alive, envying those who were dead already and thinking what to do now. I was praying for death to come. I was praying for the grave to be opened and to swallow me alive. Blood was spurting from the grave in many places, like a well of water, and whenever I pass a spring now, I remember the blood which spurted from the ground, from that grave.
I was digging with my fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I dug with my fingernails, but the grave would not open. I did not have enough strength. I cried out to my mother, to my father, ‘Why did they not kill me? What was my sin? I have no one to go to. I saw them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was I not killed?’
And I remained there, stretched out on the grave, three days and three nights.
I saw no one. I heard no one. Not a farmer passed by. After three days, shepherds drove their herd on to the field, and they began throwing stones at me, but I did not move. At night, the herds were taken back and during the day they threw stones believing that either it was a dead woman or a mad woman.They wanted me to rise, to answer. But I did not move. The shepherds were throwing stones at me until I had to leave the place.
A farmer took pity on Rivka Yosselevska, hid her, and fed her. Later, he helped her to join a group of Jews hiding in the forest. There, she survived until the Soviet forces came in the summer of 1944. Nineteen years after her escape from the pit, she told her story to a court in Jerusalem. 2
In that same eastern region, one thousand Jews had been murdered at Lenino on the previous day, one thousand at Antopol and four hundred at Byten two weeks later. ‘And where are the Jews today?’ Hans Frank asked a Nazi Party meeting at Cracow on August 15. ‘You hardly see them at all any more. If you see them, they are working….’ 3
In Warsaw, the round-ups had continued each day. On August 15 they reached the street on which lived the thirty-nine-year-old Henryk Zylberberg, a member of the two-week-old Jewish Fighting Organization. Zylberberg had considerable hopes of acquiring arms from a German policeman, Corporal Kneibel, who had made it clear that ‘he did not give a damn for the Führer and Vaterland and was prepared to sell food to Jews as long as he was paid in gold and diamonds’.
On August 15, Kneibel was on duty when Zylberberg, his wife, and his daughter Michaela were among those in the street. ‘The Nazis drew up a line in the street,’ Zylberberg recalled twenty-seven years later, ‘separating the men from the women and children. Then a second cordon of Nazis separated the children from the women. Michaela gripped her mother’s hand and screamed, “Mummy, mummy!” I saw Kneibel seize her by the arm and drag her away. She would not let go of her mother. In the end he dragged her behind the line, got hold of her waist and before my eyes smashed her little head against the wall of the house.’ 4
Five days after the murder of Zylberberg’s daughter, the Jewish Fighting Organization carried out its first action: the attempted assassination of the commander of the Jewish Police in the Warsaw ghetto, Jozef Szerynski, a convert to Christianity. The man chosen to kill Szerynski was also a member of the Jewish police, Yisrael Kanal. On the evening of August 20 he shot Szerynski in the face,but, as another Jewish police officer later recalled, ‘in a rare fluke, the bullet penetrated his left cheek, a bit high, and exited through his right cheek without touching the tongue, teeth or palate.’ 5
Szerynski survived. But the small, clandestine posters which appeared on walls in the ghetto, announcing ‘Death to a Dog’, were, as Alexander Donat recalled, ‘a turning point in the history of the Warsaw ghetto, and perhaps a turning point in the history of the Jewish people’. 6
That same night, other members of the Jewish Fighting Organization, among them Zivia Lubetkin, set on fire a warehouse filled with ‘loot’ collected
I was digging with my fingernails, trying to join the dead in that grave. I dug with my fingernails, but the grave would not open. I did not have enough strength. I cried out to my mother, to my father, ‘Why did they not kill me? What was my sin? I have no one to go to. I saw them all being killed. Why was I spared? Why was I not killed?’
And I remained there, stretched out on the grave, three days and three nights.
I saw no one. I heard no one. Not a farmer passed by. After three days, shepherds drove their herd on to the field, and they began throwing stones at me, but I did not move. At night, the herds were taken back and during the day they threw stones believing that either it was a dead woman or a mad woman.They wanted me to rise, to answer. But I did not move. The shepherds were throwing stones at me until I had to leave the place.
A farmer took pity on Rivka Yosselevska, hid her, and fed her. Later, he helped her to join a group of Jews hiding in the forest. There, she survived until the Soviet forces came in the summer of 1944. Nineteen years after her escape from the pit, she told her story to a court in Jerusalem. 2
In that same eastern region, one thousand Jews had been murdered at Lenino on the previous day, one thousand at Antopol and four hundred at Byten two weeks later. ‘And where are the Jews today?’ Hans Frank asked a Nazi Party meeting at Cracow on August 15. ‘You hardly see them at all any more. If you see them, they are working….’ 3
In Warsaw, the round-ups had continued each day. On August 15 they reached the street on which lived the thirty-nine-year-old Henryk Zylberberg, a member of the two-week-old Jewish Fighting Organization. Zylberberg had considerable hopes of acquiring arms from a German policeman, Corporal Kneibel, who had made it clear that ‘he did not give a damn for the Führer and Vaterland and was prepared to sell food to Jews as long as he was paid in gold and diamonds’.
On August 15, Kneibel was on duty when Zylberberg, his wife, and his daughter Michaela were among those in the street. ‘The Nazis drew up a line in the street,’ Zylberberg recalled twenty-seven years later, ‘separating the men from the women and children. Then a second cordon of Nazis separated the children from the women. Michaela gripped her mother’s hand and screamed, “Mummy, mummy!” I saw Kneibel seize her by the arm and drag her away. She would not let go of her mother. In the end he dragged her behind the line, got hold of her waist and before my eyes smashed her little head against the wall of the house.’ 4
Five days after the murder of Zylberberg’s daughter, the Jewish Fighting Organization carried out its first action: the attempted assassination of the commander of the Jewish Police in the Warsaw ghetto, Jozef Szerynski, a convert to Christianity. The man chosen to kill Szerynski was also a member of the Jewish police, Yisrael Kanal. On the evening of August 20 he shot Szerynski in the face,but, as another Jewish police officer later recalled, ‘in a rare fluke, the bullet penetrated his left cheek, a bit high, and exited through his right cheek without touching the tongue, teeth or palate.’ 5
Szerynski survived. But the small, clandestine posters which appeared on walls in the ghetto, announcing ‘Death to a Dog’, were, as Alexander Donat recalled, ‘a turning point in the history of the Warsaw ghetto, and perhaps a turning point in the history of the Jewish people’. 6
That same night, other members of the Jewish Fighting Organization, among them Zivia Lubetkin, set on fire a warehouse filled with ‘loot’ collected
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