No one in the room—and there were a dozen Jews, all crowded together—responded. So the awful cries—Give him up! Hand him over!—continued to drift up from the streets, sometimes near, sometimes far off, but never, not for a moment, ceasing. Finally Chaffer, his hands over his ears, burst out in wordless musical notes.

“La! La! La!” Old Pipe, surprisingly loud, joined in too.

“Quiet! Silence!” Hersh Einhorn hissed at the two elderly men. “Do you want to give our position away?”

“Maybe that is what they want! There are some people here who would like to meet the demands.” That was the Widow Trilling, after whose husband the brigade had been named.

“No, no, no, no—” said the buttonholer. “Not in the least. Not at all.”

The room fell silent again. Some fighters sat—on sandbags, on a corner of a table, on the floor; the rest, in small ovals, were pacing. A Jew asked the time. “Twenty-one minutes past ten,” another Jew told him. The voices in the street went on and on.

Thus it was almost eleven, the proverbial eleventh hour, before the next person spoke. It was Zam, the Warsaw physician, and what he said chilled them all. “Jews! Partisans! Kill me if you want! But here is my opinion. Our leader Lipsky should turn himself in!”

“Of course,” cried the widow. “It’s a non-worker speaking. A fancy dresser.”

“A doctor’s job is to save lives, not to waste them,” replied Miss Bibelnieks, Zam’s assistant.

Kleiderman, one of the Mosk mill workers, said, “No one will be saved if Lipsky surrenders. The ultimatum is just a pretext to attack the Ghetto. If it doesn’t happen tonight, it will tomorrow. If not tomorrow, the next day. Our turn has come. We have to fight.”

“Yes! Fight! Fight!” a half dozen voices, heedless of everything, cried.

“Fight? Fight who?” Zam demanded. “Listen! Do you hear them? Our enemies will be the Jews in the street.”

“Pardon, pardon—” The big presser was trying to get people’s attention. “Between today and tomorrow, there’s a big difference. I mean, what if we put off the showdown for two more months? Then the Soviet Army will be here to join the fight. Just two months!”

Nachman Kipnis stood. From all appearances he had, in the last year, or two years, simply stopped growing. But the lenses in his glasses were thicker, like milk-bottle glass. “Comrades! Whether it’s two months, or four months, or even six months, our orders are to keep the Ghetto alive! The Red Army needs us. We have to start the revolt from within!”

The presser was red in the face. He was blushing from shame. “This Lipsky! I love this Lipsky! Before I met him I was just a presser, a pants worker. He taught me to struggle. From him I learned the purpose of life. Now friends, dears, I am like Atlas. The world is a ball in my hands!” The big man in three strides crossed the room. He leaned over the Brigade Commander. “Lipsky! Our hero! Forgive me! You have to go!”