LITMIR.BIZ

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as SS¹ detachments moved inside the ghetto walls, the first shots rang out on Stawki and Leszno streets. The Germans, who had not expected any resistance, withdrew. The battle had begun.

      News of the first collective Jewish resistance in centuries did not immediately get about the city. Various versions circulated around Warsaw. In the first hours it was known only that the Germans intended to liquidate the ghetto once and for all and to kill all the Jews who had survived the previous year’s massacres.

      The neighborhoods bordering the walls swarmed with people, for there it was easiest to find out what was happening. One after another, shots rang out from the windows of the apartment houses adjoining the walls. The Germans brought their military police up to the ghetto. Hour after hour, the intensity of the gunfire increased. The defense, at first chaotic and random, quickly assumed the shape of a regular organized resistance. Machine-gun fire rang out in many places, and grenades flew.

      Street traffic still functioned normally, and in many places the conflict took place amid a throng of spectators and the rattle of passing streetcars. At the same time, the remaining Jews were being taken away from those neighborhoods where no resistance had been raised. Few realized on that first day that the destruction of the ghetto would be drawn out for many long weeks. But for as many days as the Jews defended themselves, the ghetto would continue to burn. And so it was, amid the springtime atmosphere of Holy Week, in the heart of Warsaw, which four years of terror had been unable to subdue, that the Jewish insurrection got under way, the loneliest and most agonizing of all the struggles undertaken in those times in defense of life and freedom.

      Malecki lived on the edge of Bielany, a distant settlement on the northern part of town. It was as he returned home from work on Monday evening that he first encountered the uprising. Just past Krasiński Square, as the streetcar passed along the walls of the ghetto, one could sense an atmosphere of excitement. People pressed up against the windows, but nothing could be seen. Beyond the ghetto ramparts stretched the high gray walls of tenement houses, cut through here and there by narrow windows, like arrow slits. Suddenly on Bonifraterska Street, in front of Saint John the Divine Hospital, the streetcar came to a violent stop. Simultaneously, from somewhere high up, a short, even burst of rifle fire rang out. A machine gun responded from the street.

      Panic broke out in the streetcar. People quickly pulled back from the windows. Some squatted on the floor, while others pushed forward toward the exit. In the meantime, shots rained down more and more heavily from the Jewish apartment buildings. A machine gun set up in the middle of the pavement at the intersection of Bonifraterska and Konwiktorska streets answered with a ferocious chatter. Along the narrow stretch of roadway between the streetcar tracks and the walls of the ghetto an ambulance rushed by.

      The next day, the streetcar to Żoliborz went only as far as Krasiński Square. Malecki, having completed his work at the firm more quickly than usual, was returning home early in the afternoon. At that moment, streetcar traffic came to a halt, and Miodowa Street was clogged with abandoned cars. Crowds stretched out along the sidewalks.

      After a night of gunfire, with the morning came a short interruption in the fighting. Now, however, the pounding began anew, more ferocious than on the previous day. No vehicles were allowed to pass through Krasiński Square, but a restless, noisy, and excited crowd filled the openings of Długa and Nowiniarska streets. As with all major happenings in Warsaw, when observed from the outside it was something of a spectacle. Residents of Warsaw eagerly join a fight and just as eagerly observe one in progress.

      A swarm of young boys and coiffed and elegantly dressed girls came running from the streets of the Old Town. The more curious pushed forward into the center of Nowiniarska Street, from which the most extensive view of the ghetto walls could be had. Hardly anyone pitied the Jews. The populace was mainly glad that the despised Germans were now beset by a new worry. In the estimation of the average person on the street, the very fact that fighting was taking place with a handful of solitary Jews made the victorious occupiers look ridiculous.

      The fighting became increasingly fierce. In the heart of Krasiński Square, military policemen and SS guards bustled about in front of the judicial building. No one was allowed onto Bonifraterska Street.

      When Malecki found himself at the corner of Miodowa Street, he was passed by an enormous truck loaded with soldiers dressed in full combat gear. Laughter broke out among the crowd, as rifle fire continued without interruption. This was the Jews shooting. The Germans responded with a long volley from their heavy machine guns and automatics.

      Malecki had a business matter to take care of in the district bordering the field of battle, so he joined the crowd stretched out along Nowiniarska Street. The first stretch of this narrow street, badly damaged during the war, was separated from the ghetto walls by apartment house blocks standing between Bonifraterska and Nowiniarska streets, which ran parallel to each other. A short distance away, beyond the first cross street—Świętojerska—the buildings came to an end, and the street opened onto a vast, empty, and potholed square that had come into being after the razing of buildings bombed out and burned during the siege of Warsaw.

      At the point where Nowiniarska opened upon this square, the crowd thickened, and the sidewalks and roadway became packed with people. Only a few strayed beyond the square. Shots could still be heard from the direction of the Jewish houses. In the intervals when the shooting died down, people broke away from the crowd a few at a time and vanished in haste beneath the walls of the apartment buildings.

      Just as Malecki reached a place exposed to fire from the insurgents, the shooting came to a halt, and people, some hurrying home or on errands and others driven by curiosity, pushed forward in a thick wave. The deserted square now seemed even wider. In its center stood two carousels not yet completely assembled, evidently being readied for the upcoming holiday. Under the cover of their wildly colored decorations stood helmeted German soldiers. A number of them were kneeling on the platform with rifles pointed toward the ghetto. The area beneath the ghetto walls was empty. Above them, heavy and silent, rose the high walls of the apartment buildings. With their narrow windows and broken rooflines set against the cloudy sky, they recalled the image of a huge fortress.

      Emboldened by the calm, people began to stop and to survey the solitary walls. Suddenly, shots rang out from that direction. Farther along Bonifraterska Street, probably near St. John the Divine Hospital, a deafening explosion could be heard, and many more followed, one after another. The Jews must have been throwing grenades.

      People quickly began to take cover in the nearby entryways as shots whistled through the air. One of the running men, a stocky little fellow in a straw hat, gave a shout and fell onto the sidewalk. In the square a machine gun was stuttering. The soldiers at the carousel also were firing. Simultaneously, a series of sharp and very powerful shots rocked the square, and a streak of silvery shells struck one of the highest windows of the defended houses. It was an antitank gun firing in response.

      In the ensuing havoc, Malecki found himself far from the closest gate, and he instinctively retreated into the doorway of the first store at hand. The storefront was boarded over, but the recess was deep enough to afford a measure of protection.

      The street had nearly emptied. Two broad-shouldered workers were lifting the man lying on the sidewalk. One of them, a younger man, also picked up the straw hat. A soldier standing by the wall urged them to hurry. Then, gesticulating violently, he shouted loudly in the direction of a woman who, alone among the passersby, remained on the street. She stood motionless on the edge of the sidewalk and, as if unaware of the danger to which she was exposing herself, stared straight ahead at the dark walls.

      “Don’t stand there, miss!” cried Malecki.

      She did not even turn around. It was not until the soldier leaped up, screaming and shoving her away, that she stepped back and cradled her head in her arms in an uncertain gesture of surprise and fear. The soldier, exasperated and angry, pushed her with the butt of his rifle toward the gate. At the same time, he saw Malecki hidden in the recess of the store.

      “Weg! Weg!” he screamed at him.

      Malecki jumped out and quickly ran after the fleeing woman. Shots now came from all sides. A volley of shells rang out from a small antitank gun

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