Upfall

Finally, Shapira ordered a oease fire, crawling down the line to make sure the men understood. He raised his thermal binoculars. In the distance Chaim's men still shot aimlessly into the camp, while Roi fired an occasional well aimed burst. Shapira raised Chaim on the radio and had him cease fire too. In seconds quiet descended over the fighting ground. From inside Treblinka they could still hear shooting and the occasional explosion as Yatom and the sayeret wore down the garrison, but in the immediate vicinity their ears simply rang. From the Ukranian position one or two men continued to blindly fire, but through his binoculars Shapira saw that most of the enemy soldiers assumed that this was a good opportunity to run. They started out in ones and two, and continued fleeing for the next five minutes. Shapira let them go.

What remained looked like a field of corpses, but Shapira couldn't be sure. They had rehearsed the next part. Shapira crawled down the line of men reminding the men of the next part of the mission. He raised Chaim on the radio again.

"We‘re coming on now—hit them!" Suddenly the Bears opened up again on the prostrate Ukranians. Shapira yelled to his men in German "Aufmarsch! ” Shapira lunged forward, his Tavor at the ready.

The Bulls rose unsteadily around Shapira, but followed him, walking slowly and hunched over. "AufMarchen! " he tried again, hoping to get the men to move with greater alacrity. They had practiced charging and yelling in this final attack to scare off the last defenders and put them to flight, the Jewish fighters men were shell-shocked by their own fire and death that they‘d sown, Sandler among them.

Still they stumbled on, and drawing no significant fire frorn the Ukranians, within a minute were only a few dozen meters from the edge of the enemy camp. Shapira ordered them to lie down and take out their grenades. He radioed Chaim to cease fire and the battlefield once more fell into relative silence. Shapira looked down the line. As they'd practiced every other man had a grenade in hand while his mate had a weapon raised to provide cover. Shapira yelled "Los" and a half-dozen Jews willed themselves up, jogged forward a few meters and loosed their grenades into the Ukranian camp. Everybody ducked as the weapons exploded among the dead, wounded and fleeing Ukranians.

Shapira made sure every man reloaded his weapon. That accomplished he led them into the devastated camp with orders to shoot anything that moved. They advanced into a mess of dead and dying men, upturned food pots and ammo crates. The Ukranian camp had indeed been a death trap. The soldiers, complacent and confused by Erbel's instructions, had neglected to dig entrenchments or string wire, leaving themselves open to slaughter. Here and there one of the Bulls fired nervously at a wounded or crawling man, while Shapira scanned the scene through his scope. Shapira signaled the Bears and Chaim led his men forward until the two groups reunited. Together they combed through the rest of the shattered bivouac, leaving no Ukranian alive. Sandler's Sonderkommandos shot down two Ukranians who tried to surrender. Shapira didn't care. In fact, he was glad that the men were turning into killers.

Perchensky, a few kilometers away, listened to the battle raging in and around Treblinka with increasing trepidation. At that distance the firefight sounded like a series of scattered pops and muffled bangs, that reminded her of the popcorn she would make in the little microwave she and Feldhandler shared in the Dimona lab.

Occasionally the rattle of an automatic weapon echoed over the fields. That reminded her of a woodpecker. A few times she made out a distant explosion, presumably from a sayeret grenade or rocket. At least she hoped so. She wasn't interested assisting the sayeret but was not so jaded that she hoped for a German victory. She shifted her seat in the truck and passed the time working on a complicated tensor equation by the dim glow of a chemlite.

Mueller watched her, his back and hands aching against the small tree. Like Perchensky he could hear the battle in the distance, and had little doubt that his captors were winning again. He twisted his hands against the flex cuffs and rubbed them on the rough bark, but whatever they were made out of seemed far to strong to saw through.

The plastic of the cuffs was alien to Mueller—light but maddeningly strong. He gave up trying to work his way free. Instead, he called out to Perchensky, who he knew spoke excellent German.

”Frauline" he said respectfully "please allow me relieve myself. "

Perchensky ignored him. Mueller repeated the request, louder this time, but with a touch of desperation, ending his plea with a couple of anxious ”bittes"