Uprising

The uprising officially begins the next day, August 1, at 5:00 pm. Battles begin throughout the city, first to the north, then in the city center, and then in the Wola District, where Lidia is. They manage to secure a safe area of a few city blocks in Wola, which they fortify. They also get German uniforms, supplies, and food.

Lidia is sent to Old Town with a message. When she gets there, excited uprising members who have just taken the printing house greet her. They were finally able to stop the Germans from printing propaganda and could make their papers. They send Lidia back with a box full of newly printed bulletins.

When she gets back to Wola, she learns that the uprising has taken the high school. She learns that nine soldiers and one nurse died in the effort. She thinks of how the “cost” of a school was 10 people and doesn’t “dare to figure out the cost for [them] to take back [their] entire city” (251).

Two days later, Lidia and the other resistance members discuss what little help the Allies give them. Other than weapons from the British, they receive nothing else.

Lidia goes to sleep before her next delivery. However, a young Jewish boy wakes her up in the night. She offers him water, which he quickly accepts, and then she shares crackers with him. He does not speak or answer any of her questions. She decides to give him the codename “Weasel” and then offers him her bed while she does her next delivery.

Lidia returns home to check on Mama. She finds her brushing her hair. Mama starts to blame Lidia for getting Ryszard involved in the fighting, but Lidia ignores her. She gives her money and tells her to go to Gdansk and then Sweden.

Before leaving, Lidia asks Mama why she never loved her, angrily saying that she loved Krystyna and Ryszard but never her. To Lidia’s surprise, Mama begins to cry, telling Lidia that she loved Krystyna so much that it broke her heart when she died. As a result, she was afraid to love Lidia and lose her in the same way. For the first time that she can remember, Lidia and Mama hug. She tells Mama that she has to fight but promises to find her when the uprising ends.

Lidia goes outside and is surprised to find Maryna there, waiting with a packed bag. She tells Lidia that she wants to join the resistance, insisting that she can help as a nurse. Lidia hesitates and then agrees to take her.

On August 6, a week into the fighting, Lidia and the others discuss their progress. They managed to capture German soldiers and weapons and are using the soldiers to dig a tunnel system under the streets. They continue to fortify their safe zone.

Lidia and Drill look out of his “loft”—a room that overlooks a German-controlled street leading into their safe zone. They watch as the Germans use Polish women and children as shields to move a tank up the street. At Halama’s instruction, she grabs a mask and runs down into the street, climbing over the wall as Drill throws a smoke bomb. She collects the woman and children, ushering them over the wall to safety. Then, she turns back, lighting a Molotov cocktail and throwing it into the tank’s gun. As she makes it safely back over the wall, she realizes that she was wounded in her shoulder by shrapnel but barely felt it.

The next day, Halama shows Lidia a newspaper with a description of what she did to the tank, describing her “red dress.” She asks to be a fighter, but Halama insists that she is too valuable as a messenger. Arrow then brings in crates, telling Lidia that they procured gray uniforms. Lidia finally replaces her red dress.

In the hall, Lidia runs into Weasel, who speaks more now and is helping deliver mail within the safe zone. He gives her a letter from Halama, written just minutes ago, telling her to come to his office.

Halama and Arrow tell Lidia that they have an opportunity for her to fight. In a nearby garden, German snipers are hiding. Lidia takes grenades and goes to the garden wall, running as she throws them over. On the other side, Halama does the same until they kill the snipers. They then raid the garden for any vegetables that survived.

The fighters manage to get a hold of a record player and a few records, and they dance in the high school gymnasium. Lidia meets a boy named Same, who tells her that she is famous across Warsaw. Drill cuts in and asks to dance with Lidia.

Halama interrupts their celebration. He takes Lidia, Drill, and a few others to the upper floors of the high school. They look out at a “Goliath”—a small machine attached to a wire that delivers a massive explosion. Lidia suggests that she go into the street and cut the wire but cannot find her knife. She looks back onto the street and sees Weasel run out—having stolen her knife—and begin to cut the wire. A German soldier nearby aims at him, but a resistance fighter shoots the soldier first. Weasel finishes cutting the wire and then runs back to the camp as the resistance fighters shoot at the soldiers, and they flee.

Lidia goes downstairs to find Weasel. She finds him in the gym, surrounded by resistance fighters celebrating the “eight-year-old boy who had just proven himself the bravest of [them] all” (276).

Lidia delivers a message to Old Town but is shocked to find how quiet it is. She places her message where she is instructed and then waits nearby for a reply. A few hours later, she finds the response, informing her that there is no hope of help from Russia. As she turns to leave, she sees another note scribbled on it, instructing her to go into the sewers. Just then, explosions begin, and she realizes that it is so quiet because the resistance is waiting for a German assault.

As Lidia flees, she sees a young girl removing a manhole cover. She runs to her, and the two duck into the sewers. The girl’s name is Ester, and she tells Lidia that she will help her get back to Wola. Ester then leads her through the sewers for hours, warning Lidia not to speak.

Finally, Ester stops. She tells Lidia that the high school is nearby. Lidia asks her how she knows so much about the sewers, and Ester tells her that she fought in the ghetto uprising a year before. She and her friends escaped the ghetto through the sewers, and now Ester has stayed in them to help. Lidia tries to get her to come to her camp, but Ester insists that she has to stay below to help.

The fighting intensifies, especially in Old Town, where the resistance is shrinking. As the resistance fighters discuss their plans, a German bomber flies overhead. Lidia waits for the explosion, but it never comes. She and Drill go and find the bomb, which failed to explode. A man named Engineer volunteers to dismantle the bomb and see what they can use from it.

Lidia returns to Old Town to deliver papers. In the short time she was gone, the situation worsened, as even more buildings were destroyed. On her way back to the high school, she gets lost in thought, realizing too late that the sentries there are dead. A gun goes off, and Lidia feels the bullet go by her. In response, she pretends to be hit, falling to the ground with the other bodies.

German soldiers approach her, thinking that she is dead. They roll her over, and one of them comments that their commander will be happy that they’ve killed the girl who keeps causing them trouble. He starts to shoot her—to be sure she’s dead—but gunfire nearby interrupts him. The soldiers leave her there.

A while later, Lidia hears Maryna and Halama talking. They think that she is badly injured or dead, but she sits up and tells them she is fine. They help her inside the school.

Drill comes to a group of fighters with homemade grenades made from the explosives pulled from the dud bomb. He holds one up to show them, explaining that they will explode on impact. When he goes to put it back in the bag, he misses, and it falls to the floor. Before anyone can move, Halama jumps forward and pushes Drill out of the way, collapsing on top of the grenade as it explodes. Stunned and devastated, Drill leaves, and Lidia follows him out. She sits with him for hours on the rooftop as he sobs, holding him.

When Lidia rejoins the group, she is told that, to her annoyance, Arrow has already taken over command from Halama. Arrow asks why she doesn’t like him, and she explains that he risks everyone else’s life by putting them in danger but never his own. Even if they don’t like each other, they agree to work together to free Poland.

An alarm signaling a German attack interrupts their conversation. Lidia finds that the physics building is on fire and then sees four Goliaths on the ground moving toward their base. She yells to Drill, who shoots the wires for three of the Goliaths. However, Lidia has to go out into the street to cut the fourth.

Lidia manages to cut the wire and then flees into the supply building nearby. As she searches for a helmet, she sees another Goliath at the door. It explodes, sending her to the ground as the bookcases fall around her.

Lidia wakes up in a makeshift hospital. A man asks her questions—not recognizing her—and she fails to convince him that she is a fighter in the resistance. Lidia sees Elephant in a bed nearby, but he is disoriented and blind from a gas attack in the sewers. The sounds of fighting interrupt their conversation as the man leaves and takes everyone with him except Lidia and Elephant.

Lidia realizes that they are not safe there, as the Germans are coming. She takes Elephant with her—leading him due to his blindness. The buildings around them catch fire. As Lidia desperately searches for an escape, she spots Arrow coming out of a manhole cover nearby.

As Lidia and Elephant join him in the sewers, Arrow comments that he is doing some fighting himself now. Lidia jokingly tells him that he ordered them into the sewer—instead of coming out and getting them.

Lidia spends the next few days recovering in the hospital. She is disappointed that Drill never comes to see her, but she gets to talk with Maryna, and Weasel visits her often.

When she gets out of the hospital, she goes to see Arrow, and she is immediately called to his office. Arrow tells her that their resistance is failing; they are desperate for help from the Allies that isn’t coming. They surmise that it is Russia’s fault, as Russia is keeping the other Allied nations out so that they can take over Poland themselves. Regardless, Lidia insists that they need to keep fighting.

Engineer finds a way to stop the Goliaths. He constructs small walls in the streets, causing the Goliaths to bump up against them well before they reach the school. After hitting the walls a few times, the Goliaths explode. Lidia is surprised by such a “simple” but effective solution.

Lidia goes to Drill, forcing him to speak with her. He tells her that he still needs time, as he keeps reliving the same moment when he dropped the grenade. Lidia tells him about a time when she was seven when she performed music at an orphanage in front of dozens of important people. When she made a mistake with a note, she was devastated but just kept playing. If she’d stayed on that mistake, she would’ve kept playing it over and over, creating “noise” instead of music. Lidia tells him that Halama would be upset if he saw how Drill was living, blaming and isolating himself. Drill says that he will do better but that he still needs time to heal.

As Lidia returns to her room, Engineer stops her. He asks her if she will go with him to collect belongings from the people who have fled the city. He makes it clear that it is a volunteer mission, but she accepts before he can even finish.

Engineer and Lidia search several places, but in each, they find Germans already searching the homes. Engineer suggests a neighborhood, and they walk there. As they get close, Lidia realizes that it is Doda’s apartment where she lived with her family. Walking through her old neighborhood, she is shocked at the destruction that has occurred in just a month since she was last there.

They search Maryna’s apartment and find some bandages and sugar. As they leave, Lidia slips a picture of Maryna’s family into her bag. They then go into Lidia’s apartment.

Lidia searches through the different rooms, seeing parts of her old life and realizing that she wants to take very little of it with her—as it has no use in their fight. She takes Ryszard’s old coat and Papa’s cufflinks that she took from her house years before.

As they go to leave, Lidia finds a note from her mother. She reads it aloud. Mama wrote her a note giving her the location where she was headed in Sweden. She asks Lidia to meet her there so that they can “start again.” Engineer doesn’t notice as Lidia begins to cry. He comments about how their story will probably have a “sad ending” (317).

A few days later, on September 2, the resistance fighters capture a large supply of German ammunition. When the fighters go out to retrieve it, Lidia is devastated when Elephant doesn’t come back.

Lidia and Drill are sent through the sewers to Old Town to collect the remaining fighters there as the resistance consolidates its forces. As they walk, Drill tries to ask about Elephant, but Lidia insists that they can’t speak in the sewers. She realizes that she doesn’t have the words to talk about him yet.

Arrow meets with Lidia and tells her that there is a spy among them. One of their weapons went missing, and then four soldiers ended up dead. He tasks Lidia with finding out who it is.

Lidia looks over the resistance fighters who are eating together and decides that she trusts them all. She goes with Drill to the apartments across the street, where the refugees are living, and takes a loaf of bread as a bribe.

They go among the refugees, offering bread to several of them, but they get no information. After searching several rooms, they find an old, gray-haired woman who Drill immediately identifies as the spy. Lidia isn’t sure, so she takes the bread to speak with another woman nearby. However, Drill yells to her and then tackles the old woman. Lidia realizes that the woman is actually a German man wearing a wig. With Lidia’s help, they manage to get his gun. The German angrily tells them that stopping him means nothing, as they will be bombing the area in less than two weeks.

The situation gets worse for the resistance fighters over the next few days. The Germans bomb the area and close off exits from the city—leaving only the sewers to get refugees out. Hawk is killed during the fighting. They receive news that the Allies have taken back France, but it does little for their hopes in Poland.

On September 15, Lidia walks from the school to the apartments where the refugees are kept. Drill stops her on the way. He gives her a large straw hat, and Lidia makes jokes about wearing it in the fighting. However, Drill tells her that he got it for her to wear on a date with him once the fighting is over. She starts to answer him when the area around them explodes. They are both thrown into a wall. Although Lidia is alright, she finds Drill knocked out and bleeding but still breathing. She drags him to the refugee apartments as several women come out to help. She leaves Drill with them and goes to the school to help.

Lidia finds Arrow outside the school, helping their fighters get out. She asks if anyone is still inside, and he tells her that Sam and Hand are searching the rooms. Lidia tells him that she is going inside to get them, but Arrow goes instead. After several minutes, he returns with Sam and Hand. In the end, the fighters end up gathered in the apartments with the refugees as the high school is destroyed.

Lidia sits with Drill in the infirmary. He occasionally wakes up but is mostly unresponsive. Arrow comes to her and gives her a letter from General Bór—the Polish Underground Army’s commander. Inside is a medal of valor. She tries to give the medal back, insistent that she didn’t earn it any more than anyone else. However, when Arrow tells her that he recommended her for the medal, she thanks him and puts it in her bag.

Lidia turns back to Drill. She says that he should have gotten the medal instead, and he mumbles in agreement. Her realization that he is finally returning to normal is “better than any medal on earth” (338).

Lidia spends the next few weeks getting refugees out through the sewers. Each time, she returns aboveground, but the journey becomes more difficult as more of the city is destroyed.

On one trip back, Lidia is walking in a new area of the city when she sees a destroyed school. Sticking out from the rubble is a beautiful piano still in perfect condition. She decides that she needs to play, even as she remembers her father’s anger years ago when she played in their home during the first invasions.

She sits down and begins to play Chopin’s “Nocturne in E-Flat Major.” German soldiers immediately greet her music with gunfire as they shoot and hit the piano. However, the fighting stops, and the area around her goes silent as she plays. When she finishes the song, she hears applause and German shouts for her to play again. However, she realizes that the music is not for them; it is to put “music once again in [her] heart” (343). She flees as quickly as she can.

Arrow warns Lidia that the Germans are going to arrest whatever people are left in Warsaw. He orders her to take Maryna, Weasel, the nurses, and herself—disguised as a refugee—and leave the country. She tries to argue, but he insists that they will need her to guide them.

On October 5, she prepares to leave with the final group. However, before they can go, German soldiers arrive and put everyone under arrest. They line up in the street and have their hands tied behind their backs. The soldiers force them to walk to the train station.

As they walk, Drill tells Lidia that he promises to find her after the war has ended. She tells him her real name, but before he can give his, soldiers interrupt and force them to stop talking.

As they near the train station, Maryna catches Lidia’s attention. She instructs her to fall back with Weasel. When they get near the back of the crowd, one of the soldiers sees them, but Drill yells out in distraction. When the soldier turns toward him, Lidia, Maryna, and Weasel sneak behind a wall and then down the stairs onto a different waiting platform. They flee the station and travel for hours into the forest.

Lidia, Maryna, and Weasel make their way to Gdansk and then purchase tickets on a boat to Sweden with Papa’s cufflinks. In Stockholm, they go to the address that Mama left, but the woman there tells them that Mama had been there weeks ago looking for old friends but is gone now. Unsure of what to do, Lidia makes money playing the piano at local places. Eventually, a wealthy Englishman finds her and takes them back to London for Lidia to play there.

In London, the three of them are treated like heroes. They receive a place to stay, food, and gifts from people who heard the story about their fighting. However, Lidia and Maryna agree to refuse it all, not considering themselves heroes because they lost. Weasel insists that they are heroes, though, as they “do the right thing, no matter how their story ends” (355).

Shortly after the war ends, Maryna locates her family in Norway. She takes Weasel with her to live with them, but Lidia declines their invitation.

Lidia never hears from Drill. She never finds out anything about him or the other fighters because she does not know their real names. She also never returns to Poland.

However, years later, she goes to Chicago. She knocks on a door there and finds her mother, hugging her tight because she realizes that she “survived the uprising because of” her (356). She is now ready to “rebuild” her life with Mama.