Resistance

Esther settles into the seat by the window and begins to read from a book with a gold cross on its cover, trying to be as invisible as possible. Some time into the journey, Chaya engages her in conversation, and the elderly gentleman chimes in, commenting on how the train rides are better now, as they are “Judenfrei” (free of Jews). This agitates Esther, who questions the man’s opinion and asks what the Jews ever did; he angrily insists that they are dirty, carrying lice and typhus, and cites the ghettos as examples. He expresses happiness that before long, “the Jewish problem will be solved for good” (91).

The young mother interjects, declaring that there is no “Jewish problem” and that what is happening to the Jews is evil; she confesses that whenever she passes the ghettos, she throws a loaf of bread over the fence, hoping that someone will find it. When the older man protests her characterization of German actions as “evil,” Esther brings up the extermination camps. This raises the man’s suspicions, but before he can say anything, the young mother pulls the chain and brings the train to a halt, pretending that her young toddler has done so. She gestures for Chaya and Esther to leave and intercepts the Nazi officers who arrive to investigate, tearfully apologizing for her son’s behavior.

Chaya is furious that Esther has forced them to jump off the train so far from Lodz and reprimands her for compromising the mission. However, Esther retorts that the old man is as much the enemy as the Nazis are: “If we can’t stop his hatred, this will happen again and again and again!” (93). Chaya admits that there is truth to what Esther says, and Esther promises to do better as they continue on foot.

As Chaya and Esther walk in the cold towards Lodz, Esther apologizes for her unpreparedness. Chaya retorts that everyone in the resistance has lost people they love; those who live have survived by lying, and Esther’s inability to do so jeopardizes others around her.

Chaya and Esther find an abandoned barn, where they rest for the night. They continue their journey the next day and arrive at Lodz by mid-morning. There, they ask for directions to the train stations; the ghettos are usually located nearby. Esther comments on how the Nazis’ placement of the ghettos near the train stations should have alerted the Jews to their plans from the very beginning, as it allows easy transportation to the extermination camps. Chaya asks Esther whether she used to live in a ghetto before joining Akiva, but Esther deflects the question.

The Lodz Ghetto is bounded by a simple fence but heavily guarded by the Polish police and the Gestapo; the ghetto is a large one, second in size only to the one in Warsaw. The girls decide to wait out the day somewhere safe and to sneak into the ghetto at night through gaps in the fencing.

The girls find a spot along the ghetto’s northern boundary with a tall wooden wall that is rarely patrolled, and they decide to sneak in from this point. When they approach the spot that night, they realize that it has been used as an exit point before, as there is a little hole dug beneath the wooden fence. However, just as Esther prepares to squeeze through, a Polish man finds them. Chaya identifies him as a “szmalcownik […] (one of) the treacherous citizens who’d built careers on blackmailing Jews caught outside the ghettos” (105).

The man asks the girls for their bags and seems genuinely confused when they insist that it is only food for the children in the ghetto, suggesting that there are none inside. He tells the girls he will let them go in exchange for one of their bags; Esther offers hers, as Chaya’s contains the weapons, but this alerts the man to the fact that Chaya’s bag contains something more valuable, and he asks for it instead. The sound of an approaching Nazi officer leaves Chaya with no option but to surrender her bag. Once the man leaves, Esther quickly makes her way under the fence. Before Chaya can follow, Esther calls back that this may be a mistake and that Chaya shouldn’t enter; Chaya asks why, but there is no reply.

As the Nazi officer gets closer, Chaya squeezes through the fence despite Esther’s warning and quickly realizes why Esther told her not to come. On the other side lies a field strewn with rubbish where a number of women appear to be collecting what they can from the trash; they all see Chaya and Esther enter but don’t say a word. Esther whispers to Chaya that they ought to give the women the potatoes in Esther’s bag, but Chaya suggests they ought to go deeper into the ghetto and see how best to use them. The women overhear this, and a number of them attack Esther, forcing her to give up the bag; once the women take hold of it, they apologize for their actions, driven as they are by extreme hunger.

The sounds of the scuffle bring the Gestapo to investigate, and Chaya and Esther flee the spot; as they run, they hear the sounds of gunfire and realize that people are being shot dead. A Jewish officer apprehends them. Chaya and Esther pretend to be cousins who have been recently sent to the ghetto, but the officer knows that they are lying, having received reports of two girls sneaking into the ghetto. Esther bribes him with a single potato she has managed to save from the women, and the man lets them go, warning them that if he sees them again, he will take them to the Gestapo. The girls flee deeper into the ghetto. As they are wondering where they can go now, a teenage boy who introduces himself as Avraham emerges from the shadows and asks them to go with him.

Avraham takes Chaya and Esther to an abandoned, dangerous-looking building where two other teenagers appear to be hiding: Sara and Henryk. Along the way, Avraham reveals that his family is dead and that no large groups have been brought into Lodz since early last year, which appears to distress Esther; the Jews from Lodz only leave, either in trains to extermination camps or in wagons that collect corpses.

Chaya notices how thin the three teenagers are and realizes that they are dying of starvation. She tells them that she and Esther are couriers who help smuggle things or people into and out of the ghetto, offering to help. Sara responds that they are too late. When the Nazis demanded a deportation from Lodz, the Judenrat initially sent them the elderly, sick, and disabled population of Lodz, incapable as they were of working. When a second deportation was demanded the previous September, all the children in the ghetto were rounded up and sent to their deaths. Avraham, Sara, and Henryk are in hiding, as they refuse to work anymore. They know they will eventually be found and killed; they have accepted their fate and reject Chaya’s offer to smuggle them out. They do not want to fight, believing that killing Nazis amounts to murder, and would rather die in God’s name.

Chaya is frustrated with the teens’ attitude, which she believes is defeatist; however, Esther points out that they have just chosen a different way to resist and that their path requires a great deal of courage. When Chaya asks Esther about what her path was before Akiva, she again refuses to answer.

The group wakes in the middle of the night to the sounds of a raid, and Chaya realizes that either the szmalcownik outside the ghetto or the OD inside it have reported her and Esther. Henryk shows Chaya and Esther the fire escape that they must use to escape the building and tells them of a munitions factory on the south end of the ghetto with a way out through the basement; however, it will be dangerous. Henryk refuses to leave with the girls and is shot dead as they are escaping. Chaya and Esther also hear Avraham and Sara call out “Shema Yisrael,” the first two words of the Jewish daily prayer, before they too are killed. Agonized by guilt, Chaya and Esther nevertheless manage to escape to the factory without being discovered. Esther climbs in through a window, promising to come downstairs and unlock the door for Chaya.

Several minutes later, Esther lets Chaya in, and they find themselves surrounded by crates of weapons. They grab bags to fill with weapons but must hide as two officers enter. One of them sounds Russian, and the other is the OD from earlier; their conversation reveals that the OD is the one who reported the girls. Esther manages to distract the men by throwing something into a far corner, and the girls hurry to the window Henryk described. Before they can escape, however, the Russian-accented officer apprehends them. Chaya appeals to the officer to let them go, saying that they were only sneaking in food for the people inside, fellow Jews like the officer himself; she asks the officer if he can live with what the Gestapo will do to Chaya and Esther if he hands them over. The man reluctantly lets them go, on the condition that if they ever meet his mother, Rosa Kats, who is somewhere in Warsaw, they tell her she was right: He never ought to have joined the OD.

Once they escape Lodz, Esther tells Chaya that they are indeed going to Warsaw as the next part of the mission; there is a delivery she has promised to make in the ghetto there. A man named Mordecai Anielewicz recently led fighters to halt a major deportation; the Germans will eventually be back, and Esther is to deliver the package before they return. Esther refuses to divulge any further details about the package, stating that she can only do so to the resistance in Warsaw. Chaya does not press her any further and agrees to travel to Warsaw.

Chaya and Esther cannot take a train to Warsaw, as the station appears heavily guarded; they must walk, and the journey will take them a week. They spend the day buying better winter clothes for the journey, which takes up almost all their money. As they go about their day, Esther asks Chaya how she manages to mix with the Poles and the Jews with equal ease, and Chaya responds that it is a matter of survival. Esther reveals that she joined Akiva when she was 12 years old; before coming to Krakow, she lived further north, but she does not reveal where. The girls discuss God and his laws and promises. Chaya confesses that she is tired of waiting on the latter; as for the former—specifically, the prohibition of murder—she sees her actions as self-defense. The girls also talk about what happened at Lodz, and they are both distraught that their attempt to do good inside the ghetto only brought about death. Tired and upset, they eventually find a woodshed by the side of the road to rest in for the night.