Some in these crowds managed to hand up personal petitions. Trumpelman, on his horse, higher than anyone, would read the scraps of paper, and then announce: “The Jew, Windman, is excused from the house tax for the month of August!” or “The room of the glassblower, Pincus Lining, is not to be fumigated. Notify the fumigation squads!” Most people, however, had no petition to give him or favor to ask. They simply wanted to see him, to hear him, to touch his hanging cloak. There was a special relationship between the Elder and his Jews. It was democratic, like Roosevelt in America, and at the same time it was royal. Just to be near him was considered good fortune, good luck.

Sometimes the President of the Judenrat would get off his horse and plunge right into the masses of people. Then the Jews saw that he now had a limp and walked with a cane. “I know what you’re thinking!” Trumpelman cried. “Look at the Elder! How old he’s getting! He has to walk with a cane! Listen, Jews! Your Elder works every night until dawn! He doesn’t need sleep. His eyes are always open. Every minute he’s thinking of your welfare! That’s what gives me energy! What keeps me young!” Then he picked out a girl in the crowd, a pretty young woman, and to the delight of them all he whirled her around, as if there had been music and they had been at a ball.

At night, curfew or not, there were always a few people gathered at the edge of the Balut. They liked to point to the light that burned in the top-floor window of Tsarskoye Selo. It never went out. It proved to the Jews that Trumpelman was still awake, thinking, working, finding new ways to save their lives.

In short, the summer of 1940 was the height of the Elder’s popularity in the Ghetto. Wherever you looked you saw his picture—on money, on postage stamps, on the sides of buildings. There were parades in his honor, with the chimney sweepers, tall, thin Jews, in black, with brooms, always at the front. One day, as Trumpelman was riding past the Vocational School, the door flew open and the children rushed down the steps and surrounded his horse. They gave him a gift, an album, with the names of all the schoolchildren in the Suburb. There were also prayers in it, and pictures, and poems. The Elder did not read it at once. He sat, with his white hair and black boots, completely unmoving. He was like the Rumkowsky Monument, an iron figure on an iron horse. Then he swung his cane over the heads of the students.

“My darling boys and girls! Dearest children! The woman I am going to marry has been ill, but now she has recovered. The wedding will be in the middle of October, on the first anniversary of the founding of the Balut! Welcome her! Open your hearts to her! She will be a mother to you!”