Resistance (26 page)

Prior to the expulsion, the German ruling authority consisted of the civilian commissar and the
Transferstelle,
the police, and the SS. After the expulsion, the only decision-making power was embodied in the police network and the Gestapo. These institutions tried to make it appear as if everything had returned to normal and the remaining population was in no imminent danger. Jews were expected to work and those who worked were told that they would not be harmed.

Moreover, the Germans used a series of ploys to create a calm atmosphere. For instance, the Jewish authorities were ordered to collect the aimless children wandering about and establish a children's home. This task, cynically enough, was assigned to the Jewish police. Mende, of the Gestapo, who was one of the cruelest hunters during the expulsion, addressed the Judenrat in a speech: "The children are the future of the people and therefore everything must be done for the children of the ghetto."

But the remnant of Jews who remained were not given to illusion. They had nothing but mistrust and deep hatred for the Germans. Jews lived in pain and isolation. Of one thing alone were they certain: that ghetto existence was temporary; it would not take long before the last Jews would be expelled and ghetto life concluded.

Consciences weighed heavily on the Jews; many were guilt-ridden. As long as the expulsion was going on, the struggle for survival consumed all of one's energy. When the tension had subsided, there was time for bitter and disturbing moral reexamination. Men and women mourned their families, who had been uprooted without any attempt at defense or opposition. Writing about the ghetto's mood after the expulsion, Emanuel Ringelblum said:

 

Most of the population supports opposition. It appears to me that no longer would they go to the slaughter like sheep. The public wants the enemy to pay heavily for life, they will attack them with knives, sticks, acids. No longer will they allow themselves to be expelled by means of a siege. No longer will they allow themselves to be caught in the streets.

 

Many years later, Dr. Lensky wrote in his memoirs:

 

Reality was so bitter, that it was difficult to believe that the remaining survivors were to be given a breathing spell for a while. Everyone felt in his heart that the actions could start anew any day, and the question kept cropping up as to what was to be done in order to defend ourselves effectively. If the Jews would receive a sufficient number of weapons, we could easily organize armed units of defense. But to our sorrow, we could not obtain weapons. The underground itself was lacking people, and its equipment was poor. It is therefore impossible for the underground to propose the idea of armed opposition, although from a psychological standpoint, the Jewish community was ready to carry out this mission.

 

Throughout the Polish ghettos, hopelessness was a prerequisite for resistance. As long as the ghetto's population could be deceived by reassurances from those in authority—Germans or Jews—they were prepared to carry out German orders and treat the Jewish Fighting Organization as provocateurs endangering the entire ghetto. In this new climate, however, the Judenrat and the police could no longer dominate public life. Public opinion no longer regarded the Jewish Fighting Organization as an irresponsible element that could bring catastrophe to the ghetto. They had already experienced catastrophe.

The return of some of the outstanding figures of the underground who had not been present during the expulsion also added to the internal strength of the organization. Foremost among the returnees was Mordecai Anielewicz, who had been staying in Zaglembie. After he learned of the mass expulsion, he immediately set out for Warsaw. Anielewicz had earned a reputation as a forceful and gifted leader during the period preceding the establishment of the fighting organization. He had considerable influence with his comrades in Hashomer Hatzaír, and because he had been outside the ghetto during the expulsion, he was not weighed down by a sense of personal failure for not resisting. He was prepared to act decisively. He cleared away any doubts regarding internal affairs and restored discipline and inner confidence. He then proceeded to establish contact with those groups he considered allies or natural partners of the fighting organization.

Eliezer Geller, who had led the Gordonia movement, together with a group of friends, also returned to Warsaw. Geller and his people had left Warsaw on the assumption that it was still possible to find places where Jews lived in comparatively peaceful conditions. He had not fully realized that the murder campaign was an overall decree that would apply to the Jews wherever they lived. When he returned, he regretted that his movement had not been involved in the founding of the Jewish Fighting Organization from its outset, and he immediately got involved in the organization's work.

The changed atmosphere in the ghetto made possible a renewed understanding between the groups that had founded the organization. Those segments of the underground who had formerly objected to the use of force during the expulsion changed their minds. At the end of October there were deliberations in Mila Street between Mordecai Anielewicz and Yitzhak Zuckerman, and members of the Po'alei Zion. At this meeting, they agreed to join the Jewish Fighting Organization, whose dual task was defending the Jews of Warsaw and punishing the police and other Jews who had participated in the expulsion.

Still, certain differences of opinion remained. The members of the Left Po'alei Zion emphatically insisted that the structure of the fighting organization should be based on two authoritative organs: one political, and one military. Representatives of the youth movements claimed that this dual focus would lead to differences and arguments, which in the end would paralyze their defensive actions. Leaders of the political parties were hesitant to establish a framework in which the youth movements dominated and had the right to make decisions; they were reluctant to turn over to young people the right to decide on matters of life and death.

The youth movements finally yielded to the pressure of the parties. The acceptance of two organs of authority did not only stem from a strong desire to widen the framework of the fighting organization and give it increasing influence over the ghetto. To a large extent, the concept of two authorities was insisted on by the Polish underground, which was composed of two such authorities—political and military—with the former holding the power to make decisions on critical issues.

The Poles specifically demanded that negotiations with them on behalf of the Jews should be made by a body that incorporated all the various Jewish political forces. They were uninformed about the youth movements and did not consider them to have the requisite responsibility and status for negotiations. Consequently, the heads of the organization saw the two authoritative arms not only as the answer to internal differences but also as a way to participate in negotiations with the Polish underground.

The Jewish National Committee, which included representatives of the political Zionist forces in addition to those of the youth movements, was established as the political framework for the ghetto underground. But at no point did this committee become a decisive factor in the ghetto. Actually, this committee merely lent public support and help to the Jewish Fighting Organization.

Later on, the Zionist socialist Po'alei Zion, the Communists, and the Bund joined the fighting organization. In negotiations with the Bund, a further difficulty arose. Bund members were prepared to participate in the Jewish Fighting Organization, but they refused to be partners in the national committee because of its Zionist-political cast. Consequently, a third framework was established in the form of the Coordinating Committee, in which representatives of the national committee and the Bund participated. The Coordinating Committee spoke for the Jewish underground and the Jewish Fighting Organization in negotiations with the Polish underground authorities.

The enlarged Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB), which had already established its major functions and institutions at the end of October 1942, was the continuation of the fighting body of the youth movements founded at the height of the expulsion. But in its institutions and the composition of its leadership, this was a new organization. According to Yitzhak Zuckerman's report, delivered in London in 1944, the "new" organization appointed a staff composed of Mordecai Anielewicz, commander, organization department; Zuckerman, deputy commander, arms and munitions; Marek Edelman and Jochanan Morgenstern, intelligence; Hirsch Berlinski, planning; and Michael Rosenfeld.

The Coordinating Committee and the Jewish Fighting Organization achieved an impressive degree of solidarity among the various political and ideological streams of Jewish society which previously had been unable in the interwar period to work together as a united body. Still, political and religious differences prevented a wall-to-wall coalition of Jewish factions. Even when faced with a Nazi enemy who did not distinguish among them, the Jews could not come together. Two prominent forces on the Jewish political scene between the wars remained outside: religious Jews (the Hasidic Orthodox camp and the religious Zionist movement), and the Revisionist party's Betar youth movement.

Little reliable data has been found on the secret activities of these bodies during the war and the ghetto period. We know that a group of the Betar people spent time at a farm in the vicinity of Hrubieszow and that certain members of this group returned to Warsaw at the height of the expulsion or toward its conclusion. David Wdowinski, the senior Revisionist leader in the Warsaw ghetto, presented himself in his postwar memoirs as also heading the Revisionist fighting organization. According to Wdowinski, the organization of fighting forces occurred after the expulsion, and

 

the youth decided that Jewish life would be paid for very dearly in the event of a new transfer action. They would not be led to Treblinka like sheep. That is how the Jewish fighting groups—the Jewish Fighting Organization and the Jewish Military Organization—were created.

 

From Wdowinski's statement, it appears that he did not know—or did not think it necessary to describe—the true order in which these two organizations were founded and acted during the last months of the ghetto. It is clear that the organization founded by a nucleus of the Betar youth movement's members began to organize
after
the expulsion. With regard to the disturbing question of why this organization was established separately and was not included in the wider framework of the Jewish Fighting Organization—in which so many different and divided political orientations were represented—reports diverge. The divisions are political and make the writing of history more difficult.

According to circles close to the Revisionists, the heads of the Jewish Fighting Organization refused to accept into their ranks members of Betar as an organized movement similar to the other youth movements, but insisted that they join the organization solely as individuals. Zuckerman claimed that there were negotiations with the Betar people and that for a time they were considered members of the general organization, but they disagreed over tactics and Betar insisted on maintaining its exclusive connections with the Polish forces. Both sides agree that Betar members demanded that the command be handed over to them because they had members with previous military experience. This was unacceptable to the leadership of the overall fighting organization.

Whatever the case, the Betar members founded a separate organization that included unattached individuals as well as people from other movements, among them the Communists. The second organization founded was called the Jewish Fighting Union (ZZW). The heads of this organization were Pavel Frenkel, Nathan Shultz, S. Hazensprung, Leon (Arieh) Rodal, Eliahu Alberstein, and Yitzhak Bilawski. We do not know how functions were divided among them. We do know, however, that the ZZW succeeded in establishing stable contacts with one of the secondary military branches of the Polish underground.

Some of the Polish people were genuinely motivated and did a great deal to help the organization. Henry Iwanski, an officer of the AK, the Polish military underground, was especially effective. On the other hand, there were those who were motivated by material benefits. It was because of these connections that the organization obtained large quantities of weapons. According to Wdowinski, the ZZW was made up of some 300 fighters, while Polish sources reported it had " 150 young Jews, well-armed and ready for anything."

The first missions of the Jewish Fighting Organization (ZOB) were directed against those members of the Jewish police force and Judenrat officials who carried out the Germans' orders. Revenge was exacted from Jacob Lejkin, a deputy commander in the police force who acted as police commander during the expulsion. The actual commander, Szerynski, had been charged by the Germans with dishonest dealings in confiscated furs and was only released on the eve of the expulsion. Lejkin, a lawyer by profession, had been a functionary in student circles in Warsaw in the past. He rushed about like a man possessed, driving his police force to ever more feverish action, and his name came to symbolize the faithful servant who obeys the enemy's orders.

The organization imposed the death sentence on Lejkin and assigned responsibility for his execution to a group of fighters, who appointed Eliahu Rozanski, Margalit Landau, and Mordecai Grobas to carry it out. The group followed Lejkin's movements, staying in an apartment along his daily route. On the evening of October 29, Rozanski killed Lejkin; his adjutant was wounded during the incident.

The following day, small notices signed by the ZOB were posted around the ghetto stating:

 

We would like to inform the public that as a consequence of the sentence imposed on the high command, officers, and personnel of the Jewish service which maintains order in Warsaw [the police]...the judgment against Jacob Lejkin, deputy commander of the Jewish servicemen, was executed on the 29th of October, at 6
P.M.