Isaac's Army: A Story of Courage and Survival in Nazi-Occupied Poland by Matthew Brzezinski

Author:Matthew Brzezinski [Brzezinski, Matthew]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: History, Military, World War II, Jewish, Holocaust
ISBN: 9780679645306
Google: JbRTAkG44GgC
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2012-10-02T06:20:16.902277+00:00

CHAPTER 29

ZIVIA LETS LOOSE

It was 2 A.M. on April 19, 1943, less than forty-eight hours after Isaac Zuckerman’s departure to the Aryan side as the ZOB’s new liaison officer with the Home Army, when a courier burst into Zivia Lubetkin’s quarters.

From the boy’s grave expression, Zivia immediately sensed something was wrong. For an agonizing instant, she thought Isaac might be in trouble: betrayed by an informant or apprehended by the Gestapo. These things usually happened quickly, at the outset of a mission, when inexperienced operatives blundered into traps. Zivia’s heart skipped a beat. Much as she tried to conceal her emotions behind the hard mask she wore in public, Lubetkin constantly worried about her lover. She couldn’t forget that the last time Zuckerman had left the Ghetto, he’d barely made it back, with a bullet lodged in his leg. And she was only too keenly aware that the man he was now replacing as ZOB envoy, Ari Wilner, had been betrayed to the Gestapo and tortured.

The runner, however, wasn’t bearing news of Isaac’s capture. The Germans, he stammered, were massing troops throughout Warsaw. Word from the Home Army was that special SS units would storm the Ghetto at first light.

Relief swept over Lubetkin. Not only was Isaac safe, but the hour she had long awaited was finally at hand. This was what the Jewish Fighting Organization had been preparing for since its inception. This was what all the sacrifice was about: the weapons training, the Exes, the bomb making, the rip-offs and endless haggling with the uncooperative Polish Underground and unscrupulous arms dealers. Zivia had been anticipating this moment for weeks now; the entire Jewish community had been preparing for it for months. The civilians had feverishly dug their bunkers and camouflaged their hiding places; the combatants—from both the ZOB and its rival, the Jewish Military Union—had fortified their defenses and honed their strategies.

Everything that could be done had been done. The guns had been distributed. (Boruch Spiegel, who had been afraid of accidentally shooting himself when he first held a revolver, now couldn’t sleep unless he had his trusted pistol under his pillow.) Sandbags had been filled and food supplies laid in. Mines and improvised explosive devices had been buried beneath the entry gates to the Ghetto’s three remaining sections. Molotov cocktails had been strategically stored in upper-floor windows overlooking every major artery that the Germans would have to traverse. Holes had been cut in attic fire walls so that fighters could slip unseen from building to building and track their prey from above. The ZOB’s twenty-two fighting units had all been mobilized and deployed. Nine were in the Central Ghetto, eight in the main shops district, and the five battle groups under Mark Edelman’s command were positioned in the Brushmakers Area.

By 4 A.M. the Ghetto was on high alert, a hive of activity as fifty thousand residents scrambled into basements, disappearing behind false walls and trapdoors that opened onto preprovisioned hideouts. “In the bunkers, people push and shove and lie down on planks,” Zivia noted.

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