Page 63 - LEIBY

Chapter 7 63

Leiby felt no sympathy for them. Many Polish nationalists
served in the Polish underground and they had no qualms
shooting their Jewish counterparts who fought with them
side-by-side, while the military headquarters let it pass. During
the Warsaw Ghetto uprising they had not come to the Jewish
rebels’ aid at all, and despite the vast amounts of artillery and
firearms that they had stored in massive warehouses, they had
begrudgingly allocated only ten pistols to the Jews – a laughable
gesture indeed. On many occasions Leiby had been asked
by the head office to translate the leaflets that the resistance
movement disseminated, and he knew that their strategy
had been to let the Germans and Russians fight to the death
between them, and after both armies had been quashed, they
would emerge and fight to liberate Poland. What had actually
occurred was that they themselves had been overcome, both by
the Germans and by the Russians, who had conquered Warsaw
with no Polish resistance. As Leiby had often declared – if you
sit idly, don’t expect to succeed!

Chava entered the house, a Polish newspaper in her hand.
All the headlines screamed about the Red Army’s triumph in
Warsaw. Leiby took the newspaper and looked at the pictures.
He saw tanks crossing a bridge, and soldiers running with guns
drawn around the destroyed city.

“We have to get to Poland, to Warsaw,” Leiby decided.

“Leiby, we’re already in Poland,” Chava reminded him.

“Yes, I know,” Leiby explained himself, “but Lida is in Eastern
Poland,and according to the Molotov- Ribbentrop agreement,16
is about to be annexed to Belorussia. Stalin has promised that

16 The Molotov-Ribbentrop agreement was an agreement signed
by German Foreign Minister Joachim von Ribbentrop and Soviet Foreign
Minister Vyacheslav Molotov just prior to the second world war, on August
23, 1939. Part of the agreement established the division of Poland between
the two countries: the east (Belarus and West Ukraine) was to be annexed to
the Soviet Union, and the rest of Poland was to remain under the German
regime. At the conclusion of the war, the Russians continued to adhere to
the division, albeit with slight alterations.