Uri had been a partisan, who had ultimately helped lead,
or at least had been involved in, a revolt by the Jews in the Warsaw ghetto against the
Nazis. The uprising, which took place in April and May of 1943, was unsuccessful, but
was considered to be a great act of courage on the part of the grossly outnumbered and
poorly supplied partisans, and brought hope to the Jews, calling "all the world's
attention" to their plight.
In Chapter 43, Misha
explains,
"...I understood at last what Uri had done and
what he had saved me from. I understood that the Uri I knew - the real Uri - was not the
one the Nazis knew. I smiled to think of him on the last day, once again in his own
clothes, shaking his fist at the oncoming tanks, his red hair
flying..."
It was Uri's red
hair and fair complexion that allowed him to pass as a non-Jew. During the time the Jews
of Warsaw were confined to the ghetto, he had been living on the "outside," working at a
hotel frequented by occupation troops and ultimately becoming a Nazi soldier himself.
Uri's actions were clandestine; his heart was with his people, the Jews, and he
circulated among the Nazis to gain information for the
underground.
Uri was a Nazi soldier when Misha saw him
last, and he did indeed shoot the boy, but not to kill; Uri had his gun "point[ed]
between [Misha's] eyes," but hits him in the ear instead. By wounding Misha and
rendering him unconscious so that the Nazis would have thought he was dead, Uri had
saved his friend from being put on the train to the concentration camps, where he would
have been killed in the ovens. Appearances to the contrary, Uri had saved Misha's life
(Chapters 39 and 43).
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