[16] I shall fight for culture and humanitarianism in word and deed. I will fight against barbarity, atrocity, murderous wars, and fascism. I promise this to you, Rachela. I promise to fight and win, or to contribute to victory. I swear.
October 1939–
January 1939 [17] A red flag with a swastika on Warsaw’s City Hall.
The first car with German officers. Their green uniforms and flat caps are an eyesore not only because of their novelty, but also because of their hostility. They are to blame for the changes all around us. A tall, elegant, handsome officer turns over an unexploded cannonball meant to have sprayed shrapnel, and paints the name of its manufacturer and its serial number. He then looks down the destroyed, ruined street, with the red outlines on both sides marking what used to be the sidewalks. He pulls out a small camera and takes a commemorative war picture aus Warschau.12
But he’s nagged by the question: “Wieso ist hier noch so viel Menschen?13 Are we in the wrong place?”
An endless wave of helmets spiked with rifles. The ceaseless, steady stomping, its rhythm so strange after the earlier events. And the endlessly flowing, triumphant “Horst Wessel Lied.”14
[18] Armbands with the Star of David.15
A dark room. Windows boarded up or covered with carpets. No panes. No plaster on the ceiling. Crumbling walls. At the table in the centre of the room a few people are packing razor blades. Heaps of razor blades. Tissue papers piling up. Red. White fingers wriggling like snakes on the table. Chaos. All is spinning, the table too. Fingers running across the table. Tissue papers flying. Scissors cutting. Fingers. Tissue papers. Scissors. Fingers. Tissue papers. Scissors. Fingers. Tissue papers. Razor blades. Fingers. Blood.
The doorbell rings. Somebody rushes in. Silent whispers. Secrets.
—The Germans are conducting a search. Hide.
