Holocaust - Khurram Bukhari

Holocaust 208“We are close to half a million,” Dr. Kohn said. “They won’t be able todig enough ditches, find enough ammunition.”Uncle Moses interrupted him. “They’ll find a way.”Anelevitz looked at Kovel. “Tell us what we must do.”Kovel took a rumpled sheet from his jacket. “Start with this. Send it outas a warning to everyone here. Read it for all to hear.”Eva Lubin took it, and in her girlish voice read the Vilna proclamation.“‘Let us not go to our deaths like lambs to the slaughter. Young Jews,I appeal to you, do not believe those who wish to do you harm. It isHitler’s plan to annihilate the Jews. We are the first. It is true we areweak and alone, but the only answer worth giving to the enemy isresistance. Brothers, rather die fighting than to live by the grace ofthe slaughterer. Let us defend ourselves to the death. Vilna, in theghetto, January 1, 1942.’”No one spoke for a while. Then Dr. Kohn asked, “But what good can itdo? You say they’ll be killed anyway.”“They?” Uncle Moses asked. “We, Kohn, we.”“Bare hands against tanks and artillery?” Kohn asked.Kovel turned to Anelevitz. “Do you have any guns?”“None yet. But we’re teaching the Zionist youth to obey orders, to workwith broomsticks pretending they’re guns, to organize on military lines.”“We’ll be soldiers first, then get guns,” Eva said.“That sounds like Jews,” Uncle Moses said. “Not a gun among us,but soldiers.”Dr. Kohn was shaking his head. “The Germans can be bribed. I knowit. The Warsaw ghetto is valuable to them. They know the war isfinished. The Americans are in the war. They’re losing Africa. TheRussians will hold Moscow—”“And we will all be dead while all that is happening,” Kovel said.“They need our factories, our workrooms,” Kohn went on. “Uniforms,leather goods. We Jews are skilled craftsmen.”Kovel got up. “I cannot seem to make you understand that the murderof Jews is central to their plan. They care less about losing territoryhere and there, an invasion, a two-front war, than they do about killingJews. That is their primary aim.”