Chapter twelve

When they got off the truck, they started walking towards the forests, the road was empty, and Violette decided to split up and get some distance between them so they would not stand out as a group. So about fifty yards behind Violette walked the two boys, and then at the same length, Kalman walked alone.

A few villagers who passed on the dirt road on their carts greeted them peacefully but without suspicion. Finally, after an exhausting day-long walk, they began to see the beginning of the tangled forests. When Violette realized that there was no danger to them, she gathered everyone in a hidden place behind tall bushes and ordered a rest. She took a few slices of bread and a sausage, a water tank out of her backpack, enough for everyone. "In the nearby village, we will stock up on food. I paid all my money to the truck driver. Do any of you have more money?"

Kalman handed her a pack of bills.

"Keep the money with you, and if we need it, I will ask you," she said, then turned to the boys; "now it is your turn; everyone would tell his story briefly. We would start with you, Marian."

Marian blushed and bowed his head, "I have nothing to tell; I grew up in an orphanage and will soon be sixteen years old. I did not know my parents. An aunt, a relative of my mother who would visit me once a year, always told me I was Jewish, and my mother died giving birth to me, and soon after, my father disappeared." He looked away from the tears flowing down his cheeks.

"Now is your term, Vitek; tell us who you are?"

Vitek was a sturdy, light-eyed guy with a brown shock of hair fluttering in the wind, his muscular body making him look like a strong, athletic man. "My name is Vitek, Avigdor Feldman, I am from Lublin, and we lived in a house in the city center. Until the outbreak of the war, my father worked in a large sewing factory that belonged to a wealthy Jew; they would make windbreakers with fur collars. My father was an accountant at the factory. Around the end of 1940, SS men came to the factory and took my father to hard labor, paving roads. Two weeks later, they informed us that he had died of a heart attack, my mother fell ill, and a few days after his death, cut her veins. I found her dead on the bathroom floor, lying in a pool of blood. I was left alone in the apartment until the burial ceremony. The next day was the funeral; from there, I no longer returned home. My father's brother brought me to the orphanage and said he could not take care of me. I later found out that he had moved into our apartment with his wife and children. "They lived there for two months until the big action that caught all the occupants of the street, loaded them on trucks directed to a concentration camp. Henia told me one day that God punished them, and I always thought there was no such thing as God."

Violette now turned to Kalman, "What's your story? I trust the kind doctor who recommended you.

Kalman suddenly became severe, "Maybe another time, I cannot speak now." he suddenly burst into heartbreaking cries that stunned everyone. Violette approached him and hugged him, "Everyone has his sorrows he is carrying with him; I'm sure yours are heavy. Let's walk on until we find a hiding place for the night."

The walk in the rural area was now conducted in one group; occasionally, they passed small villages of several dozen scattered houses. As it got dark, they continued to walk in the full moonlight. Violette decided that it was better to go on a bright night than in daylight to bypass villages for fear that the residents would report them.

They stopped to rest and laid down on the soft vegetation to straighten their aching backs from time to time. Eventually, in the morning, they reached the landmark where Violette was about to enter the thickness of the forest. "Now that it's tranquil, we'll progress slowly and in one line as I lead."

Violette had left landmarks in the forest in cloth ribbons tied to tree trunks. She found one of the ribbons and knew the road was correct. The four progressed slowly and quietly, occasionally stopping and listening if there were no treading sounds on branch fragments.

"Stop, or I'll shoot," a sudden shout was heard.

Violette raised her hand, and everyone stopped. The vigilance was great; she hoped that these were not Poles or Ukrainians but the Jewish partisans.

"Who are you? Identify yourself," came another shout.

Violette did not want to take an unnecessary risk. "Bring me to Shalma," she shouted.

"Is that you? Vivi?" She heard another shout.

"Jaroslaw?"

"Yes, it's me; go ahead, who's with you?"

Suddenly, out of the bushes, Jaroslaw, dressed in Russian partisan uniform and a black beret, with his red curls, stood out. He grabbed Violette, spun her in the air a few turns, then stopped and kissed her all over her face.

"Enough, it's tickling; you have a stinging beard," she responded, laughing

"They are Jews from Lublin who want to join the partisans," she replied as everyone walked toward the camp.

She suddenly noticed that all the fighters were in the same uniform. "What happened? Did you rob a car carrying clothes?" She asked sarcastically.

"No, we merged with the Red Russians; we are now part of the partisans receiving orders from Moscow. The Germans have been attacking them in Operation Barbarossa since June 1941, and they need as much help to hit the Nazis from behind and disrupt the supply lines to the front. "

"How I missed you, Vivi, I was terrified you would get caught, and I would not get to see you again."

She held his hand, "I too," she replied, not specifying if she missed him or was afraid she would be caught.

"Where is Shalma? I want to introduce him to my new friends."

"He's at headquarters; go to him."

"Go to the dining room in the meantime, and I'll meet you there."

Jaroslaw accompanied her to the headquarters, all the way holding her hand and looking at her hypnotized, "how appropriate it is for you to be a commander; you have the right characteristics; beauty, daring, languages, leadership ability."

"Enough, enough with all your flattery; it's embarrassing," she replied with a shy smile.

"I'm in love with you; let's get married."

"Jaroslaw, make sense, see where we are? And in what situation? Is it time for romance? Marriage? Grow up."

"Don't you have a little affection for me?

"Maybe more, but I suppress my emotions because we have big issues beyond personal feelings; let's not talk about it, okay?"

Jaroslaw stopped abruptly, "Go on alone; we'll meet in the dining room."

Violette entered headquarters; Shalma raised his head and looked at her indifferently, suddenly got up and roared, "Violette!" He jumped up from his chair and hugged her warmly, "I was not told you were back."

"I just arrived, and I came straight to you."

"Tell me about everything you went through in detail, or do you want to rest first?" He asked.

"No. I want to tell you now. What is happening is critical."

Commander Shalma called his deputy Sasha, "Come and hear what our fighter Violette has to report."

She told him step by step from the moment she said farewell to Leo and Armin and went up to Juziek's apartment, the good Pole, about Dr. Tannenbaum's hospital; she also handed the doctor's report, in such small handwriting to minimize the size of the note, over. Next, she gave him the information she wrote and had hidden under her shoe pad. Then she told of her being rescued by Henrik and his joining Armia Krajowa when she gave him the gun in her possession. Shalma looked at her with admiration, "You did a wonderful job, you are an excellent agent, you have the abilities to help in the war effort, I will recommend to the Russian commanders to give you a soldier rank."

"I'm not looking for honor; I brought three fighters here, two from the orphanage and one on the recommendation of Dr. Tennenbaum. In addition, a girl I rescued from the orphanage is in a safe place; in Juziek's house who promised to hide her in his apartment."

Shalma opened the headquarters door for a moment, "Call the adult from the three new ones who arrived," he ordered one of his companions.

"His name is Kalman," added Violette.

When Kalman entered the room, he looked exhausted. His sleepless eyes were red. "Kalman, tell me, why did you want to join the Jewish partisans? Tell me a little about yourself," said Shalma, motioning him to a chair.

Kalman sat down and let out a heavy sigh; it was hard for him to speak, but he understood that there was no escape, and he had to explain his request to join the partisans.

"I lived in Lublin in a nice apartment until the Nazi gathered us in the ghetto in a small apartment with my wife and four children. My wife's parents also lived with us, as they had been evacuated from their home too. In the first Aktion, they took all the older men in the middle of the night, loaded them on a truck, and we never heard from them again, they caught about six hundred older men and women that night, and no one returned. Then came the second Aktion, and they were looking for the thirty-forty-year-old, Dr. Tennenbaum warned me, and I fled to a hiding place. When I returned, my wife said to me in these words: Do not think of us, whatever it is, flee now to the forests and join the partisans, fight for us and avenge our blood, because if you sit and wait, they will come and take us all to a place from where nobody ever returns. We cannot reach the forest without being discovered, and how will I survive? 'I did not sleep a few nights and was tormented by the question, what should I do? Finally, my wife turned to me and said, "I order you to flee to the forest, carry our memory in your heart all your life, and it will be enough for me" I looked at my sleeping children, so young and defenseless, my wife did not shed a tear, she was already reconciled with her fate, she wanted me to fight for all of us, so she decided that my life was worth more than her life and the lives of our children, but what could I do? To sit and wait to be taken to the death pit? Everyone knows it's our end." Kalman burst into bitter tears, and all present wept with him, while Violette, who did not know his story, sat stunned with swollen red eyes.

"What a brave and heroic woman you have; this is the real heroine, a Jewish mother who sacrifices her life and the lives of her children for the salvation of her husband," Shalma said and patted Kalman on his back. "Maybe a miracle will happen, and you will meet again after the war ends."

He knew that his words were in vain, but he felt that he had to strengthen Kalman at this challenging moment.

The days passed, and Violette became the heroine of the camp; she received a uniform and a black beret, a colorful handkerchief tied around her neck, and she began to like the life in the camp, which trained up to sixty fighters, about a quarter of them women. Additional structures were erected, some underground, and a fortified fence with two guard towers.

A commando company of twenty fighters was selected, who set out every few days to sabotage the supply of combat equipment and provisions to the German soldiers fighting against Russia. The information brought by Violette was of great value to the rescue operations, and Shalma decided to impose on Kalman to smuggle as many boys and girls into the forests to save them. Kalman knew it was not long before the Germans defeated in their war against the Russians will start to retreat. He believed that they would begin to hurry up executions in the face of their imminent defeat and therefore accepted the command of a special unit of four fighters to go out to the Lublin ghetto and try to save as many Jews as possible.

When Violette heard about the planned operation, she volunteered to go to Lublin again to prepare the ground.

Shalma did not object but conditioned it with the close accompaniment of Leo and Armin, a condition that Violette gladly accepted.

When Jaroslaw heard that Violette was about to leave for Lublin again, he tried to persuade her not to go. "Your Luck can run out," he said.

Kalman prepared himself for the rescue operation. He practiced shooting, crawling between thorns, tree climbing, and fitness training. All of which diverted his thoughts from his family. He hoped to get to his house and find them waiting for him.

Before the operation in Lublin, Kalman and four other fighters were sent to the nearby village to bring fresh food to the camp. The Polish farmers did not volunteer to help, but at the sight of the armed soldiers, they opened their hideouts and took out sacks of wheat and smoked sausages and sold them.

The rumor about the camp spread out, and the forest hunters did not dare to approach the area.

In one of the ambushes in which Marianek and Vitek participated, the two young men from the orphanage trained in the camp were found to be brave warriors. Marianek was wounded in the shoulder by a bullet fired by a German. In that ambush, a partisan commando force managed to eliminate four SS men while repairing telephone lines cut off by the partisans. While one of them climbed the pillar and three others handed him tools and cables, Marianek snuck up to their vehicle and pulled out of an automatic gun, and started firing; they were shot by the other two from among the bushes. The German who was on the post pulled a pistol from his boot and fired a bullet from above that penetrated Marianek's shoulder; despite the injury, Marianek shot him and knocked him to the ground, then approached him and finished killing him from zero range, a straight shot to his head.

In the evening there was a party at the camp. Such parties were often done to raise the morale of the warriors. Above the fire on an iron pole, a doe hunted in the forest was cooking. Everyone drank homemade vodka, and one of the partisans played the accordion and harmonica simultaneously. That evening Violette washed and parted her hair, bared her shoulders, and unbuttoned her shirt a little. She looked sexier than ever, and it was impossible not to look at her. "You look like the actress Hedi Lamarr," Jaroslaw said as he approached her. Violette smiled at him, "Let's dance," she said. She grabbed him by the hand and pulled him to the edge of the camp, to a quiet place away from the commotion. "Where did your ring go?" He asked when he noticed it was gone. "I gave it to a truck driver to get us out of Lublin," she said.

She walked over to him and put her head on his shoulder, and hugged him. "No talking, just hugging," she whispered to him. She needed the warmth and love she sorely had missed for a long time.