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longer copes with the cause of his desperation; he does not attempt to change it, and whatever he does is the function of a destroyed, maddened mind. The rebel can survive the crisis and, overcoming it, return to constructive deeds and living. The desperado has lost that ability. If he survives the crisis, it will be in spite of himself, and if he regains his sanity, outside help and care, not his own self-assertion, will be the cause.

Here is the psychological key to understanding what was going on in our minds and hearts as we were led to gas chambers or as we actually dug our own graves; even though we thus only learn how we did not feel and who we were not. We were neither rebels nor desperadoes.

We were not rebels, nor could we have been rebels, because the situation, as we saw it, was completely hopeless. Hopeless not only because of the sufferings, tortures and hunger inflicted on us but first and foremost because we were completely cut off from the rest of humanity in our ghettoes and concentration camps. We knew nothing about what was going on in the world. Even the pervasive fact of still continued war only vaguely penetrated our consciousness. No news from the outside reached us. In Ghetto Litzmannstadt and other such places, even German newspapers reached a few of us only occasion- ally and then even at the risk of death to all involved in the smuggling. On the other hand, we learned from bitter experience to respect Nazi buoyancy. They behaved like masters of the world, and, to us, masters of the world they were. Only their word prevailed in the world that we knew. Didn't we see Poland crumble within days even though we had been told a million times that if war came, the united might of the Allies would crush the German forces in no time? Now, we had been suffering for years, totally subjugated by the Nazis who did as they pleased and got away with it. To our knowledge, nothing had happened to make us doubt their might. As far as we were concerned, the Nazis were indeed ruling the world. If there was still some fighting going on in remote areas, we felt it to be no more than marginal, while wherever we looked, whatever we perceived testified to total German hegemony. And if a mysterious reliance on history's justice told us that ultimately Hitler would be defeated, in the meantime we saw his evil power as sufficient to cast the final verdict on us.

There are heroes, and there are heroes. In Ghetto Litzmannstadt, a few brave men kept searching for ways to serve their co-sufferers; they decided that the most meaningful and practical act was to build a short wave radio, listen to British newscasts and spread the word that Nazi Germany was not yet the victor, that she was still being challenged by mighty forces. We felt that more than anything else the masses needed a ray of hope, a knowledge that not the entire world had succumbed to Hitler. We arranged shifts to listen to the foreign broadcasts, write down the highlights and circulate crude copies. When the Kripo (Kriminal Polizei) finally detected our conspiracy and raided our listening post, all the participants were in mortal danger. I remember the slender, small figure of Chaim Widawski. He was the most inconspicuous, unimpressive man. I remember his words when he learned that the Kripo was looking for him. He did not fear death, nor did he regret his part in the conspiracy. He had a slim chance to survive, possibly the best chance of any man in the ghetto. Although listening to foreign broadcasts was considered high treason, it was a political crime, not a racial one such as being a Jew. As a political criminal he had a chance of being arrested and sent to a regular prison, there to answer for his "offense" before a German court. This bore a much greater promise of survival than being in a ghetto and having to share the ultimate fate of all the Jews. In fact, another member of the conspiracy arrested by the Kripo and brought before a Ger- man court survived the war in the relative safety of a regular German prison. But Chaim was afraid of just one thing; he knew he was physically a weak man. What if, in the process of being tortured, he should lose his presence of mind and unwittingly reveal the names of all others involved in the radio conspiracy! This was at the moment the only danger Chaim was ready to act against: he took poison in the soothing knowledge that now no one could make him inform on the others.

We had our heroes. Their acts were neither spectacular nor mentioned in a medal-bestowing ceremony. But I believe even the Congress of the United States has no medals becoming the heroism of the little man, Chaim Widawski. What medal can you bestow for "just" listening to a radio?

Neither the timing nor the location of resistance to the Nazi killers were coincidental. Ghetto Warsaw, although only about eighty miles from Ghetto Litzmannstadt, was never as hermetically sealed off from the outside world as the latter. It had been closed much later by the Germans, a factor that accounted for the establishment of close ties between the underground movements in the ghetto and on the out- side. It was also connected by an under- ground sewage system that proved so important in the days of the uprising. Furthermore, Ghetto Warsaw did not rise up until the German east front started to feel the impact of the Red Army's offensives. Even though it was still totally unrealistic to count on Soviet advances catching up with the uprising in the ghetto, its eruption confirms that the Nazi victims passively accepted their doom only for as long as there was no prospect whatsoever for a meaningful struggle. The slightest, dimmest ray of hope sufficed to kindle the flame of resistance.

In the ruthless claws of the SS, between the electrified barbed wires of the Ausschwitz concentration camp where no one had the remotest chance to escape, even there news about the advances of the Red Army sufficed to touch off a revolt; and while we were being indiscriminately showered with bullets from Nazi machine guns, at least some of the gas chambers were put out of commission by the rebels.

How little hope was needed to make the doomed stand up and fight for their lives!

Speaking of Ausschwitz I cannot help but recall the thoughts of all of us while Allied warplanes were flying over the camp en route to and from bombing missions on industrial complexes. Each time they flew over they left in our hearts a sharp pain of disappointment and bitterness. For hundreds of miles around there was no better target for the bombers than the four huge flames that night and day extended from the crematories to lose themselves some- where in the invisible depths of the sky. No spy could have provided a more exact location for bombing. We watched the war planes fly over our heads in precise geometric formations. They did not fly too high. They were relatively safe, encountering no more resistance than an occasional Ineffective burst from a German machine gun emplaced in the concentration camp. Yet, they just flew over and continued on to their destination. Why, why didn't they ever drop at least a part of their load on those huge death plants identified by their long flames? Or, didn't they know, now late in 1944, what those flames were? Didn't they know that these were the death sites of millions of people? Why didn't the Allied planes that kept flying over Ausschwitz put the gas chambers and crematories out of commission, at least to slow down the macabric efficiency of the genocidal apparatus? These were questions we, down there in the Ausschwitz concentration camp, could never resolve. These are questions