Resistance: Part Three

“We’ll find a way.” Esther faced steadfastly forward as we walked.

Hopefully, that would keep her safe while I took the rest of our money to buy provisions. There were only two things I wanted: food and medical supplies.

I bought dried meats that I hoped were kosher, although I could hardly ask about them, pierogis, and even some pastries that might raise the spirits of fighters who could only see a bleak future.

“And how many more died in the Aktion we started because you wanted to settle your conscience?”

It encompassed a three-and-a-half-kilometer area with a footbridge connecting two halves, allowing a streetcar to pass underneath.

I didn’t understand how that was possible, but she was asking me to trust her. Given what I’d just learned about her history, I knew how foolhardy that was, but what other choice did I have?

Death permeated the night air, carried on the wind like a vulture’s hiss.

Esther moved with confidence, secure in each step. From her lithe movements, I was sure she’d been here before, likely had traveled this very hallway before.

No one sat idly by, watching the world turn. Those who were on the streets moved with purpose.

We’d been carving them into crude pikes, weapons that would take little more training than “Stab with the sharp end.”

If this place is compromised—and it will be sooner or later—you must give the people another place to go.

He had a sweet tooth for rugelach and a lifelong aversion to peas.

His eyes became wistful. “There should be more singing now, not less.”

We had no idea how long our meager food supplies would last, and so rations were imposed that were nearly as strict as what they were under control of the Judenrat.

And for three months, the only thing that truly mattered was that every day they waited, we improved another bunker, created more weapons, and solicited help from the outside world.

As I sipped from my wineglass, listening to the recitation of God’s deliverance of the Israelites from bondage in Egypt, I couldn’t help but wonder if He would deliver us now.

Yitzchak leaned over to me with a wry smile.

We darted into the street, jumping over fallen bodies and debris, but I kept looking back until I saw a plume of black smoke rising where the warehouse had been.

“We’ve never been more free. Don’t you see? They don’t control us anymore. Since we already know how this will end, they can’t even use the fear of death against us. There is nothing more they can take from us, but today, we have taken their superiority, and their belief in our submissiveness. No matter how this ends, history will recognize today for its greatness.”

The Judenrat official continued, “Lay down your arms and surrender. If you refuse, the ghetto will be razed to the ground. My friends, I beg you to surrender or everyone here will die.”

Then a single shot was fired from a building overhead. It hit the car, which might not have been the intended target. But it was a decisive answer. Our official refusal of his generous offer to go to the death camps today.

We were ordered onto the street, now strewn with far too many of our own, either dead or wounded.

These buildings were already dilapidated. Bullets would bite through them as though the walls were made of paper.

Minutes later, the thread that was meant for darning socks and patching holes in pants closed a gash in my flesh.

For two minutes, the reporter blathered on about the complex issues surrounding our situation, and about Allied priorities and disagreements.

The pungent odor of fire filled the air, burning our nostrils and making our eyes water.

No one had to bring their children next to our wall, where they could surely smell the gunpowder and the acrid stench of fire.

I couldn’t see Esther anymore, but still I ran, heat licking at my back and spurring me on even faster.

Evening slowly approached, following a horrible, endless day passed in a literal haze due to the thick smoke around us, an unyielding, suffocating blanket.

Steadily moving forward, trying not to think about Mr. Pilzer, or, rather, thinking so intently of him that we seemed to form a silent pact that his death would not be in vain.

“I traveled with a man who was my guide, but he succumbed to a poison gas grenade a few kilometers back. Please, sir, I surrender.”

Time stopped while its echo reverberated in my heart, creating a wound that would never fully heal.

There will come a time of reckoning for our spilled, innocent blood.

Send help to those who, in the last hour, may elude the enemy—in order that the fight may continue.

We proved that there was value in faith. There was value in loyalty. And that a righteous resistance was victory in itself, no matter the outcome.