Resistance

Chaya reflects on the three kinds of Polish citizens she has encountered: those who endear themselves to the Nazis and harass the Jews; those who neither help nor harm the Jews, merely trying to survive themselves; and the minority who actively helps the Jews, disagreeing with the Nazi cause. She wonders which category Wit falls into.

Wit tells them that no place is safe with the Germans combing through the countryside looking for partisans. He reveals that the woman with the eggs regularly meets with German officers to sell them information; she will undoubtedly tell the Germans about the girls. He understands Chaya’s refusal to reveal their real names and backgrounds and offers them a safe place to stay; he and his wife have been sheltering Jews in their home for some time. However, Chaya refuses his offer, as she knows they have work to do. Wit drops them off at a turn in the road, pointing out the path the Germans are less likely to search. He gives them some money and a loaf of bread before he leaves, and Chaya and Esther agree that “He was one of the good ones” (155).

Chaya and Esther continue along the path Wit pointed out to them. They come across a field where a battle seems to have taken place; on its far end lies a damaged German tank. Despite Esther’s protests regarding the ethics of using a German tank, Chaya is thrilled and convinces her that it will be safest for them to spend the night in the tank.

Chaya wakes up early the next morning and begins to search the tank for supplies while Esther is still asleep. She finds a number of food packages, including squares of chocolate, and she delightedly breaks off and eats half of one; when Esther wakes up, Chaya gives her the other half. Together, they continue their search and find a radio. It is tuned to a German military news broadcast, and Chaya translates the news for Esther, describing different battles happening across the world. They also hear about the White Rose, a student resistance movement in Germany whose leadership was caught and are to be executed soon.

They eventually find bullets, and although they are not the right kind for the pistol Chaya has stolen from Lodz, the girls nevertheless decide to take them along with the food and the radio, hoping someone in Warsaw will be able to use them. They leave the tank and continue on. Chaya tells Esther about her family along the way; once again, Esther avoids answering questions about hers.

The girls walk in the moonlight until they chance upon another abandoned barn and decide to take shelter inside. They listen to the radio again, and Chaya hears about the German forces preparing an assault in Warsaw in response to the Jewish resistance; she refuses to translate for Esther, however, not wanting to disturb her further.

Noises outside the barn wake Chaya in the middle of the night; Esther has stepped outside, needing to use the bathroom, but someone else seems to be there as well. Chaya hides inside a storage bin, hoping that Esther will be able to do the same. However, realizing that they will be caught regardless, Esther walks noisily towards the barn and is apprehended by a Gestapo officer. When he demands papers she replies that she has none, lying that she is traveling alone and has escaped from the house that hid her because they beat her. Chaya hears Esther being slapped and taken away in a truck, and a voice commands someone to burn the barn to the ground.

Chaya manages to escape the burning barn with both her and Esther’s knapsacks. The truck is long gone, and Chaya realizes that the woman from Lodz must have tipped off the Gestapo. Chaya follows the vehicle’s tracks until they reach a main road and fade into the concrete. Chaya turns towards a town away from Warsaw, hoping that this is where the officers have taken Esther; if she has been taken to Warsaw, Chaya will never be able to find her.

Before entering the town, Chaya buries the bags in the snow and marks the site with a snowman; she then walks in, trying to appear as calm and confident as possible. A young soldier begins to flirt with her, even brushing away her papers when she tries to display them; he asks Chaya if they can get a coffee together, and when Chaya says that she has shopping to do, he proposes that he accompany her on her chores.

As they walk towards the town square, the soldier tells Chaya that he is with the Gestapo; his duties involve searching for Jews or Roma in hiding. He was part of the group that found Esther the previous night, and he reveals that she is being kept in a Gestapo building nearby until she can be shipped to a labor camp. The soldier further lets slip that Esther is currently tied up outside, as she claims to have typhus. After the local doctor verifies that she does not, the Gestapo will take her in for questioning, as Esther’s refusal to reveal her name leads them to believe she may have valuable information; if she does indeed have typhus, they will kill her immediately.

Chaya shakes off the young soldier by pretending that she needs to shop at a store selling women’s undergarments. After he leaves, she rushes to the local doctor’s office, but the nurse informs her that he has already left on rounds for the “occupiers.” The nurse’s use of this term leads Chaya to believe that the doctor may not be a Nazi sympathizer, and she heads to the Gestapo building, catching the doctor on his way out. When she asks him to have Esther quarantined somehow, the doctor is sympathetic but says there is nothing he can do to help. He also tells Chaya that Esther has a broken wrist and that the officers plan to leave her tied outside the whole night, which will ensure her death from exposure.

Chaya thanks the doctor and heads to a café, where she steals a matchbook from a neighboring table as well as her coffee cup. She also buys a small knife from a local store and steals an unattended bicycle. After dark, Chaya uses the knife to cut the fuel lines of three trucks parked outside the Gestapo building, collecting fuel from each of them and trailing it between the three trucks. Once she runs out of fuel, she uses the single match left in the matchbook to light the book on fire and throw it onto the fuel trail, which leads to massive explosions when the flames reach the trucks. In the commotion that ensues, Chaya scales the back wall of the yard behind the building and breaks a weakened Esther out; she then places Esther on the handlebars of the stolen bike and pedals away from the scene as fast as she can.

Chaya and Esther make it out of town on the bicycle, even managing to collect the bags buried under the snowman. They use the bicycle to create misleading tracks in a different direction and then walk upstream through a freezing river to cover their trail. When they cannot bear the cold any longer, they exit the river and continue walking, hoping the activity will stave off hypothermia. Chaya asks Esther if she wants to talk about what happened, and Esther tells them how angry the officers were that she refused to give up any information, hitting and torturing her and eventually breaking her arm. At that point, she told the guard that she had typhus, and they tied her up in the yard outside. Through it all, Esther was convinced that Chaya would come for her. Exhausted from her ordeal, Esther proclaims that she doesn’t want to go to Warsaw anymore; however, when Chaya offers to deliver the package on her behalf so that Esther can rest, Esther insists that she must be the one to do it and proclaims that she will keep her promise after all.

Chaya and Esther continue to walk through the dark and the cold, unable to stop anywhere safe to shelter. Esther realizes that they missed the Sabbath the previous day, and Chaya points out that they were busy escaping the Gestapo. They discuss what they might each have been doing if there were no war. Esther reflects that she would have liked to marry in a few years’ time, but the boy from her synagogue whom she was interested in was sent to Belzec, an extermination camp. Chaya would have liked to enroll in a university but now cannot think of what she would have wanted to study. Chaya confesses that she wants to know what happened to her brother, even if the truth is terrible; Esther reveals that she too once had a brother, who fought in the Polish forces when the Germans attacked.

To Chaya’s question of whether her whole family is gone, Esther responds, “The Nazis murder us many times over. […] The question isn’t whether my family is gone. It’s only a matter of how many deaths they’ve suffered so far” (197). Suddenly, the girls hear someone approaching; Chaya urges Esther to keep walking even though they have no way to defend themselves. They feel eyes on them drawing closer until finally they are confronted with the barrel of a rifle. A man’s voice tells them to stop or be shot.

For a few seconds, no one emerges from the dark; Chaya finally shouts out to the man to show himself, and another voice calls out telling the man not to shoot: “I know her! […] that’s Chaya Lindner” (201). Chaya recognizes Rubin, and they embrace joyfully; two men and a woman emerge from behind him. The woman’s name is Mindla, and she too recognizes Chaya; Chaya helped smuggle her out of the Krakow Ghetto a long time ago. A number of other people join them as they walk, and Rubin indicates that they are partisans—Polish resistance fighters.

Rubin takes Chaya and Esther back to the partisans’ camp for food and rest. Along the way, they discuss the girls’ plan to head to Warsaw, and Rubin warns them that it is a lost cause. Mordecai Anielewicz has united all the different resistance groups in Warsaw under the banner of the ZOB, and the partisans have been helping them collect food and weapons as best as they can; however, the partisans refuse to join forces with the ZOB because they think fighting from within a ghetto is futile. Rubin and the other partisans urge Chaya and Esther to join them, but Esther insists that they must continue to Warsaw, as she has a delivery to complete.

At the camp, Rubin tells Chaya about what happened the night of the Cyganeria Café attack: Two Akiva members betrayed the group to the Gestapo, and everyone at the bunker, including Dolek, was either killed or arrested. Rubin survived because he had left the bunker an hour earlier in search of Chaya, but when he heard about the arrests, he hastily left Krakow. Hanusia was among those arrested, while Jakub was killed in crossfire at Cyganeria itself. Once again, Rubin tries to convince Chaya to stay with the partisans, but Chaya has made up her mind and asks Rubin for his support; he finally gives in and promises to get her and Esther as close to Warsaw as possible.