Renia and Gusta
NOVEMBER 1943
“This is for you,” a woman whispered, handing Renia a note. “It was given to me while working in the field.” Renia, on her way to the toilet, was startled. “The woman is coming tomorrow to get an answer and deliver a food package.”
Renia’s hands shook as she took the paper. Could it be? She clutched it the entire day.
Finally, at night, when everyone around her was asleep, Renia opened her treasure, devouring each word. Was it for real? The handwriting did look like Sarah’s.
Her sister wrote that everyone was still alive. The comrades had found places to hide in Poles’ homes. She had learned of Renia’s fate from the letter that Zivia received in Warsaw. The gendarme had really sent it! Now Sarah wanted to know how they could help. The comrades would do anything to get her out. “Don’t be discouraged,” she counseled.
Renia reread the note dozens of times.
Thinking, planning, scheming.
Renia checked that everyone was still asleep. It was past midnight.
She snuck out of bed and padded over to the monitor’s desk. As quietly as possible, she fumbled in the dark for a pencil. And found one!
Sarah, always prepared, had included a piece of paper for her reply.
Renia tiptoed back to her bed and wrote:
“First, you must pay the woman who carried the note generously, since she risked her life. Second, would it be possible to pay her to trade places with me, so I could go out to the field? Then we can meet and decide what to do.”
In the morning, in the bathroom, Renia slipped the page to the woman, Belitkova, and arranged to meet her there again that night.
All day, whenever she could, Renia kept rereading Sarah’s letter: “We will do anything to get you out of there. Zivia sent a person with money.” Her friends were safe.
That very evening, another note arrived:
“Everything will be ok. After much persuasion, Belitkova agreed to let you go to the field in her place. She’ll be paid with valuables and plenty of money. I’ll send the goods to her house today. She’s poor and happy for cash.”
The next day, Renia quickly changed into Belitkova’s dress and moved to her cell; Belitkova would attend roll call in Renia’s place. It was a cold November morning, and Renia wrapped her face in all the rags she could find. Luckily, none of the guards knew her.
She arrived at the square with Belitkova’s work group, meeting Russian, French, and Italian prisoners—so many people. They all got to work, carrying bricks onto a train car. Despite the relative ease of the task, Renia was still too weak to do it. Each brick she lifted fell to the ground, attracting stares. She was so impatient. When will Sarah arrive? Every second was an eternity.
Then, from a distance, Renia made out two well-dressed, elegant ladies—one of them with Sarah’s assured gait. She saw her sister examining the surrounds. She probably doesn’t even recognize me. Renia started to walk over. The women prisoners watched, puzzled: Who was this Warsaw girl, with no local relations, heading to talk to?
“They’re acquaintances of a cell mate,” Renia lied, attempting nonchalance, and made her way to the gate.
The chief guard walked right behind Renia. He didn’t know her and, thankfully, did not know of her political prisoner history. Renia approached the wall, and despite the guard on her heels, the sisters could not hold back their tears. It was really her. Sarah handed the guard pastries, while Renia talked to the other girl, Halina. Zivia had sent her from Warsaw, and Renia could tell why. “It doesn’t matter if you fail,” Halina said, her green eyes locked on to Renia’s face. “You must try to get out. Your life is in danger anyways.”
They arranged to meet at that same spot the following week. The girls would bring clothes for Renia to change into. She needed to prepare to escape.
Renia couldn’t stand at the wall for long without looking suspicious. She was shaken by emotion as she watched her sister and Halina walk off and disappear, feeling a resolve that hadn’t been stirred in a long time. She repeated Halina’s words in her mind: You must try.
* * *
But as soon as Renia returned from work, she collapsed. Her skull throbbed. She could not stand up. Her meeting with Sarah had triggered something in her head, she wrote later. Medicine didn’t help. Her fever spiked to 104 degrees for three days straight. In her haze, she began to babble, a real threat. What if she spoke Yiddish? What if she revealed her truth? A few cellmates pitied Renia and offered her their breakfast bread, but she couldn’t swallow a bite. She would miss her chance. She would die.
When finally, her fever miraculously subsided, Renia’s fellow prisoners held a special Sunday prayer to thank God for her recovery. Renia, truly grateful, got up to join them, kneeling and praying intently, as she’d learned to do.
But in the midst of recitation, a hot flash. Renia fainted. The door was locked, and the women could not get any water. They splashed her with the dirty liquid used to wash their bowls.
Renia revived but lay in bed for another two days. How could this happen?
She had to get up, she had to get well. She had to. You must try.
* * *
“November 12, 1943. A date etched in my memory,” Renia wrote in her memoirs. After a sleepless night, she was the first to jump out of bed. Today was it.
“No,” the cell monitor suddenly told her. “You can’t go to the fields today.”
What? “Why not? You let me go last week.” Belitkova had agreed once again to swap places, for a large sum.
“It’s too risky. What if the camp chief realizes you are from the political prisoner’s cell? We’ll all be in trouble.”
“Please,” Renia pleaded. That was all she had left. “Please, I beg you.”
The cell monitor grunted and let her out. The small miracles were endless.
Dressed in Belitkova’s clothes and covered in kerchiefs, Renia left. The supervisor didn’t recognize her. She was held upright by women on her right and left so that she didn’t collapse; it took so many women to help her live. At last, they arrived at the square. Fifteen women, five guards. Renia arranged the bricks and looked around, searching for Sarah and Halina. Nowhere.
Ten in the morning. They arrived! Renia scanned around her: everyone was engaged with her own bricks, her own burdens. All clear. She swiftly left the work site.
But before she reached the girls, the head guard was next to her, yelling. “How dare you leave work without my permission!”
Sarah tried to appease him, flirting, pleading.
“Come back at two with cigarettes and liquor,” Renia murmured to Halina.
The workers were angry with Renia for disobeying the head guard—she was putting everyone at risk.
Renia went back to the bricks, calm for now. Then, just before lunch, a guard called her over. “So you’re a political prisoner,” he said, to her horror. “You’re very young, and I feel sorry for you. Otherwise, I would have informed the camp commander.’”
He wagged his finger in Renia’s face and told her not to even think about trying to escape. They would cut her into pieces.
“There’s no chance I’d escape,” Renia answered. “I’m smart enough to know that I’d be caught. I was arrested for stealing across the border; I’ll probably be released soon. Why would I spoil my chances?”
Renia assumed that the women had told the head guard her secret. No wonder: if Renia escaped, they’d all suffer. Everyone was extracautious since the partisan jailbreak.
All this made escaping even more difficult. Everyone was watching her: the guards and her fellow prisoners. But Renia also knew that her cover was up. They knew she was a “political.” She was doomed either way.
Where were Sarah and Halina? Renia was not wearing a watch—of course, it had been taken—but it felt like hours since they’d left. What if something happened? What if they didn’t return? Could she jet on her own?
Finally, two silhouettes in the distance.
This time Renia played aggressive. “Come with me, please,” she asked the head guard. He followed.
Three Jewish girls and the Nazi stood behind the wall of a bombed building.
Halina passed the guard several bottles of whiskey. He gulped down an entire flask while they stuffed his pockets with cigarettes. Renia picked up a few small bottles of liquor and packs of cigarettes and wrapped them in her kerchief. She distributed them to the watchmen and asked them to stop the other women from going behind the wall. Her acquaintances had brought her hot soup, she told them, and she didn’t want to share it. The watchmen weren’t too concerned, as they knew the head guard had his eye on her.
By now, the head guard was completely intoxicated. Renia needed to figure out how to handle him. “Why don’t you go see if any of the women are looking in our direction?” she suggested. He stumbled off.
Now was her time. Now or never.
* * *
Renia was not the only Jewish female operative to attempt a jail-break.
After the Kraków bombings, Shimshon Draenger had gone missing; Gusta went to every police station until she found him, then refused to leave his side. For the second time, his wife adhered to their marital pact and handed herself in.
Gusta was incarcerated at Helzlow, the woman’s section of Montelupich Prison. Perched in the center of the beautiful old town, Montelupich was another horrific Gestapo jail priding itself on its use of medieval torture. After beating Gusta badly, the Nazis brought her to her husband, hoping to use her wounds to get a confession out of him. Instead, Gusta told them, “We did it. We organized fighting groups. And if we get out of here, we’ll organize even stronger ones.”
Gusta was placed in the large, lightless “cell 15” with fifty women, including several Jewish underground operatives. She organized a daily routine for her fellow prisoners: as long as water was available, she made them wash and brush their hair and clean their table, all to maintain hygiene and humanity. She initiated regular discussions of philosophy, history, literature, and the Bible. They celebrated Oneg Shabbat. They recited poems and composed new ones. And when a group was taken out to be shot, those remaining shared their grief in song.
Gola Mire, caught by Nazis in the Polish resistance’s printing office, was also brought into the cell, setting off a period of “spiritual elevation” and “sisterhood.” Gola constantly wrote Yiddish and Hebrew poetry, often dedicating her work to her husband and dead child. Beaten brutally in frequent interrogations, her body was gray, her fingernails ripped off, her hair torn out, her eyes temporarily blinded. But upon returning to the cell, she’d pick up her pencil, then recite her poems to her cellmates.
Gusta, too, wrote her memoirs between beatings. She placed herself in a corner, surrounded by a group of Jewish women, hiding her activity from the other prisoners, some of whom were not entirely trustworthy criminals. On triangular pieces of toilet paper sewn together with thread from the girls’ skirts, with pencils donated by Polish women who had secretly received them in food packages, and with fingers crushed in torture, Gusta composed the story of the Kraków resistance. Everyone was given a fake name for security, and she wrote about herself—“Justyna,” her underground code name—in the third person.
Much of the material came from the perspectives of others, especially Shimshon’s and her cellmates’, all of whom contributed. For security, Gusta included only past events that were already known to the Gestapo. She wrote until she became too tired and pained, then passed on the pencil, dictating as cell mates took turns transcribing, all the while maintaining her unique literary and introspective tone, providing psychological portraits of the fighters, hiders, and even enemies. To cover up her voice, women would sing; others would watch for the guard. Gusta checked every page, revising at least ten times, insisting on accuracy. Enchanted by the fantasy that their story might one day be told, the women wrote four copies of the diary simultaneously. Three copies were hidden in the prison—in the stove, in door upholstery, and under the floorboards—and one was smuggled out by Jewish auto mechanics who worked for the Gestapo (and who also brought Gusta pencils and additional toilet paper). After the war, text scraps that had been hidden under the cell floor were found.
On April 29, 1943, Gusta and her comrades, who had been planning an escape, knew that they would be on the next transport to death and, like Renia, decided it was now or never. While they were being led outside to the transport truck, right on the crowded city street, Gusta, Gola, their comrade Genia Meltzer, and a few others suddenly halted and refused to move. The Gestapo guards were confused. One took out his gun. Genia sprinted behind him and pushed his arm up into the air.
In that moment, the girls fled, making their way around a horse and buggy. The Gestapo shot at them in the crowded streets as they searched for cover.
Only Gusta and Genia survived. Genia hid behind a door; Gusta was wounded in the leg.
Unbeknownst to the women, Shimshon had also broken out of jail that day. He and Gusta met up in a small town outside Kraków where several Akiva members were hiding. They resumed forest fighting, organizing fighting groups, and writing and distributing underground bulletins. A few months later, around the time of Renia’s imprisonment, Shimshon was captured again while arranging for them to be smuggled to Hungary; he told the Gestapo to go get his wife. The Nazis arrived at Gusta’s hiding place with a note from him, and she gave herself up right away. Three times unlucky. Both were killed.
* * *
In a flash, the girls helped Renia put on a new dress, shawl, and shoes.
Sarah and Renia faced one direction, Halina the other.
If they were destined to fail, Renia did not want Halina to fail with them.
Then they ran, fast as ever, out of breath, panting.
The sisters came to a hill—Renia could not climb it. There was no way, no way.
But another miracle: an Italian prisoner passed them. “Here.” He held out his hand and helped Renia ascend.
She barely made it over the barbed wire fence surrounding the square. The girls landed in the street, open air. This was the most dangerous part of the escape and the most crucial moment of her life. They didn’t know the way; they went straight. Renia’s dress was caked in mud from climbing, but she continued to run, drawing on an impossible energy. Faster, faster. Renia turned back to make sure that no one was after them. The wind cooled her sweaty body and face. She felt her mother and father’s presence, as if they were right there, protecting her.
A car approached.
Sarah cupped her head in her hands. “They got us! We’re doomed.”
But the car drove on.
Sarah shouted, “Renia, faster! This is it. If we make it, we’ll both stay alive.”
With every passing minute, Renia became weaker. She tried and tried, but her legs were failing. She fell on the road. Sarah picked her up. She was in tears. “Renia,” she pleaded. “Please keep going. If not, it will be the end for us both. Make the effort. I have no one but you. I can’t lose you. Please.”
Her tears landed on her sister’s face, reviving her. Renia stood, paused. They moved on.
But Renia gasped for air. Her lips were dry. She couldn’t feel her arms, as if she’d had a stroke. Her legs were gummy, buckling under her.
Every time they heard the sound of a passing bus, their hearts stalled. Passersby slowed down to look at them, probably thinking they were insane.
Another bus stopped on the road near them. Renia was sure this was it. How would they make it? The Gestapo could trap them so easily, at any moment. The sisters were wearing muddy rags, their shoes covered in dirt, so incredibly suspect.
The bus passed.
Sarah walked a hundred feet ahead, Renia dragged behind. How strange it felt to walk alone, unaccompanied by a guard. Slowly the two of them approached Katowice. They’d covered four miles.
Sarah wiped Renia’s face with her saliva and kerchief, and removed the mud and debris from her jacket. She was beaming with happiness. She knew a German woman who lived nearby. Nacha Schulman, Meir’s wife, was disguised as a Catholic and worked for her as a seamstress. They couldn’t take the tram, in case a gendarme recognized them, but it wasn’t too far. Only another four miles to go.
Renia walked slowly, step by step, on the side of the road. Then: a group of gendarmes in the distance.
The uniforms. Renia shivered. It was too late for them to turn around.
The men approached, observed the girls . . . and moved on.
Renia forced herself forward. She needed to pause every two or three steps. Her breath was heavy, hot.
“There’s not far left to go,” Sarah encouraged. She would have carried Renia if she could have.
Renia wobbled like a drunk. Sarah pulled her forward. Their clothes were drenched with sweat.
Renia made the effort—for her sister.
At last, they approached the first buildings outside the town of Siemianowice. Renia could not go more than two steps without stopping to lean against a wall. She ignored passersby; her vision was so blurry, she could barely see them.
Renia stopped at a well in someone’s yard, splashed water on her face. Wake up.
The sisters walked through the town, Renia using all her strength to stay upright, to be inconspicuous. They crossed from alley to alley until they reached a small street. Sarah pointed at a two-storey building. “This is it.”
Sarah then bent down and picked up her tiny sister, carrying Renia up the stairs like a bride. “I don’t know where she found the strength,” Renia later wrote. The door opened, but before Renia could even see inside, she fainted.
When she came to, Renia took a pill, but her fever persisted. She peeled off her filthy rags and got into a clean bed—a pleasure she wasn’t sure she’d ever have again. Her teeth chattered and her bones felt hollow even under the blankets; spasms of cold shook her.
Sarah and Nacha sat by her side, crying. Nacha hadn’t recognized Renia at all. But Sarah comforted them both. “Forget everything. What’s important is that you’re free.”
But where was Halina?
Sarah told the German lady of the house that Renia was a friend of hers who was ill and needed to rest. But Renia could not stay there. The usual refrain.
That night, somehow, Renia was back on her feet. Two and half miles to Michalkowice. At least the darkness would help conceal their limping and loping.
They reached the village at eleven o’clock and headed to the house of Polish peasants. Mr. and Mrs. Kobiletz greeted them warmly. They’d heard of Renia and were full of praise for Sarah’s skills. They offered Renia food, but she couldn’t stay in the main room for long—she was there to enter the bunker. She slipped through a window underneath the stairs to the basement. It was so small that even emaciated Renia could barely fit through. Then she climbed down the ladder. Twenty comrades greeted her with joy, “as if I was just born.”
They wanted to know everything, right away.
She was too weak and had to lie down, but Sarah told them the tale of her escape. Her head was spinning, as was her heart. She was here, with her comrades, her sister, and, for a moment, safe.
Renia observed everyone in the bunker as they listened. She was still burning up with fever, still felt as if she were in prison, still felt like she was being chased. Would that feeling ever leave her?
* * *
A few hours later, Halina arrived and regaled them with her story:
“As I started walking away from you, I turned my jacket inside out and took off my kerchief. Ahead of me, I saw a railroad worker. I asked him if he cared to join me as we walked. He took one look at me and said, ‘Happily.’ I held his arm, and we strolled and chatted about this and that. He probably thought I was a prostitute. Within ten minutes, we came across two guards who were maniacally running toward the camp. They asked if we’d seen three women escaping and described our clothes. I took such joy seeing them scramble. I continued talking to the railroad worker, as if nothing had happened. The worker accompanied me to the tram. We said we’d get together tomorrow!”
The next morning, Halina, in good spirits, left for Warsaw. A week later, they received a letter from her. Her journey had been uneventful. She’d crossed the border by foot. She was happy to have taken part in Renia’s escape. A touching letter came from Marek Folman’s mother and another from Zivia, Antek and Rivka Moscovitch, who had healed and was working as a courier, smuggling weapons and bringing aid to those in hiding—the trio were so happy that she’d gotten out.
Marek, on the other hand, met a less fortunate end. After he left Będzin for Warsaw, crippled with guilt about the Socha setup, he was so distraught that Nazis noticed him when he switched trains at Częstochowa. He was shot on the spot.
* * *
Day in, day out, Renia sat in the Kobiletz bunker, which had been built by Meir Schulman. Meir had been friends with the Kobiletz’s eldest son, Mitek, before the war. Mitek had worked for the Gestapo in Kraków but had been in contact with the ghetto Jews. When one of his friends got drunk and spilled his secret, Mitek jumped on his motorcycle and fled. Meir learned that Mitek had been paid to arrange for Jews to stay with his friends in the city of Bielsko. That’s when Meir got the idea to ask him to let Meir build a bunker underneath his parents’ house. At first, Mr. Kobiletz refused, but his son’s pleas convinced him, especially when he told his father that he could use it to hide from the Gestapo himself.
A few Jews hid in their small attic until the bunker was built. Meir had to construct it at night so that the neighbors wouldn’t notice. In Renia’s memoirs, she wrote that Kobiletz was paid a fortune to hide them. “He said he did it out of pity, but in fact, he did it for profit.” Other accounts suggest that though the Kobiletzes took payment, they were motivated by anti-German politics and compassion. The question of whether Poles who received payment for helping Jews should be considered “righteous” remains a heated one.
Renia was secure and free—relatively—but life in the Kobiletz bunker was not a permanent solution. The shelter had been built to house two or three people, but more ghetto escapees kept arriving. People slept together on a few beds. Food was purchased with counterfeit ration tickets collected every few days by one of the girls, who risked her life to travel to the village of Jablonka. Lunch was prepared by Mrs. Kobiletz. At first, the comrades used their own money from the ghetto to pay for all this, but later, Halina brought additional funds from Zivia.
Alongside the stuffiness, the people in the bunker lived in constant fear of the neighbors finding out. So did the Kobiletzes, who would also be executed if caught.
A few days after Renia arrived, she climbed back up the ladder at midnight and was transferred to a hiding place at the home of the Kobiletzes’ daughter, Banasikova. The move was uplifting. She was now with Dror comrades Chawka, the medic, and Aliza, who’d cared for the orphans. The door was locked at all times, so the neighbors knew nothing. If anyone knocked, they hid in the closet. Banasikova took care of all their needs. Her husband was in the army and barely earned a living wage, so she appreciated the money and goods she received for hiding people.
There were still a few hundred people scattered in the Będzin liquidation camp and local ghettos, a population dwindling with each transport. Sarah, Chawka, Kasia, Dorka—all the girls with non-Jewish features—continued to sneak in and try to save as many as possible, even though it was nearly impossible to find hiding places. Renia, though, was still too weak to go outside.
They all knew that the only way out of their suffocating lives was via Slovakia, where, for the time being, Jews had relative freedom. But to transfer comrades there, they needed connections. It took many attempts until they received an address from The Hague. But how would they get there? After having been betrayed so cruelly by Socha, the group was particularly cautious. The Zionist Youth group, Renia wrote, would not divulge who its smugglers were. Mitek tried to arrange for smugglers, but as always, this was no easy task. The Kobiletzes were becoming increasingly afraid for their lives and, despite the payments, were urging the group to leave. Yet another ticking time bomb.
* * *
Renia and the group were in constant contact with Warsaw. Zivia and Antek also urged them to go to Slovakia, though they offered to bring Renia to Warsaw, where it might be safer. But Renia didn’t want to separate from her comrades. “Their fate is mine.”
At last, Mitek found legitimate smugglers. They would send one group first, and if they made it, the rest would follow.
That first group left in early December. They dressed up as Poles and carried fake travel documents and work papers. The smuggler took them by train from Katowice to Bielsko, and then Jelesnia, the border town. The others sat in their bunkers, thinking and talking obsessively about the mortal danger they faced.
A week later the smuggler returned.
It had been a success! Their friends were already in Slovakia. This time they did write to the group, telling them that the journey was less difficult than they’d anticipated. “Do not,” they warned, “wait any longer.”
December 20, 1943: Aliza and Renia waited all day for Chawka or Sarah to arrive and tell them who would leave with the second group. At midnight, a knock on the door. Everyone jolted awake. The police?
A few nerve-wracking moments later, Chawka entered.
She turned to Renia. “Get ready for the journey.” Eight people would leave in the morning. Renia would be one of them.
Fight or flight.
Renia refused.
This was not for ideology, but for love. Sarah had been on missions helping the Atid children who’d been smuggled to Germany, and Renia hadn’t seen her in two weeks. She didn’t want to leave without her sister’s knowledge—certainly not without saying good-bye. “She’s my sister,” she told Chawka. “She risked her life during my prison escape. I can’t go without her consent.”
But Chawka and Aliza tried to convince her. The Gestapo was after Renia: “Wanted” posters showing her face, calling her a spy, and offering a cash reward hung on the streets. She needed to leave right away. Sarah would understand, they told her, and would follow soon. Sarah and Aliza had to gather the Atid children who’d been dispersed among German peasants’ houses. Aliza promised that she, Sarah, and the children would join the very next group to Slovakia.
After an entire night of persuasion, Renia relented.
The train from Katowice left at six in the morning. Renia put her hair up in a new style and wore fresh clothes, all so that she wouldn’t be recognized by the Gestapo or the police. “Only my face is the same.” She took nothing but the clothes on her back.
Banasikova said good-bye with great compassion, asking only to be remembered after the war. Parting from Aliza was painful. Who knew who would make it?
At five thirty on a cold December morning, Renia and Chawka felt their way through a pitch-black field. They spoke quietly in German so as not to catch the attention of passersby hurrying to work in the mines. At the Michałkowice station, they met Mitek, who was to accompany them to Bielsko, as well the other six people who would flee with them—including Chajka Klinger.
Chajka had escaped from the liquidation camp, where entrances and exits were not highly supervised and the guards were easily bribed. At first, she hid with Meir at the Novaks but claimed Mrs. Novak became too nervous and greedy. She then went into hiding at various Kobiletz family locations, where she wrote the bulk of her diaries. Other comrades around Będzin were placed in barns and dovecots, but because of Chajka’s assignment to chronicle their story, she was given larger, more comfortable melinas.
Chajka had initially resisted her documentarian role, but with so many comrades dead, she accepted her calling. It was terrifically difficult for her to write, to revisit her pain continually, while her comrades got to focus on day-to-day living. She had not heard music for four years, and now the sounds of German songs emanating from a radio reminded her of everyone who had been killed—of all that had been taken from her. Chajka, who had not cried when Zvi died, nor while being beaten, now wailed. David. Had she done enough? Her guilt over not saving her own family was so overwhelming that she could not write about them.
A depression lodged itself in her bones.
Now Renia, Chajka, Chawka, and the group took the train from Michałkowice to Katowice, where, despite the early hour, they met heavy traffic. Renia walked confidently along the platform with Mitek. Every time they saw a police or Gestapo man, they stepped aside, blended into the crowd. Mitek joked, “How great it would be if we were caught together—me, a former political instructor for the Gestapo and fugitive, and you, a suspected spy who escaped from jail!”
Suddenly three Gestapo men approached. Renia recognized them from Mysłowice; they’d seen her while she stood in formation. Think fast. Renia lowered her hat and covered her face with her kerchief, pretending she had a toothache.
The men walked away.
Within a few minutes, the group was all aboard the train car, en route from Katowice to Bielsko. For Renia, who risked being recognized in this area, this was the most dangerous leg of the entire journey. But the ride was seamless. Nobody asked to see their papers; no one even inspected their bags.
In Bielsko, smugglers waited for them. They bought tickets to Jelesnia, the station closest to the Slovak border, where they arrived that evening. Mitek parted from them as if he were a close relative. “Please,” he pleaded, “do not forget what I’ve done for you.” Mitek promised to join them in Slovakia after helping the remaining comrades get out. He told the smugglers to take care of the Jews. The comrades quickly jotted messages to those staying behind. Renia composed a “Hurry up and meet me” letter to her sister and Aliza. Mitek took the pages, folded them up, and got back on the train.
The escapees spent a few hours resting at one of the smuggler’s houses, preparing for their trek through the Tatra Mountains. The rest of the way was by foot.
Then it was time. They stealthily exited the small village: eight comrades, two smugglers, two guides. In the distance they saw snow-covered mountains rising to the sky. The border. The goal.
The first few miles were flat. Their world was all white, but the snow was shallow. “The night was so bright it felt like morning,” Renia wrote.
She was wearing nothing but a dress—no jacket—but she didn’t feel the cold.
Then they reached the mountains. Walking became more difficult. The group progressed single file, stepping as fast as they could. The snow was knee deep, and where it wasn’t, they slipped and slid. Every moving branch startled them—could it be police?
The guides knew the route well. One of them led, the other and the smugglers helped the comrades. It was blustering, which was actually helpful, as the sound muffled the crunch of their footsteps. But the walking became harder and harder. Without coats or boots, they climbed toward the peak, 6,233 feet—more than a mile high. Once in a while, they stopped to catch their breath, lying on the snow as if on a bed of feathers. Despite the cold, their sweaty clothes clung to their skin.
The group entered a forest; they toppled over like toddlers learning to walk. They were amazed by little Muniosh from the Atid kibbutz: Brown hair, pale skin, pointy ears, he was all grit, leading the line, mocking the rest of them for their substandard hiking skills.
Suddenly, in the distance, they saw black spots against the snow: border patrol.
They lay down, covering themselves in snow, until the officers passed.
Renia, wet, barely dressed, was still so weak from prison. She could hardly breathe in this altitude. I’m not going to make it.
The smugglers helped, walking her along like a child. She remembered her escape from Mysłowice; if she could make it out of there alive, she could make it now too. Push.
Slowly, quietly, the group carefully passed the border patrol building and approached the summit. Exhausted, they had to pick up the pace. They stumbled on each step, sinking into the snow. But this was the last leg of the trek, and they managed to find a miraculous second wind. Flight.
After six hours of torturous hiking, they found themselves in Slovakia.
Their most incredible crossing yet.
Renia had left Poland.
Now, for the rest of the world.