Those last words made everyone think of Grundtripp. Blood kept coming from his body, as if it were still being pumped. His mouth was wide open. So were his eyes. The look he had was of shock, of surprise. Who can blame him? It was difficult to believe that such an important man, with the rank equivalent to a Lieutenant-General in the British Army, could be killed by a single bullet shot by a Jew.

IV

The dawn of that day, drizzly, dim, leaking in a hundred places, was the last one our Baluters would ever see. Such, at any rate, was a widely held opinion—an opinion that had been formed as soon as our Jews awoke and read the poster in fresh, black, wet-looking ink. Lipsky, provocateur Lipsky, had to be handed over by midnight. Otherwise the Suburb would be destroyed. Signed: the Judenrat Chairman. As if that weren’t enough, the Ghettoites next discovered there was no place to work. The mills were locked. The shops—twine makers, brush makers, crystal sorters, and such—did not open. That meant one thing: the threat on the posters would be carried out. But who was to capture this Lipsky? The Jewish police had disappeared. Rievesaltes was now a prisoner in his own jail. Worst, most awful, Grundtripp, the Blond One, was dead! Shot, some said, by a Jew! Hopeless, then, to beg for mercy. What to do? There was nothing to do. That is why the Jews simply went into the streets and stood there, in their coats, in their caps, by the hour, like wheat.

Then, because the Ghetto was so quiet, many people heard, first a pounding noise and then the sound of someone cutting wood. Everyone began to walk toward the Baluter Ring, where the sounds came from. Other Jews were already there, filling up the streets that lined the square, pressing right to the edge of what had once been—with its birds and squirrels and blue-and-white benches—an attractive park. Nothing but tree stumps there now. And among these stumps, on the burned patches of grass, a man was hammering and a man was sawing, while the Judenrat Chairman, in his new wheelchair, rolled up and down.

It was Brauwatt with the hammer, a real carpenter, with nails in his mouth. What was he building? Too soon to tell. The one man kept sawing planks; Brauwatt joined them together. After a time you could see there was a platform, a kind of stage. On top of this two vertical supports went up, like two big capital A’s. Then two teams of sweepers climbed up these structures and lowered a stout crossbar between them, nearly four meters above the ground.

“Look!” came a voice from the crowd. “It’s a scaffold!”

Of course! Why hadn’t they seen it before? The Baluters began to laugh and shout. “Yes! Yes!” they cried. “We’ll hang the traitor!” How every man’s spirit soared! It was as if rays of sunshine had broken through the thick, spongy clouds.