The Puppet Boy of Warsaw (19 page)

‘Comrades, we need to act and act now. We owe it to those who’ve been taken from us, their bodies burnt to ashes. We didn’t want to believe it but now we cannot turn away from the terrible truth. The time of denial is over.’ Although he was unremarkable and could easily have been overlooked, Alexei’s calm, determined words quickly attracted a crowd. He fetched one of the few chairs, climbed up on to it and lifted his arm.

‘Comrades, the time has come for us to rise up and turn the tables, take the Germans out one by one. We will not be led like sheep to the slaughter ever again. Let us rise and use our weapons, avenge our mothers, children, sisters, brothers, friends and lovers!’

We greeted his speech with loud cheers – its passion penetrated those dark places we thought would never awaken again. Ellie, standing next to me that night, squeezed my hand tightly. Our spirits were high but we had hardly any weapons.

‘Some people on the Aryan side are finally waking up too and are ready to support our struggle. You think it took strength to survive until now? Forget what you’ve known so far; now we need every ounce of our strength and courage to smuggle in as many weapons as we can and prepare ourselves, so we can rise like a blazing flame, a bullet-spitting dragon. We will act as one and take the bastards by surprise.’

Everyone listened spellbound. Alexei took a deep breath.

‘They took our belongings and houses, marched us into the ghetto and we didn’t resist; they ripped our families from us and we didn’t fight. Now there is nothing to lose but our complacency. We need to rise! Stoke the fires and prepare for the fight. Who will take this challenge?’

One hand after another rose. Men, boys, women and girls; Ellie’s hand among them. Everyone in our barracks was ready. Wasn’t this the only possible choice? Nothing else could retrieve our dignity. And so, after this meeting, each of us had another, secret life – something I had already experienced. Finally I felt a spark inside me.

The next night I confessed to Andre about my puppet shows for the soldiers and about the children: those I had smuggled out and the orphans who had perished. Many changing emotions washed over his face, but when I finished, he clapped me on my back.

‘You’re a brave boy, Mika; I think the puppets and the coat will come in handy some time soon.’ And indeed, it wasn’t long before he approached me.

‘Mika, I’ve a mission for you. Your coat is perfect for this.’ It turned out that he wanted me to smuggle some of the biggest, most dangerous weapons under my coat. On one occasion I hid parts of a machine gun, another time a rifle and three grenades. How much my grandfather’s coat had seen: first it had sheltered the children, their hearts beating as fast as a young hare’s, and now the cold steel of weapons. But whatever I carried, the puppets were witnesses, confidants and comrades in this game of life and death.

Then one night Andre introduced me to Mordecai, our leader, a young man of twenty-seven with dark eyes, a thick head of coal-black hair and a wonderful broad smile.

‘I’ve heard about your adventures on both sides of the fence, my friend.’ I shifted from one foot to another as he looked at me intently.

‘Couldn’t you boost morale here a bit with your puppets? God knows we all need it.’ I thought of the prince and his fiery speech. So much had happened since then. ‘And also,’ he continued, ‘there are still men and women here who didn’t greet Alexei’s speech in quite the same way. Maybe they are too timid to fight, but we need every hand we can get. Maybe your puppets could help out a bit?’

‘I don’t know, I guess I could try.’ His request touched a sore place in me, but there was also a glimmer of pride. If Mordecai thought my puppets could make a difference then I would give it a go.

So I made puppets of ordinary-looking men and women like us, and also of soldiers, officers and policemen. I didn’t want to get caught with them, so I hid them in the coat’s innermost pockets. And slowly a different set of puppets emerged that mixed with my old ones and boosted the whole troupe.

One night after coming back from a gruelling day’s work on the Aryan side, I stole back to our old apartment to fetch some materials from the workshop. In the strict curfew anyone caught risked being shot, but I had run out of glue, papier-mâché, lacquer and fabric. I saw myself more than anything now as a puppeteer – a smuggling, resisting puppeteer-fighter, and I needed to stock up on materials. As I entered our old apartment in Gęsia Street, the sight of our kitchen overwhelmed me: the table covered in thick dust, our teapot standing untouched, the chairs at an angle as if Mama would enter any minute, sit down and pour us tea. Her soup pan still sat on the stove. I grabbed some materials from the workshop and rushed back. I knew I would never return.

It became more and more nerve-racking for me: the Germans had not forgotten me and every so often they called on me to entertain the officers and soldiers, with the Punch and Judy style that worked best. But at night I fired up my comrades with very different plays. Here, we sniped at the rat-soldiers, blew them up and beat them to a pulp. Sometimes I mixed my new puppets with the old ones and then all hell broke lose: the crocodile chased the soldiers and the fool battered the officer until he collapsed. I even made a little Hitler puppet, which always ended up in the crocodile’s mouth.

One night Andre took me to one side.

‘Look, Mika, your plays are wonderful entertainment for us, but they could also be the perfect way of making plans for dangerous operations.’ I didn’t understand but Andre was excited.

‘I’m sure this could work, Mika. It could help us to imagine how to fight the Germans. Let’s get all your puppets out.’

And so instead of fantasy landscapes as backdrops, we created a miniature set of the ghetto, complete with street names, a papier-mâché wall and landmarks. We let the puppets live in our small ghetto and rehearsed the best approach for attack and defence: the safest way to get from A to B, what to do if we were cornered by the rats and where an ambush would be most effective. Everyone, even Mordecai, wanted to have a go.

And so we risked our lives every day; smuggling weapons, ammunition and food. Some told me that when they were alone and fear ate away at their hearts, they remembered the puppet shows, the fiery speeches. We also played through all the possible scenarios, so that we were prepared for all eventualities. We often ended up laughing and, needless to say, in the puppet plays we always won.

At night, we all had more work to do – in one big secret movement we dug bunkers all over the ghetto: under housing blocks, shops, synagogues and streets. By the end of December 1942 everyone had two addresses in the ghetto, one official and one underground. Slowly we created a secret city – a city of moles. The bunkers were basic, yes, but with cleverly hidden entrances, air shafts, small ovens for warmth and cooking and stocked with as much food as we could spare or steal. We kept a secret radio going and a printing press in one of the bunkers to help mobilise others for the fight, and in one underground workshop we even created simple automatic weapons.

On the afternoon of 9 January soldiers pushed open the doors to the brush factory in which I worked, and started to sniff around. I didn’t pay them much attention – we were so used to being searched day and night. But this turned out to be different.

‘Mika Hernsteyn? Is there a boy called Mika Hernsteyn among you? The “Puppet Boy”? Step forward.’

I shivered when I heard my name. Had they finally caught on, did they want to search my coat? My hands were clammy as I stepped forward, towards the soldiers. What choice did I have? Sooner or later one of the rats would recognise me. And sure enough, the soldier facing me was the very same one who had pinched my cheeks the first night Max took me to the barracks. His face cracked into a broad grin when he saw me. I flushed, hoping my comrades would eventually understand – not everyone knew about my double life.

‘Come, you have a special assignment.’ The soldier took my arm and led me out of the factory. A ‘special assignment’ was never a good thing under the Germans and this was no exception. The chief of the SS and the Gestapo had arrived in Warsaw to inspect the Germans’ progress with the Jews and to report back to the Führer. And so, that very afternoon, I performed in front of the son of the devil himself, Himmler, the most powerful man after Hitler.

Much later I learnt that Himmler gave orders to cleanse the ghetto of all Jews by 15 February; our end was declared that very same January day. But not before the ‘architect of the Holocaust’, as he was later called, had enjoyed the entertainment of a puppet show.

He sat in the front row, looking so very ordinary: a skinny, ugly man, with a dark moustache and round, gold spectacles. Sitting so closely to me, this monster, his black uniform decorated with SS runes, the silver skull sitting on the peaked cap that lay in his lap. At that time death wasn’t the grim reaper, a black-cloaked skeleton swinging a scythe. No, death wore a smart uniform sewn in Germany for the elite of the Reich. I remember his thin laughter as I performed – as usual a crude Punch and Judy-style show.

I could have shot him there and then. The fool clowning around, digging deep into the treasure box, discovering a shiny pistol. Bang! Shot by the fool. It would have been so easy; a chance that would never return. But no, I finished my stupid puppet show and when I returned to our sad barracks I wouldn’t talk for days. But soon I would be ripped from my self-imposed silence.

O
n the morning of 18 January 1943 a sharp white frost covered Warsaw, glittering under a steel-blue sky. Nothing about this day could have warned us. The rats moved early in the morning, just after sunrise. The first sound we heard was that of their dreaded trucks, then soldiers swarmed through the ghetto like a giant cloud of locusts. They were back to round us up. But this time we were prepared.

This was our sign to rise and fight: we had sworn that if the rats returned for a new wave of deportations, we would strike back with full force. The ‘
Übermenschen
’, as they called themselves, had been arrogant, so sure of themselves for far too long, believing they could herd us to our deaths like cattle. Sweep Warsaw ‘
Judenrein
’ – free of Jews.
No
. Here we were, drawn together by a single aim: to kill as many as we could, one bullet for a rat, a grenade for a cluster. We would wear their blood on our hands for a change.

Mordecai gathered us immediately at Mila 18, going over our strategy once more: first we’d set the barricades we had built in recent weeks alight, then spread out and hide around Gęsia and Mila Streets in order to ambush them with our bullets. He put Ellie and me with a handful of others in charge of the hundreds of petrol bombs we had manufactured secretly in Mila 10. We handed them out to our fellow fighters, who then separated and quickly ran to the houses and the streets we planned to fight in.

‘Good luck, Mika.’ Ellie squeezed my hand hard, looking straight at me. Her hands were dry and hot as if they were about to catch fire. ‘Let’s give them hell!’ She had tied back her wild curls with a red scarf and could hardly contain herself – she was as ready as a bull for the fight.

‘Here, take one.’ The bottle felt cool and smooth in my hands and I inhaled the petrol’s sharp smell. My hand reached into my coat pocket and pulled out my mother’s red scarf. I always carried it with me but today I would wear it like a proud flag.

‘For our mothers. For Grandfather and Peter. The twins. Today we’ll avenge them.’ Ellie smiled at me – we were ready. We stationed ourselves on the second floor of an apartment block on the corner of Lubiecka and Mila Streets, together with three snipers: Andrew, Thomas and Adam. We crouched beneath the windows, tense like tigers, waiting for our prey. All of a sudden we heard a group of SS soldiers marching up Lubiecka Street, flanking a tank. Our moment had arrived. We let them come closer, until they were underneath our windows. Then the snipers pulled their triggers almost as one and the first soldiers collapsed.

‘Die, you rat!’ Ellie screamed, taking a broad swing before launching the petrol bomb down on to the soldiers – my Amazon! Her rage found the Germans unprepared. Here she stood, Ellie, my friend, my love, like Syrena, our mermaid warrior, Warsaw’s proud symbol of resistance, swinging not a sword but a petrol bomb. I had never seen her like this and never loved her as much as I did in that moment.

Our home-made missiles rained down on to the tank and soldiers; they smashed into pieces and exploded into fierce flames. The rats tumbled about like crazed torches; their screams mixed with retaliating bullets that splintered the windows around us. We didn’t flinch but quickly changed position and continued to hurl bomb after bomb. This time the Germans responded with machinegun fire.

‘Shit, they got me,’ Andrew howled, holding his left arm, his face contorted with pain.

‘Get over here,’ I screamed, pulling him out of the line of fire. We moved up another floor.

‘God, it hurts,’ Andrew moaned. ‘Still, I’ve got my right hand and a sharp eye.’ Within minutes he was back at a window taking aim.

For three days we were sniping, fire-hurling heroes – a ferocious group, making every bullet count. Then, as suddenly as they had appeared, the troops retreated. This was the first time ever the rats had met resistance: we held up their machinery and stopped the deportations, at least for this briefest moment in this long war. We were ecstatic, and no one could have put it as well as Wladyslaw Szengel, our ‘ghetto poet’:

From Niska, and Mila, and Muranow

Our barrels bloom with flames,

It’s our spring! It’s our counter-strike!

The wine of battle is in our heads!

If we had to die, we would die fighting, taking with us as many Germans as we could. We would die with honour and pride, avenging our sisters and parents and lovers – like the nine comrades who lost their lives during these three days.

That evening we gathered in the main bunker at Mila 18, elated, and whoever still had a bottle of precious vodka happily shared it. Some showed off guns and pistols taken from the rats in surprise attacks, and Andrzej dug out a battered record player from underneath his field bed. For that one victorious night we risked music – from waltzes to jazz. It was to be the first and last time I danced with Ellie.