The broken body of Klapholtz, draped over the wooden staves of the leading wagon, rocked back and forth. His arms and legs and the head on his neck seemed full of energy. Someone ran up and attached a flower to his trousers. He was their martyr, their hero. Ladies and gentlemen, what other artist—not even Victor Hugo, not Michelangelo—has moved men so greatly, or filled them with the conviction that they could change the course of their lives?

So began the first day of the Five Day General Strike.

II

Strike Day One

Everything remained quite peaceful the rest of that morning. No raids by the Guardsmen. No Warriors called in. The spinning-mill workers set out their pickets, and here and there in the Suburb you could hear clanking pails, rather like cow bells, as the fecalists drove to this shop and that one, urging the workers to strike. Then large wall posters were stuck right over the Judenrat’s official announcements—FREE EDMUND TRILLING! REMEMBER KLAPHOLTZ! MARCH OF THE JEWISH WAR VETERANS!—and no one came to tear them down. Next the tanners voted to join the protest, the carpet workers did likewise, and the weak-current technicians, a crucial group, threatened to leave their stations if new Judenrat elections were not quickly held. It seemed likely the printers would follow. How rapidly the movement was spreading! A fight broke out between the Balut market porters and pickets from the Strike Committee. But the Jewish police only stood there, pretending not to notice. What did this lack of response mean? Had Trumpelman given up? The Ghetto waited to see.

The suspense ended late that same afternoon, when the hook and ladder and the red pumper drove out of the Smugowa Street station. For a moment—since there had been no report of a fire—people thought that the Jewish Fire Brigade had joined the General Strike. But the face of Faybush on one truck, of Wax and Pfeffer steering the other, did not respond to the cheers of the crowd along the road. The two machines went the whole length of Wrzesnienska and then turned down the Piwna Boundary Road. Finally they took up stations on Stefanska Street, in front of the food depot for the Ghetto. A detachment of sweepers was already there, stringing wire along the length of the warehouse. On the roof, with a rifle, was the Guardsman Szpilfogel. There were more Guardsmen at the windows and these men had rifles, too. Henceforth the policy of the Race of Masters—to wit, starvation—would be carried out by the Jews.

Strike Day Two

Obviously, whoever controlled the food supply in the Suburb would win the strike. It was a victory, then, when the kosher butchers, and at least half the bakers, agreed to supply the pickets with fish sausage and bread. The Judenrat, however, had stored only enough food in the factories to feed those who still showed up to work. No fish, no flour, came into the other shops. At noon on the second day the brush makers, so full of enthusiasm during the funeral procession, cheering and waving streamers, showed up at their factory benches. Why? Because on their half-kilo loaves there was a choice of two jams. An hour later a fistfight occurred between the striking and nonstriking carpenters, some of whom broke into their own locked shops. The picketers hardly had strength to hold up their own banners and signs.