Free The Emperor of Lies by Steve Sem-Sandberg

are working for; have you considered that for a moment? And what do you
think would happen if at this very second – right now, as I am speaking –
German soldiers rushed in and took you at gunpoint to an assembly point for
deportation?
    What
would you say to your poor parents, your husbands, your children . . .
?
    [The
women crouched behind their workbenches.]
    From
today, I am imposing a WORK BAN at this and all other workplaces in the
ghetto where agitation and rebellion have occurred.
    MR
WIŚNIEWSKI! SEE THAT ALL WORKERS ARE IMMEDIATELY REMOVED FROM THESE
PREMISES. SEAL THE FACTORY GATES!
    No
rations will be distributed from this point on. All strikers will surrender
their identity cards and work logs. Only when you accept the fact that
whatever serves the ghetto’s best interests is also in your best interests
are you welcome back to your former places of work!
    The strikers held out for six days.
    On 30 January, Rumkowski let it be
officially known that the factory gates stood open again for those who pledged
to accept existing conditions. All the strikers went back to work, and the whole
story could have ended there.
    But it did not end there.
    Two days after the strike was called
off, on 1 February 1941, Rumkowski took his revenge. In another speech, this
time to the ghetto’s resort-laiter , he
announced his intention to have deported from the ghetto all ‘vermin and
disturbers of the peace’ 2 who could be proved to have taken part
in the strikes. Among the 107 people whose names went on the list that day were
some thirty workers from the joinery workshop in Drukarska, and the same number
from Urzędnicza Street.
    One of those who was ‘sacked’ and left
the joinery on Drukarska Street that day was thirty-year-old cabinetmaker Lajb
Rzepin.
    Lajb Rzepin had taken part in the
strike action, even been one of the workers who barricaded themselves in the
upstairs rooms and thrown things at the police.
    But Lajb Rzepin’s name never featured
on any of the deportation lists.
    On 8 March 1941 – the same day the
first transport of forcibly ejected workers left the ghetto – Lajb Rzepin
started a new job at Winograd’s Kleinmöbelfabrik in Bazarowa. Around him at the long workbench, where he stood with his
gluing tools, you could have heard a pin drop. No one raised their eyes from the
work of their hands, no one dared look the traitor in the eye.
    From that day, it was as if treachery
began to cast its long shadows into the ghetto, Jew against Jew; no worker could
be sure that he would not have his work permit withdrawn the next day and be
expelled from the ghetto, without having done anything more than claim his right
to his own daily bread. But Chaim Rumkowski knew how words and rumour could run
through the ghetto. In his speech to his resort-laiter he had said that he never had more to give than there
was to give. But the very fact that he gave meant he was also entitled to take . Namely from
those wicked, irresponsible people who misappropriated the bread that everyone
had a right to demand.
    In that respect, he said, quoting the
Talmud, he stood on solid ground.

And so it was decreed from the highest quarters: everyone in the ghetto was to work.
    By earning your keep, you also served the public good.
    Yet there were many in the ghetto who couldn’t care less about the public good and preferred to provide for themselves. Some of them dug for coal behind the brickworks on the corner of Dworska and Łagiewnicka Streets. The yard behind the works had been used as a dump for years. It often took several hours just to get down to the coal level. First you had to dig down through a slimy mess of vegetable tops and other food waste that lay rotting under a covering of angrily buzzing flies. Then down through layer after layer of waterlogged sand and mud full of smashed crockery with shards that cut into your hands.
    Among the dozen or so children who dug here were two brothers, Jakub and Chaim Wajsberg from