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Wehrmacht
uniforms, each with shoulder boards and collar insignia. How would the
authorities react if they did not get their uniforms on time? And Wiśniewski was
scarcely off the line before Estera Daum at the Secretariat put through a call
from Marysin. This time it was the chairman of the Funeral Association speaking
on behalf of a company of gravediggers who had announced that they did not
intend to dig any more graves unless they could keep their extra rations of
bread and soup. Why, they argued, should the gravediggers be singled out and
punished with sub-standard soup? Did their work somehow count as less strenuous
and important than that of other workers who had previously been receiving C
rations?
    ‘What do you expect me to do about it?’
was all Rumkowski said.
    Unlike Wiśniewski, who had been almost
in tears as he poured out his anguish over the phone, the representative of the
Funeral Association, one Mr Morski, took a more humorous view.
    ‘Well, even the dead will have to wait
their turn now,’ he said.
    That same morning, the temperature in
Marysin had been recorded as minus twenty-one degrees, Mr Morski told him; he
had been informed of this by Mr Józef Feldman, who of course was also a
respected and trusted member of his digging team. Twelve bodies had arrived from
the centre of town that morning. His grobers had attacked the ground in their usual way with picks and iron bars, but had not
even penetrated the surface of the soil.
    ‘And what do you expect me to do about
it?’ repeated the Chairman impatiently.
    But Mr Morski was far too preoccupied
by his own difficulties even to listen. ‘I suppose we’ll have to stand them on
end,’ he said. ‘If we stand the bodies on end instead of stacking them on top of
each other, they’ll take up less space.’
    But now the Praeses of the ghetto had had enough. He
pushed his way through the Secretariat’s sea of industrious telephonists and
typists, threw open the door and yelled to Kuper to get the carriage ready at
once. Then he was taken the short distance to Jakuba Street. Mr Wiśniewski met
him at the door, rubbing his hands together, though it was not clear whether
this was from cold or from a desire to show the Chairman into his factory as
soon as possible.
    The striking seamstresses sat
obediently in their places at their workbenches, looking up at Mr Chairman
expectantly.
    Wiśniewski : I gave them a beating.
    The
Chairman : I beg your pardon?
    Wiśniewski : I gave them a beating with my stick. Those who wouldn’t
work, that is.
    The
Chairman: But my dear Mr Wiśniewski, I don’t understand how you
imagine you can take such liberties; if anyone is to do any beating, it is
I!
    And whether it was David Wiśniewski’s
burning red ears at that moment, or the strange atmosphere in the freezing
factory building, where Wehrmacht uniforms marched in rows along the far wall (a
whole army of brown tailor’s dummies, admittedly nothing but chests and trunks,
but all on the march!), suddenly it was as if inspiration struck the old man,
and before anybody knew it, before anybody could rush forward to offer a
supporting arm or elbow, the Chairman was up on one of the rickety benches,
speaking with clenched fist held high, for all the world like one of those
socialist agitators he had just been condemning; and the speech he made was
subsequently acknowledged by all those present to have been one of his most
stirring ever:
    You
are the first to condemn me, you women – you may take the part of all those
agitating against me. But tell me honestly: what would you have thought of
me if you had known that I only favoured the few in the ghetto and forced
the rest to work for slave wages . . . !
    Every hour, I am focused exclusively on what is best for the ghetto. Order
and calm in our workplaces is the only salvation for us
all . . . !
    (Shame on those who think otherwise!)
    Don’t you know that it is the GERMAN MILITARY POWERS you and I and all of
us