fit. They were starving and carrying their injured comrades; hours with no drinking water, an eternity. The whole time that Zivia’s body was immersed in sewage, her brain was immersed in thoughts of the friends she’d left behind. Tosia, meanwhile, felt demoralized. She was injured and occasionally begged to be left behind, but she ultimately managed.
Miraculously, the entire group arrived before dawn to the sewer under Prosta Street on the Aryan side, in central Warsaw. Kazik explained that the truck that was supposed to transport them out of the city wasn’t there; that it wasn’t safe for them to exit. He climbed out to find help. Zivia, at the back of the line, did not know what was happening. She knew no details of this rescue plan and could not communicate with the outside, which made her anxious. She did not dwell on her own precarious future, however; her worry for the comrades still in the ghetto “gnawed cruelly at my heart.”
For an entire day, the group sat below the manhole on Prosta listening to the sounds of the street above—carriages, streetcars, Polish children playing. Finally, Zivia couldn’t take it anymore. She and Marek, who had also been at the back, pushed their way to the crowded area at the front. No one had any information. Suddenly, in the middle of the afternoon, the manhole cover was opened, and a note was thrown in. It said that the rescue would take place that night. Most sighed in desperation, but Zivia exclaimed, full of vigor, “Let’s go back and bring the others!”
Two fighters volunteered to return and bring the rest of the ZOB to the canal entrance. Then they all waited.
At midnight, the manhole cover was raised; soup and bread were lowered in for the fighters, or at least those who could get some, though Zivia claimed they were all so violently thirsty they could barely eat. They were told that the local streets were patrolled by Germans and that they would have to continue to wait. A group of fighters went off to a secondary location, a thirty-minute walk away, to alleviate the overcrowding in the feces-filled water. Dangerous methane gas was accumulating in the air around them. One member collapsed and drank sewage water in desperation.
Zivia waited and worried for the two volunteers who went to retrieve the others. She took position near the manhole to make sure no one made any hasty moves. She could see a single ray of new sunlight piercing through the opening, a reminder of fresh air. The sounds of life cascaded right above her but were a world away.
Early morning, May 10. The couriers who’d gone back to the ghetto returned safely. But they were alone. They reported that the Germans had sealed off all the canal openings and raised the water level through the entire sewage system; they’d had to turn back. With the hope of saving more members dashed, Zivia became immensely depressed. （She did not know about the ongoing drama above ground, as every attempt to find a truck to collect the fighters was fruitless.） Then, German voices.