powerless to resist them, and that would be the end. We kept watch not to save ourselves, but so we could fight to the very end.
At night, we ran through the streets like rats, patrolling whatever block we were sent to, trying to inflict damage upon the Germans with our desperately limited resources. One by one, each member of my unit succumbed, until Andrzej, Chaim and I were the only surviving members. By that stage, we hadn’t had contact from the other units for days.
From the rooftops, we could see that the Germans were circling closer to the few large bunkers that remained, hunting out survivors with dogs and machines that detected sounds underground. They had interrupted our city water supply, and we had entirely run out of food. The once-vibrant streets of the Jewish Quarter were now a hellscape of rubble and death. The end was finally near.
“We have done our ancestors proud,” Andrzej said. “Do you know how long it has been, Roman?” That I kept losing track of days and weeks had been a source of unending amusement to him and Chaim, even throughout the horror.
“Two weeks?”
“It was two weeks the last time I asked you this question,” he chuckled. “Do you want to guess again?”
“I was hoping we’d hold out for three days.”
“And we made it to twenty-seven,” he said, and then his voice cracked as he murmured, “I’m not sure there has ever been a group of men and women as courageous or as resourceful as we have been. We will go down in history as heroes.”
“Will we?” I said, too tired to laugh.
“You doubt this?”
“Do I doubt that we are heroes? Yes. How can we be heroes when we lost the battle?”
“To the very end, Roman, we have stood for our values. We have had courage and conviction. We have stood up for what was right. That is what makes us heroes.”
“Even if that is true, you seem to forget that there is no one left to write the history of what happened here. The Germans will surely win the war, and even if they don’t, none of us are making it out alive. The Poles on the other side of the wall will have no clue about how fiercely we fought or about any of our small triumphs.” I sighed heavily, then shook my head, pushing my overgrown hair out of my eyes. “No, Andrzej. History will not remember us, let alone remember us as heroes.”
“There’s that sunny disposition we all know and love,” Chaim said mildly, and he playfully threw a bottle cap in my direction. I swatted it away.
We didn’t talk about why this felt like a goodbye. We didn’t have to. We had completely run out of ammunition, other than a single grenade Chaim had found in the coat of a dead Z·OB soldier. The three of us were going to try to make our way to Franciszkan´ska Street, where we hoped there was another unit hiding in a bunker, but we had no idea what we’d find even if we made it there, and it was an almost impossible journey. The streets were again rife with German patrols, becoming ever-bolder as our attacks against them faded. Andrzej hoped the patrols would slow once the sun went down, but night came, and German soldiers just kept rolling through.
“I miss the days when we could run along the rooftops,” Chaim said.
“Of course you do. You’re our Pigeon,” Andrzej said, but he sounded exhausted, and the playful tone had faded from his voice. “But smoldering rubble doesn’t have a rooftop, and that’s all that lies ahead of us. We’re going to have to walk on the street.”
We tied scraps of fabric around what was left of our shoes, hoping it would muffle our heels against the cobblestones, and then we moved to the street. As tired and as weak as I was, I could not allow myself to breathe as heavily as I wanted to, because even the sound of our breathing could give us away. Shallow breathing left me faint, and I wondered if I would just pass out, if that would be the end of me.
The sound of an engine turning over sounded up ahead. Suddenly, the street was lit with headlights. A shot was fired, then another and another. It was dark other than the headlight, and I was momentarily blinded. My whole body jolted as a white-hot, searing pain exploded in my right arm. The next bullet would