Mila 18

As in many other books by Uris, the story is largely told from the standpoint of a newspaperman; in this case, an American-Italian journalist, Christopher de Monti, who is assigned to Warsaw after covering the Spanish civil war. Although meant to be a dispassionate and neutral observer, he meets and becomes intimate with both the Nazi hierarchy and the Jews of Warsaw. He has a passionate affair with the wife of one of the Jewish community leaders, while also dealing with prostitutes provided by the Nazis.

As the ghetto is surrounded and reduced to rubble, he throws in his lot with the gallant defenders. He is one of the few survivors and manages to escape with a young woman, Gabriela Rak, who is pregnant with the child of one of the defenders, Andrei Androfski, a former Polish army officer.

I read this book in my late teens and made me strongly pro-Israeli (I later realised that things were more complicated). I have since visited the Warsaw ghetto – it is eerie to see the same street names

Uris though takes the reader back in time to the start of the war in 1939 and the coming of the Germans. The novel moves from the initial anti-Semitic laws imposed on the Polish Jews, then onto their round up and placement into the Ghetto. It is all historically accurate, and again Uris must be commended for his research and accuracy. The fate of European Jewry is too important and tragic to be played around with, and Uris is extremely sensitive to the history of the Holocaust ( It must be remembered that Uris researched, and wrote this novel only 15 years after the actual Uprising. Many books and documents have since surfaced that only emphasise Uris’s care on the subject within the material he had to work with that was available to him). The Jews of Warsaw boldly met Wehrmacht tanks with homemade weapons and bare fists.

As the wall shuts out the rest of the world they are left to their fate, Uris goes into how quickly things degenerated. Jewish women prostituted themselves, children were sent through sewers to the outside to get food, disease became rampant, as did collaboration with the Germans. Anything went just to survive and it is brutal reading in seeing how low humanity got just to survive. Of course the Germans actually used this as a pretext to show to the world that the Jews really were scum and needed to be dealt with.

As the Germans systematically start to ship batches of Jews off eastward the rumours of their fate reach the rest. It is haunting as they realise they are left to their fate and will be eventually wiped out. The choice comes down to one of succumb and go meekly, or fight and die with dignity. This of course divides them all and many have their faiths tested. It must be remembered that the uprising was by only a small number of Jews and not the whole Ghetto. The fighters received word that the Germans were going to make one last major sweep and transport he last fifty thousand survivors to Treblinka. It was this news that triggered the uprising by the approximately thirteen thousand Jewish fighters.

They were poorly armed with captured weapons of differing calibres and sometimes only a few bullets per gun. They manufactured home made weapons and used extensive use of Molotov cocktails. Knifes, bare fists, whatever, these Jews showed a courage that was unbearably futile, but extremely heroic. They died in their thousands but held off the Germans for many weeks even though the Ghetto was virtually destroyed. It was an incredible achievement. Doomed from the start it has gone down in history as a stunning statement of sacrifice against tyranny. Leon Uris has put into a novelised form, an unpolished, and uncompromising book, which no reader will ever be able to forget.

Quotations:

“All you have the right to ask of life is to choose a battle in this war, make the best you can, and leave the field with honor.”

“Who is left in the ghetto is the one man in a thousand in any age, in any culture, who through some mysterious workings of force within his soul will stand in defiance against any master. He is that one human in a thousand whose indomitable spirit will not bow. He is the one man in a thousand whose indomitable spirit cannot bow. He is the one man in a thousand who will not walk quietly to Umschlagplatz. Watch out for him, Alfred Funk, we have pushed him to the wall.”

“Truth is what people want to believe and nothing more.”

“So anyhow, all your goddamn poets will write tired sonnets about the good old days when the noblemen kicked the piss out of the peasants and the peasants kicked the piss out of the Jews.”

“and the righteous cowed and the evil grew bold.”

“Truth is only what people want to believe and nothing more.”

“permanent positions. Joint Fighters shrank

“From that moment, when she was consumed by his great and wonderful power, all the things she had considered important to her way of liefe ceased to be important…Gabriela knew with no uncertainty that there had never been nor ever would be again a man like Andrei Androfski”
“So, anyhow all your goddamn poets will write tired sonnets about the good old days when the noblemen kicked the piss out of the peasants and the peasants kicked the piss out of the Jews. Then, some half-assed piano player will play benefit concerts to the Poles in Chicago, and in a hundred years everybody will say-Jesus Christ, let’s put Poland back together-we’re sick of hearing Chopin concerts”

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