Antek, despite his endless meetings, had not been able to set up safe houses in Aryan Warsaw; the Home Army did not provide its promised help. Vladka’s attempts were also fruitless. The ZOB accepted the People’s Army’s offer to transfer most of them to partisan camps in the Wyszków Forest, while a few sick and wounded were placed in hiding in Warsaw. Antek moved the leaders to his apartment, with its hiding place behind a double wall. He also moved Zivia, even though she wasn’t an official commander. “[I]f anyone blames me for taking care of my wife, so be it,” he later said. He wanted them all nearby.
Antek had paid a large sum of money to the owner of a celluloid factory in Warsaw to cease production; several comrades who’d escaped the sewers were housed inside, in a loft accessed by a ladder that was removed when it wasn’t in use. The attic was lit by small skylights, and the fighters slept on large sacks filled with celluloid. A Polish watchman guarded the site and brought the comrades food. The factory was a good place to consult; a leaders’ plenary was scheduled to take place there on May 24, two weeks after their exit from the canals.
*
On May 24 Tosia, who now lived in a safe house, was in the loft waiting for the meeting. One comrade lit a match for a cigarette, and the piles of celluloid caught the flame, causing a blazing fire. In another version: Tosia lived in the loft, injured and immobile, and was heating up ointment to treat her wounds when the fire erupted.
The flames spread quickly, and because the ladder was put away and the skylights too high up, it was almost impossible to escape. A few fighters broke out of the flaring ceiling, jumped and lived. Tosia, whose clothes were on fire, made it, but she was badly burnt and tumbled off the roof. Poles found her and handed her over to the Nazis. They tortured her to death. In another version: she jumped to kill herself, determined to not be taken alive.
Chapter 17
Arms, Arms, Arms
Arms—for those who had never once before thought about these tools of destruction.
Arms—for those who were trained for a life of work and peaceful trade.
Arms—for all those who saw in the gun, above all, a hateful thing. . . .
For these very people, arms became a thing of holiness. . . .
We used arms in holy battle, in order to become free people.
—Ruzka Korczak
Renia
MAY 1943
“It’s not your fault, Frumka,” Renia repeated for the umpteenth time, watching her friend, her leader, scream and spin. Renia had successfully returned from her mission with news—but not all of it was good. “Please, Frumka, calm down.”
Frumka’s tumultuous interior, her passions and self-analysis, were spiraling out of control. When she’d found out that Zivia was still alive, she’d flushed with excitement, a new wave of motivation. But all that crashed when she heard about Hantze’s death in the Warsaw ghetto.
“I’m responsible,” Frumka shrieked. She pounded her first into her breast with such ferocity that Renia jumped. “I’m the one who sent her to Warsaw.” Frumka hyperventilated. Renia didn’t know whether to hold her or flee. The comrades had kept the news of her sister’s death from Frumka for as long as possible, fearing just this sort of breakdown. In her diaries, Chajka pegged Frumka as a leader who was not really fit for the overwhelming realities of wartime.
Other comrades joined in. “It’s not your fault.”
“I’m responsible!” Frumka shrieked again and again. “Responsible for the death of my own little sister!” Then she wept, torrents of tears and pain.
“But man is made of iron,” Renia later wrote, “callous to suffering. Frumka returned to herself, even after this terrible blow.” If anything, one thought rang through Frumka’s mind with even greater focus and fury: revenge!