One Girl, Many Lives

By Steve Rodan

Sometimes the actions of one person can change the lives of tens of thousands of oppressed. Emily Landau was that person.

Emily, also known as Margolit, was a fighter in the maddeningly passive Warsaw Ghetto, established by Germany in 1940 and soon the repository of Jews from all over Poland and Nazi-occupied Europe. She was the daughter of Aleksander Landau. a Zionist activist who operated a furniture factory with his older brother on 30 Gesia St. Although the factory was seized by the Germans in December 1941, Landau remained a manager who both supplied the German Army as well as helped protect Jews, including members of the underground, by giving them employment. He also collected money to buy weapons. [1]

Emily was disgusted by these meager efforts. The SS and Gestapo repeatedly raided her father's factory and hauled off men and women for execution. Few weapons were obtained by the underground and virtually none of them was used. The Zionist resistance, later known as the Zydowska Organizacja Bojowa, or ZOB, could not decide whether to fight or capitulate to Nazi extermination. Throughout 1941 and 1942, Mordechai Anielewicz had urged Jews to resist. But his affiliations were suspect, particularly with the Judenrat, or Jewish quisling council that supplied the hundreds of thousands of Jews for deportation to the death camps. [2]

For a long time, Anielewicz was seen as little more than an ineffective propagandist. His followers were stealing money sent by the Jewish Agency and American Joint Distribution Committee from Geneva and Istanbul. The Zionists also argued over ideology and symbols: Should their flag be blue or white?

In October 1942, the resistance acquired several dozen firearms from the Polish Home Army as well as weapons dealers. The Zionists, known as the “snotty-nosed kids,” had turned to their leadership in Jerusalem, London and New York for money to buy weapons. Finally, money was sent by U.S. trade unions to the Polish exile government. Much of the money remained in the government account in London or with the Home Army in Warsaw. Few guns were bought. Even fewer were smuggled into the ghetto.. [3]

Emily was determined not to submit to the Germans. In August 1942, she was captured in a roundup and sent by train to Treblinka. With her comrades from Hashomer Hatzair, they cut the barbed wire of the carriage door and escaped. She returned to the Warsaw ghetto swearing to take revenge.

Her first target was the Jewish collaborators of the Germans, particularly the police. Jacob Lejkin was first on the list. An attorney, Lejkin rose rapidly in the ranks, and by the fall of 1942 was the head of a 2,000-man quisling force. Lejkin was in charge of the massive deportation in the summer in which some 275,000 Jews were killed.

On Oct. 29, 1942, Emily and her comrades followed Lejkin, who had been warned of a plot against his life. She and Mordechai Growas followed the tiny police commander along Gesia St., and a third person, Eliaz Rozanski, shot him dead in broad daylight. The ghetto rejoiced. The Germans did not avenge the death of the man they called "Little Napoleon". [4]

“People think about who was guilty for the mass slaughter [in the summer of 1942] and they come to the conclusion that much guilt falls on the Jewish police," Emanuel Ringelblum, who chronicled the Holocaust in Poland, wrote. "Many even claim that the Jewish police were the only guilty ones. So, now people are taking revenge. The police are reminded of their sin at every opportunity... The Jewish police are pursued wherever it is possible to do so." [5]

ZOB was galvanized by the assassination of Lejkin and vowed more attacks. The group planned operations against other Jewish police commanders. But the resistance failed to act.

Instead, the Germans beat ZOB to the punch. On Jan. 18, 1943, the SS was back in the Warsaw ghetto, ordered by its chief Heinrich Himmler to resume deportations after a three-month lull. The aim was to grab 8,000 Jews for Treblinka. ZOB and the rest of the underground were taken by surprise and did not plan to resist.

Emily Landau and her friends, however, were ready. When the SS raided the forced labor factories they were rushed by Jews with axes and iron bars. Yasha Greenstein attacked an SS man with a knife. Emily grabbed a grenade she had prepared and hurled it toward a group of SS men. A dozen were killed or injured.

News of the ongoing battle reached the underground. Anielewicz quickly gathered a dozen of his men and reached a column of Jews taken by the SS. The resistance members began to shoot. Others hurled firebombs, known as Molotov cocktails. The Germans returned fire and most of the Jewish rebels were killed. But some of the Jews on the deportation line managed to escape. Somebody snatched a submachine gun from a German soldier. The Nazis were too stunned to give chase. Instead, SS officers fled the ghetto. Within hours, word of the retreat reached Himmler in Berlin.

This marked the first battle by the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto. About 1,000, the lion's share of them Jews, were killed in the battle that lasted four days. Anielewicz survived; most of his colleagues did not.

But when the Germans withdrew the fear of the Jews dissipated. Other Jewish quislings were tracked and assassinated, particularly Alfred Nussig, a cousin of Theodore Herzl and former Zionist who now worked for German intelligence. Many of the remaining 65,000 Jews in the ghetto built bunkers and stored weapons for what would be the Warsaw ghetto uprising in April.

Anielewicz, in contact with the Zionist leadership in Jerusalem, formed another group called Eyal. Poalei Zion dominated the new group, later joined by the communists and Bund. Betar, Mizrahi and Agudat Israel were not included. Mired in ideological tiffs and power struggles, there was little trust among the factions. This would have tragic consequences when the Germans returned to destroy the ghetto. [6]

What happened to Emily was not clear. Some reports assert that she was killed in the January battles. Others said she survived and died in the revolt in April. Her father survived the January uprising but was captured and eventually killed in the gas chambers of Auschwitz. Witnesses recalled that Landau never stopped talking about his hero daughter. [7]

Notes

1. Aleksander Landau. Przemysław Batorski. Jewish Historical Institute. https://www.jhi.pl/en/articles/aleksander-landau,6194*

2. In Jewish Blood: The Zionist Alliance with Germany, 1933-1963. Steve Rodan and Elly Sinclair. Page 166

3. ibid. Page 167

4. Aleksander Landau

5. Ringleblum Diary, November 1942.

6. In Jewish Blood. Page 169

7. Who Will Write Our History? Samuel D. Kassow. Page 287. Wydawnictwo Żydowski Instytut Historyczny, Warsaw 2017

Below: Emily Landau and her father Aleksander in 1935.