Warsaw, April 23-May, 1943

While the top leadership of the main Polish underground, the AK (for Armia Krajowa), tied to the exile government in London, made do with expressions of solidarity, the much less well armed AL (Armia Ludowa), tied to the Communists, was ready to really help when it became evident that there was serious fighting going on in the ghetto; as seen from the outside e.g. by the German ambulances coming out with their wounded. Specifically, they had offered 28 rifles, which with the ammunition would have more than doubled the effective firing power of the ZOB, and may have been almost all they had themselves. But since the ghetto was completely sealed off now, Yitzkhak Zuckerman's main concern became how to get them fast to the fighters inside, since it was expected that they couldn't last more than a couple of days.

There was telephone contact at night between Franya and Tosia Altman, who was in the ghetto, although her normal assignment was also on the outside. She belonged to the HaShomer HaTza'ir, like Mordekhai Anielewicz, the ZOB commander (and me; I believe she had even been in our Czestochowa kibbutz earlier, where I was at the war's beginning and with whom I then marched through Poland). Using mutually understood code words, Tosia was the main source of information about the course of the fighting at first (and vice versa). It also made possible establishing a direct meeting channel through a passage between the general Polish and the Jewish cemeteries; after it could be confirmed that ghetto corpses were still being buried there, even though it was no longer part of the ghetto. Antek recalled that he knew of that passage ”because, when I was in the ghetto, we would hold meetings with comrades from the Aryan side at the grave of Y.L. Peretz” (the classic Yiddish writer after whom Vancouver's Peretz Centre is named).

That is how the April 23 letter from Anielewicz to Antek was transmitted. The original of the excerpts here was in Hebrew.

Dear Yitzkhak,

I don't know what to write to you. Let's dispense with personal details this time. I have only one expression to describe my feelings and the feelings of my comrades: things have surpassed our boldest dreams: The Germans ran away from the ghetto twice. One of our units held out for forty minutes and the other for more than six hours.The mine planted in the Brushmakers area exploded....

Yesterday, when we got information that....the radio station Swit broadcast a wonderful bulletin about our self-defense, I had a feeling of fulfilment.....From this evening we are switching to a system of guerilla action. At night, three of our units go out on two missions; an armed reconnaissance patrol and the acquisition of weapons. Know that the pistol has no value, we practically don't use it. We need grenades, rifles, machine guns and explosives.

I can't describe to you the conditions in which the Jews are living. Only a few individuals will hold out. All the rest will be killed sooner or later......In all the bunkers...you can't light a candle at night for lack of oxygen.........Of all the units in the ghetto, only one man is missing, Yehiel. Ihat, too, is a victory........ There are many fires in the ghetto. Yesterday, the hospital burned. Blocks of buildings are in flames... . Be well, my friend. Perhaps we shall meet again. The main thing is........ I've lived to see a Jewish defense in the ghetto in all its greatness and glory.

Mordekhai

They did not meet again. Without going into details widely published, some guerilla action went on until about May 16. Mordekhai, his girl friend Mira Fuchrer, and most of the remaining Hashomer Hatza'ir fighters died May 8, when the command bunker at Mila 18 was discovered and gas grenades lobbed into it. Some of the ZOB eventually made it to the outside world, mostly through the sewer system, including Zivia Lubetkin, Yitzkhak's girl, later wife, and also of the ZOB Command. Tosia also made it out, but was subsequently discovered and tortured to death. She was in her mid twenties, as was Mordekhai. Franya took her own life in May. Another courier recalled by Antek, Vladka, of the Bund, may be alive in North America. The only survivor of the ZOB Command, also of the Bund, is Lodz cardiologist Marek Edelman.

About a quarter of a million people died during the 1944 Warsaw city uprising; in which Antek and Marek led the ZOB fighters (and other Jews) who had survived.

The Nazis lost the war. We won.