photographs had arrived in the sealed pouch from London. They were of several large pieces of debris that had been picked up by the Polish resistance from the Bug River near the town of Siemiatycze in eastern Poland. Two weeks prior, they had intercepted cables detailing how two key German scientists from the secret missile laboratory at Peenemünde were headed to that area of Poland, where apparently the Nazis had set up some kind of secret testing facility. Now Blum had a sense why. Two days ago, partisans near Siemiatycze had reported a flash in the early morning sky, which then spiraled back to earthâclearly the failed test launch of some kind of secret missile. Combining the reports, Blum was certain these photos werenât of just any debris. This was the real thing, he felt for sure, likely a test flight of the Nazisâ rumored guided weapon, the V-2, which they would be able to launch from the mainland against a defenseless England. The actual debris pieces were now in the hands of the Polish underground, awaiting transport to another location where they could be transported to England and gone over by experts, an action known as Operation Most, which meant âbridgeâ in Polish.
The images Blum was staring at could turn out to be one of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs of the war.
Though he was barely twenty-three, and the OSSâs principal day-to-day liason with the AK, the Armia Krajowaâthe Polish resistance group that was actively engaged in a war of sabotage and assassination behind enemy lines, pretty much making life on the Nazisâ collapsing Russian front a bloody hellâBlum had spent the last year in this musty basement, aching to do more. Only three years earlier he had been a student at the university in his hometown of Krakow studying economics while continuing to practice Liszt and Chopin on the piano to please his mother, though he much preferred the more contemporary music of Fats Waller and the American jazz artists who had taken the continent by storm. He was a decent player, though never in the same league as his younger sister, Leisa, was on the clarinet; everyone said she would one day play with the national orchestra. His father owned the finest hat store in Krakow, on Florianska Street, with a small factory upstairs. They sold homburgs, Borsalinos, fedoras, even the smaller tweed Alpine hats so popular with the Austrians and Germans these days. Even rabbinical hats. Hats had no country, his father always said. Before the Nazis came, they lived not in the Jewish Quarter but in a spacious apartment on Grodzka Street near the Mariacki Cathedral. His fatherâs customers were businessmen, government officials, professors, rabbis, even members of exiled royal families. They had music in their life, and art, and friends from all segments of Polish society. They spoke Polish, not Yiddish. They didnât even keep kosher.
His mother always told the story of her visiting Aunt Rosa, who complained, âI know it doesnât matter to you, but couldnât you at least put out a different knife for buttering the bread and cutting the meat?â
To which his mother replied, âBut donât you know, good aunt, the meat is fried in butter to begin with?â
Their poor aunt went pale.
That was all before 1941, of course, when all Jewish businesses were forced to close and Jews of all commitment were relocated to the ghetto.
While at the university, Blum joined the free political youth movement there. He even helped publish an antifascist newsletter, HeHaluc HaLohem , The Fighting Pioneer . Then, in October, Jews were told they could no longer study there. His fatherâs store was looted and marked with a big yellow star, and they were all given armbands and patches which they were forced to wear. Then they were made to close, after sixty years in business. For two generations they had sold hats to the finest gentlemen in Poland. In the ghetto,
The images Blum was staring at could turn out to be one of the biggest intelligence breakthroughs of the war.
Though he was barely twenty-three, and the OSSâs principal day-to-day liason with the AK, the Armia Krajowaâthe Polish resistance group that was actively engaged in a war of sabotage and assassination behind enemy lines, pretty much making life on the Nazisâ collapsing Russian front a bloody hellâBlum had spent the last year in this musty basement, aching to do more. Only three years earlier he had been a student at the university in his hometown of Krakow studying economics while continuing to practice Liszt and Chopin on the piano to please his mother, though he much preferred the more contemporary music of Fats Waller and the American jazz artists who had taken the continent by storm. He was a decent player, though never in the same league as his younger sister, Leisa, was on the clarinet; everyone said she would one day play with the national orchestra. His father owned the finest hat store in Krakow, on Florianska Street, with a small factory upstairs. They sold homburgs, Borsalinos, fedoras, even the smaller tweed Alpine hats so popular with the Austrians and Germans these days. Even rabbinical hats. Hats had no country, his father always said. Before the Nazis came, they lived not in the Jewish Quarter but in a spacious apartment on Grodzka Street near the Mariacki Cathedral. His fatherâs customers were businessmen, government officials, professors, rabbis, even members of exiled royal families. They had music in their life, and art, and friends from all segments of Polish society. They spoke Polish, not Yiddish. They didnât even keep kosher.
His mother always told the story of her visiting Aunt Rosa, who complained, âI know it doesnât matter to you, but couldnât you at least put out a different knife for buttering the bread and cutting the meat?â
To which his mother replied, âBut donât you know, good aunt, the meat is fried in butter to begin with?â
Their poor aunt went pale.
That was all before 1941, of course, when all Jewish businesses were forced to close and Jews of all commitment were relocated to the ghetto.
While at the university, Blum joined the free political youth movement there. He even helped publish an antifascist newsletter, HeHaluc HaLohem , The Fighting Pioneer . Then, in October, Jews were told they could no longer study there. His fatherâs store was looted and marked with a big yellow star, and they were all given armbands and patches which they were forced to wear. Then they were made to close, after sixty years in business. For two generations they had sold hats to the finest gentlemen in Poland. In the ghetto,
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