Tilting the Balance

The Lizard governor said, “You do not seem to understand, Herr Anielewicz. We can hold your people hostage to make sure you turn in your rifles and other weapons.”

“Superior sir, you are the one who does not understand,” Anielewicz answered. “Whatever you want to do to us, we went through worse before you came. We will fight to keep that from happening again. Will you start up Auschwitz and Treblinka and Chelmno and the rest again?”

“Do not make disgusting suggestions.” The German death camps had revolted all the Lizards, Zolraag included. They’d gotten good propaganda mileage out of them. There, Russie and Anielewicz and other Jews had felt no compunctions about helping the Lizards tell the world the story.

“Well, then, in that case we have nothing to lose by fighting,” Anielewicz said. “We were getting ready to fight the Nazis even though we had next to nothing. Now we have guns. If you are going to treat us the way the Nazis did, do you think we’d not fight you? What would we have to lose?”’

“Your lives,” Zolraag said.

Anielewicz spat on the floor of the governor’s office. He didn’t know whether Zolraag knew how much scorn the gesture showed, but he hoped so. He said, “What good are our lives if you push us back into the ghetto and starve us once more? No one will do that to us again, superior sir, no one. Do what you like with me. The next Jew you pick as puppet leader will tell you the same-or his own people will deal with him.”

“You are serious in this matter,” Zolraag said in tones of wonder.

“Of course I am,” Anielewicz answered. “Have you talked with General Bor-Komorowski about taking guns away from the Home Army?”

“He did not seem pleased with the idea, but he did not reject it in the way you have,” Zolraag said.

“He’s politer than I am,” Anielewicz said, adding the alter kacker to himself. Aloud, he went on, “That doesn’t mean you’ll get any real cooperation from him.”

“We get no real cooperation from any Tosevites,” Zolraag said mournfully. “We thought you Jews were an exception, but I see it is not so.”

“We owed you a lot for throwing out the Nazis and saving us from the death camps,” Anielewicz said. “If you’d treated us as free people who deserved respect, we would have worked with you. But you just want to be another set of masters and treat everyone on Earth the way the Nazis treated us.”

“We would not kill the way the Germans did,” Zolraag protested.

“No, but you would enslave. When you were through, not a human being on this world would be free.”

“I do not see that this matters,” Zolraag said.

“I know you don’t,” Anielewicz said-sadly, for Zolraag was, given the limits of his position, a decent enough being. Some of the Germans had been that way, too; not all by any means enjoyed exterminating Jews for the sake of extermination. But enjoy it or not, they’d done it, as Zolraag resented freedom now.

That ate at Anielewicz’s. Nineteen hundred years before, Tacitus had remarked with pride that good men-the one in particular he had in mind was his father-in-law-could serve a bad Roman emperor. But when a bad ruler required good men to do monstrous things, how could they obey and remain good? He’d asked himself the question more times than he could count, but never yet found an answer.

Zolraag said, “You claim we cannot make you obey by force. I do not believe this, but you say it. Let us think… does this language have a word for thinking of something so as to examine it?”

“ ‘Assume’ is the word you want,” Anielewicz said.

“Assume. Thank you. Let us assume, then, that what you say is true. How in this case are we to rule you Jews and have you obey our requirements?”

“I wish you would have asked that before events drove a wedge between you and us,” Anielewicz answered. “The best way, I think, is not to force us to do anything that would damage the rest of mankind.”

“Even the Germans?” Zolraag asked.

The Jewish fighting leader’s lips curled in what was not a smile. Zolraag knew his business, sure enough. What the Nazis had done to the Jews in Poland-all over Europe-cried out for vengeance. But if the Jews collaborated with the Lizards against the Germans, how could they say no to collaborating with them against other peoples as well? That dilemma had sent Moishe Russie first into hiding and then into flight.

“Don’t use us as your propaganda front.” Anielewicz knew he wasn’t answering directly, but he could not force himself to say yes or no. “Whether you win your war or lose it, you make the rest of the world hate us by doing that.”

“Why should we care?” Zolraag asked.

The trouble was, he sounded curious, not vindictive. Sighing, Anielewicz replied, “Because that would give you your best chance of ruling here quietly. If you make other people hate us, you’ll also make us hate you.”

“We gave you privileges early on, because you did help us against the Germans,” Zolraag said. “By our way of thinking, you abused them. Issuing threats will not make us want to give you more. You may go, Herr Anielewicz.”