Upfall

Sobel managed to foster a trickle of trade into Biali, using the the neighboring gentile village as a market for both Biali and the outside world. This yielded extra bread, meat and dairy products for the town, though in truth, Sobel's effective coercion of Biali—Podlaski was the Jewish town's real stock in trade. Jezek and Yatom disliked this, but had no choice but to tolerate it. Sobel the M acher indeed got things done.

Maintaining connections to the outside was a necessary risk. Yatom learned that the main east—west road to Biali had become little used after the massacre, and trade ran mostly through a track that intersected Biali-Podlaski. He feared that were the Germans to launch an attack, it would likely come down the little used east-west road from Lubin, called locally the Lubinstrasse, and he insisted that this avenue be mined. The risk of mining the Lubinstrasse was two-fold— that any trade down that road would be cut, or that a mine detonation might alert the Germans to partisan activity in the area. Though neither Jezek nor Sohel liked the idea, Yatom had several dozen of Sobibor's mines sown on the road anyway. These were placed far from the town near the intersection of the Lubinstrasse with the north-south high road that ran to Chelm. A nearby forester's track was also mined. Yatom hoped that if a German patrol hit a mine along the Lubinstrasse, they would not associate it with the isolated town, still five kilometers distant. On the other hand, if the Germans launched a major attack down the road, the mines would be critical to slowing the advance and giving Biali's defenders time to man the town’s defenses.

Creating those defenses absorbed most of Yatom‘s time and energy in the weeks following the sayeret's arrival in Biali. With the aid of several Jewish engineers and an architect, Yatom designed and supervised the construction of Biali's fortifications. Each day he set off with work crews, usually accompanied by De J ong and the architect, an Austrian named Natan Nudelman. Nudelman had made a career designing expensive villas, but now threw himself into the intricacies of making camouflaged fighting positions. Yatom and De Jong selected sites for dozens of small three and four man bunkers, intended to hold a single machinegun crew, or a few and submachine-gunners. The bunkers faced in all directions, towards anticipated enemy attacks, and in opposite directions in order to hit invaders from behind, and on every flank. Nudelrnan's designs allowed the bunkers to be reasonably fortified and blend almost invisibly into the hills. Around each concentration of bunkers Yatom laid out a few more precious mines, supplemented by ad-hoc boobytraps, including many simple spiked trap holes that Yatom based on little more than what he'd seen in Vietnam War movies. The bunkers were built on all sides of the town, but concentrated to the north and west, where Yatom guessed an attack was most likely. In these areas the workers built a forward and secondary lines of bunkers, to give the defenders the chance to retreat. Around the town itself, four extra large bunkers were constructed, facing north, south, east and west, as a last defensive line.

There were so many bunkers that not all could be manned at once —the Jews would have to determine the avenue of a German attack and orient the defense accordingly to have any hope of throwing it back. Unless the Germans chose a roundabout route through the hills, Yatom figured that Biali would face attack down the Lubinstrasse and the forester‘s track that paralleled it to the north. The forester's road terminated in an abandoned encampment a little less than three kilometers northwest of the town from where the Germans could easily launch a final assault on Biali. Yatom’s crews built a half—dozen bunkers within those deserted buildings too, turning the innocuous looking shacks into a killing ground.

Mofaz drowned his anger and worries in a multitude of tasks. Mostly, assisted by Nir, Bolander and Roi, he trained the bulk Biali's new militia in basic infantry tactics. Driven by desperation and boredom the conglomeration of Polish, Dutch, Czech and Austrian Jews had made good progress, especially considering differences in language, culture and outlook. Most were destined to man Biali‘s bunkers, where they were expected to fight to the bitter end. However, a few promising candidates were given more advanced instruction in the arts of war.

After an initial few days of target practice Mofaz and Bolander selected the best marksmen, including two young women, and sent them to Ilan for sniper training. Using two scoped Mausers and a pair of scoped Mosin—Nagants, the Israeli sniper trained four two person teams in shooting, spotting and camouflage skills. They were to deploy between the bunkers and on the flanks and aim for German officers and NCOs.