“Zag nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg”
Never say the final journey is at hand
Never say we will not meet the Promised Land,
The longed-for hour shall come, oh never fear.
Our tread drums forth the tidings—we are here!
—From “The Partisan Song,” by Hirsh Glick, written in Yiddish in the Vilna ghetto
Renia
DECEMBER 1943
Slovakia, a state newly formed on the eve of World War II, was no Jewish paradise. The country, whose ruler was an outspoken antisemite, was aligned with the Axis nations and became a Hitler satellite. The majority of Slovakia’s Jews had been deported to death camps in Poland in 1942. After that, there was a pause in deportations that lasted until August 1944. In those two years, Jews lived in relative security, either protected by papers or pretending to be Christian, or because of political pressure and bribes.
This period of calm can be credited partly to resistance leader Gisi Fleischmann. Born to a bourgeois, orthodox Jewish family, she, like most Slovakian Jews, did not speak Slovak or fit in with the country’s new national consciousness. Gisi joined the Zionists early on. In the capital Bratislava, she was president of the Women’s International Zionist Organization (WIZO) before taking on several public leadership roles. (In the much larger Poland, even the left-wing groups had no women in public positions. Gisi was unique.) By 1938, she ran an agency that aided German Jewish refugees, then became head of Slovakia’s JDC. International money was funneled from a Swiss account to her.
At the outbreak of war, Gisi, then in her late thirties, was in London trying to arrange for large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine. Her efforts were not successful, and though colleagues encouraged her to stay in England, she insisted on returning home, feeling obligations to her sickly mother and husband, and her community. She sent her two teenage daughters to Palestine for safety.
In wartime, Gisi was a Jewish community leader, insisting on joining the Judenrat leadership (the rare woman to do so) in order to help her people; she maintained contact with numerous international leaders, telling them what was going on. Slovakia had promised to send its people to German work camps, but the Slovak government struck a deal with the Nazis, asking them to deport their Jews instead. Slovakia was the only European country that formally requested that the Nazis take their Jewish citizens.
At first, the Nazis wanted to take only twenty thousand Jews to help build Auschwitz, but Slovakia pleaded with them to take more. In fact, the Slovak government paid the Nazis 500 marks for each additional Jew—yet another way the Nazis made money off their Final Solution. Hoping that money could sway the Nazis further, Gisi really got to work, negotiating with Germans and the Slovak government, eventually collecting funds and offering bribes to the Nazis to reduce the number of Jewish deportees. She set up work camps for Jews in Slovakia to save them from being taken to Poland. When several of her interventions seemed to work—though it’s possible the reduced deportations occurred for other political reasons—she promoted the Europa Plan, an attempt to bribe the Germans to curb Jewish transportations and murders all across Europe.
Always active, Gisi sent medication and money to Polish Jews via paid emissaries. She was also instrumental in collecting international funds to help smuggle in Jews, known as “hikers,” on an underground railroad from Poland—like the one Renia had taken.
* * *
In this new country, Renia and her hiker comrades descended the mountain into a valley. In the distance, a bonfire. Goods traffickers on a break. The comrades stopped at the spot where they were supposed to meet their local guides and started their own fire.
Now they felt the cold.
Their feet were wet and in danger of freezing. They dried off their shoes and socks in the blaze. Then they heard heavy footsteps in the snow. But it was only the Slovak smugglers, bringing liquor to warm up everyone. The comrades rested for an hour, and their original guides parted from them caringly, returning to Bielsko to bring over more groups. The guides too, Renia wrote later, were paid a large sum of money per person. Mountain people were poor, and this was how they made a living.
The comrades could barely put on their shrunken shoes, but they had to continue.
They walked with the Slovaks, trying to make conversation. Passing mountains, hills, valleys, and forests, they approached a sleepy village. A dog’s bark welcomed them. They were led into a stable with horses, cows, pigs, and chickens. The only light came from a small oil lamp, and the stench of manure was unbearable, but they couldn’t enter the house, for fear the neighbors would see.
Despite the cold, it was hot inside. Fatigue set in. Everyone dropped onto bales of hay. Renia’s legs were so weak, she was unable to straighten them. She curled up and fell into a deep sleep.
* * *
At noon, the landlady, dressed in traditional mountain garb—a kerchief and colorful dress with felt shoes connected to a garter by white laces—woke the comrades with lunch. It was Sunday. She told them to stay put, as the villagers were all on their way to church. They needed to be careful. These days, everyone was spying on their neighbors; everyone was suspect. Of course, for them, nothing new.
After eating, Renia slept some more, lying next to her comrades on the hay like packed sardines. Rays of sun entered through a small window. The Jews started talking and—for the first time—recounting the events of the past months and years. On the threshold of safety, they began to fully realize all that they had lost.
Their happiness at having crossed the border was muted by fear of the future. Their trek was not over; neither was the war. At night, a sleigh arrived. The comrades hopped on and rode to the next village via small side roads and empty fields, away from police. A few hours later, they reached a town and were placed in a single room in a peasant’s home and told not to leave until their car arrived. There was plenty of food here, as long as one had the money to buy it, and, fortunately, the comrades each had a bit of cash. The household head—an honest, compassionate person, Renia felt, who spoke of the Germans with great hatred—went out to buy them provisions. It turned out that the first group had been there a few days earlier. After feasting, the comrades slept some more.
That night, a car waited for them on the outskirts of the village. The driver was a customs clerk—he’d been bribed. He asked them questions about the Jews in Poland.
Suddenly he stopped the car.
What now? Dark, the middle of nowhere. They were completely vulnerable.
The driver got out, went to the backseat. Everyone clenched.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” he said.
To Renia’s surprise, he hugged little Muniosh.
Then he asked each of them about their relatives. He could not believe that they were the sole survivors of their families. He was incensed by their stories of German atrocities.
The driver took them through Slovak towns and villages. It was dark, but here and there, they saw a glimmer of light from a window that wasn’t properly blacked out, as was the law. The driver told them that he was taking them to Mikuláš, a town with a Jewish community that would take care of them. Renia was in awe of how well planned the whole operation was, everything arranged to the smallest detail.
In Mikuláš, the car stopped at the community center. The driver fetched a Jewish person, who took them to an inn. There they met Max Fischer, looking all dark haired and dashing. Max relayed that the rest of the first group was already in Hungary, from where they hoped to make legal aliyah to Palestine. Suddenly Renia felt like a bird released from a cage, finally able to untuck her wings.
The Mikuláš Jews were happy about their escape, but no one offered to host them, for fear of police raids. The comrades were put in a school auditorium set up for refugees. As far as the police were concerned, the shelter housed only people who had been caught by border patrol and were waiting for the authorities to look into their cases; when a few found out about the additional refugees, they shook them down for bribes. Here, Renia learned quickly, you could get anything from the cops for the right amount of money. The large room had beds, a table, a long bench, and a heater. Food was available for purchase from a special kitchen set up by refugees themselves. The comrades were to wait here for a few days until the next group arrived; together they’d continue to Hungary. Would Sarah be there?
The next day, Benito, a local from The Young Guard arrived, asking about the surviving comrades. Benito was constantly busy, making arrangements for escapees. He warned Renia not to get too relaxed—a huge number of Slovakian Jews had been deported to Poland. Here, too, Jews were required to wear a patch to identify them. Who knew how much longer they’d be able to stay?
Each day in the shelter, Renia met Jews arriving from Kraków, Warsaw, Radom, Tarnów, Ljubljana, Lvov—a hodgepodge of tortured asylum seekers brought together by fate. Chatty and energized, young Jews were different people when not in constant, mortal danger. But out of habit, they still whispered. Some had been caught by border guards, most had been hidden on the Aryan side. Hardly anyone had relatives, but everyone wanted to live—for many, they were driven by dreams of revenge. Renia learned about communities across Poland, the ghettos and labor camps that still existed, the thousands of Jews hiding in each large city. Could any of them be her family? She tried not to kindle any hopes.
Meanwhile, Chajka had an entirely different awakening. She and Benito fell for each other instantly. From a middle-class and assimilated Slovak family, Benito was the same age and had been a longtime Young Guard leader. He had survived the Slovakian deportations by escaping to Hungary—that is, after he arranged for sixty of his comrades to escape too. Following several arrests in Hungary, he returned to Slovakia to help receive incoming Jewish refugees. He was connected with movement leaders in Europe and Palestine. Chajka had lived through the horrors he’d only heard of secondhand. She stayed up late, telling him her stories, warmed by the auditorium’s large oven. “She found everything she’d lost in the Slovak activist,” their son explained many years later. “Like her, he was willing to risk his life for friends, and he also believed in the ideals of the future.” Benito instantly felt the need to protect Chajka. As he recalled: “An entire generation was screaming through her mouth. She talked for hours and hours, as if fearing that she would not have time to deliver all of the information. . . . And I was listening to her, occasionally holding her hand, to feel the person who is carrying all of this on their heart and soul.”
From the other side of the room, Max Fischer and Chawka watched the two whispering to each other. Max winked at Chawka. “I see trouble . . .”
* * *
A few days into Renia’s stay, the next group of eight arrived.
No Sarah.
The Jews all planned to head to the Hungarian border together, accompanied by a bribed policeman. Their cover story: the comrades were Hungarian nationals, and the policeman was taking them to the border to deport them. The convoy left, but Renia remained in Slovakia, along with Chajka, waiting for the next group—waiting for Sarah, waiting for Benito.
The following group arrived the next week. Still no Sarah.
This group was traumatized.
Back in Poland, there had been an incident at the Kobiletzes’. Banasikova’s husband, Pavel, returned home on army leave and visited his in-laws’ home. Meir hadn’t expected him and ran into him outside the bunker. Pavel, intoxicated, called him over and disclosed that he’d heard about the hidden Jews from Mitek’s friends who had helped Jews escape the ghetto. “Don’t worry,” he insisted, “I won’t harm the Jews.”
Pavel was curious about how the bunker was made and opened its secret door. He was so drunk he could barely stand. The five people who remained in the bunker were shocked. Meir entered behind him, holding his homemade pistol. Pavel asked to hold it. Meir let him.
“The people who told us the story still don’t understand why Meir did that,” Renia wrote.
Pavel examined the pistol, looking at each part. Then, he pulled the trigger . . . and shot himself.
He was conscious when the comrades dragged him out of the bunker. But the family needed to report the incident to the police. Meir begged him not to disclose the bunker, and Pavel reassured them that he wouldn’t. He was, however, not in a good state. The police arrived, and he testified, showing them Meir’s homemade pistol, claiming he had stolen it from partisans during his military work, and that he’d been cleaning it when it accidentally went off. An ambulance arrived and took him to the hospital in Katowice. Two days later, he died.
The Kobiletzes still did not insist that the comrades leave, but they were too scared to stay, and, at first chance, escaped to Slovakia.
Then Renia got a message. She and Chajka were to leave immediately: they had received papers to immigrate to Palestine. Their photos had been sent to Hungary, and the girls needed to stop in Budapest to pick up all the documents.
Their dream.
Renia wrote to Sarah and Aliza, explaining that it was possible to make aliyah; that they needed to hurry to Slovakia with the children.
On the very day she was leaving for Hungary, the group received a letter from a smuggler. The snow in the mountains was now hip deep and the Poland-Slovakia border, impassable. They would not be doing any more crossings. That was it.
Everything went black. Renia knew that Sarah would not be coming. She sensed that she would never see her sister again. She was the last remaining Kukielka.
* * *
Early January 1944: Renia could not afford to miss a single connection.
She traveled with Chajka, Benito, and Moshe from The Young Guard, who spoke fluent Hungarian. They took the train to the final station in Slovakia. They were going to cross the border in the locomotive of a freight train.
It was late and dark. An engineer climbed down from the locomotive and gestured for them to follow him. Renia, Chajka, and Moshe climbed aboard. Benito, however, stayed behind to help more Jewish refugees. They crouched inside—a few other escapees were there. The engineers, paid per person, crammed them into hidden corners, and the train began to move, everyone united in praying that it would not be searched at the border. The heat from the boiler was unbearable, and Renia could not catch a full breath. Each time the train stopped, they all hunched down to the floor. Fortunately, the ride was quick. She did not let herself think about Aliza, the children, Sarah.
At the first station inside Hungary, the engineer released a long wave of steam, creating a heavy cloud. “Go!” he told Renia. This cloud obscured the escapees as they scrambled to disembark the locomotive and dash for the station. The engineer bought them tickets and showed them where to catch a passenger train to Budapest.
The ride took a day and a half, through increasingly warmer climes, during which time the comrades did not utter one word, not wanting to raise anyone’s suspicions. “The Hungarian language sounds foreign and strange,” Renia wrote. “The Hungarians themselves have semitic features. It’s hard to tell who’s Jewish and who’s Aryan.” Most Jews spoke Hungarian, not Yiddish or Hebrew. The radar that she’d developed in Nazi-ruled territory was no longer as functional. Jews were not required to wear ribbons or stars on their sleeves. There were no document checks or inspections on the train; it was probably unimaginable that they were Jewish refugees from Poland.
Then, at last, Budapest. The grand train station was crowded and hectic. The police inspected passengers’ bags. Renia passed through quickly and hurried to the address they’d been given. Moshe’s Hungarian skills were indispensable.
They took the tram to the Palestine bureau, which was bustling, echoing with German, Polish, Yiddish, and Hungarian pleas. Everyone wanted papers, everyone laid a claim as to why he or she needed to leave right away. They all deserve to make aliyah! Renia thought. The British, however, maintained their quotas and limited Jewish immigration. First in line for visas were the Polish refugees who’d endured the most terrible tortures. That meant Renia.
Renia waited impatiently for her departure date, which kept being postponed. First, her photos had not been received. Then, when the passports were ready, the visas were delayed from Turkey. The closer she was, the more nerve wracking the wait. The uncertainty was constant. “We kept thinking that something would happen that would postpone our aliyah,” Renia later reflected. “Was all the trouble we went through for nothing? The situation in Hungary is good for now, but it could change at any moment.” She had learned that life offered no stability, that moments flew past, that chances were paper thin, that the clock ruled all. She knew.
* * *
Renia needed the correct papers not only to make aliyah but also just to exist in Hungary. She watched as people were regularly stopped in the streets for inspections; those not registered with the police were arrested. Hitler had not invaded yet, but Jews’ rights had been curtailed. People who had long assumed that they were safe from the savagery that occurred in Poland now lived on edge.
Renia went to the Polish consulate to report herself as a refugee from Poland. The Polish captain lobbed endless questions: Was she a member of the PPR? (Communism was illegal.) No, of course she wasn’t. On the other hand, every Pole was obligated to support the Sikorski movement. Yes, of course she did.
One of the clerks asked: “Is Madame really Catholic?”
Renia told him in full certainly that she was.
“Thank God,” he said. “Until now, only Jews disguised as Poles have come to us.”
Renia feigned indignation. “What? Jews disguised as Poles?”
“Yes, unfortunately,” he answered. The performance was never ending. A photograph taken of Renia on a Budapest street in 1944 shows her coiffed and styled, wearing a tailored coat with fur-trimmed pockets, and carrying a leather handbag, the hint of a smile on her lips, entirely betraying the physical and emotional brutalities of her preceding months.
She received 24 pengo for room and board to last a few days, and a certificate that allowed her to walk around the city freely.
When she returned to the comrades, she learned that though they’d all registered as Christian Poles, the clerks had suspected that the others were Jews and did not give them money, only a certificate to show during inspections. The JDC, Renia explained, had paid the Polish consulate to turn a blind eye.
Renia never returned to that office, thinking she’d be gone in a few days. But a month later, she was still in Budapest, still waiting for her visa to Palestine.
During this month, Renia, still thin but growing strong, began to write her memoirs. She knew she needed to tell the world what had happened to her people, her family, her comrades, but how? With which words? She scribbled in Polish, using initials instead of names, likely for security, figuring out for herself what had happened, how five years had lasted several lifetimes, who she was, could be, would be.
In a photograph of the comrades in Hungary, her sticklike wrist is adorned with a brand-new watch. Renewed time.
None of the comrades had been to their spiritual homeland outside their imaginations. Still, they knew it would be warm, familiar. “They will receive us with open arms,” Renia believed, “like a mother receiving her children.” They yearned for this land where they would find remedy for all their suffering—the hope that had kept them alive. There, finally, they would be free of the constant threat.
But still, Renia worried. “Will our friends in Israel understand what we’d gone through?” she asked presciently. “Will we be able to live a normal, mundane life, a life like theirs?”
* * *
And then, at long last, Renia was at the station. Chajka too. The platform was crowded with people who’d met only a few days earlier, but already a camaraderie had formed; an indelible spiritual closeness. Renia was on her way.
Everyone envied her, she knew it, but despite all her longing, she could not find happiness. “The memory of the millions that were murdered, the memory of the comrades who dedicated their lives to Eretz Israel but have fallen before reaching their destination, doesn’t let up.” Out of nowhere, the image of Jews being shoved into a train car would flash through her mind, shivers shooting through her body. Her family, her sister—she could barely begin to think about any of it.
Renia watched as a German army train passed the station on the other track. They must have known they were a group of Jews, she thought. They looked at her, at all the Jews, with evil eyes. A few of them grinned. If they’d been able to, they would have come over and beaten her. But then, Renia thought, if I could, I’d beat them back. She felt a strong urge to provoke them, to show them that she had successfully escaped from the Gestapo and was traveling to Palestine. She had done it.
Melancholy and joy. Warm embraces, sad farewells. Remember us, those left behind, the hugs said. Do whatever you can, wherever you end up, to help the few who survived.
The train moved slowly. People ran alongside, not wanting to let go of their loved ones. Renia too was unable to let go—not of hands, but of feelings. She so wanted to feel joyful, to be enchanted by the glorious sun and the lush landscape, but her heart was heavy, inconsolable, as she thought obsessively about Sarah, Aliza, the orphans that remained in Poland, her brother Yankel, all the children.
Renia was traveling with a group of ten people. Most had photos in their passports, while a few used fake names. According to Renia’s Palestine immigration papers, she was “also known as Irena Glick and sometimes known as Irene Neuman.” Her file includes a signed statement that her marriage to Yitzhak Fiszman, aka Vilmos Neuman was not a true union—presumably, they pretended to be betrothed to ease immigration. (Yitzhak, who posed in a debonair suit with wide lapel alongside Renia in a photo of the Freedom group in Budapest, was actually married to Chana Gelbard, the Freedom courier in Warsaw.) Every faux couple was accompanied by orphaned children or children of adults who had not been able to leave. The children were ecstatic, excited for a new adventure.
Renia reached the border the following night. Would the inspections ever end? The guards searched their belongings without incident. In Romania, they learned that the Palestine bureau’s employees had been arrested. Though nervous, they managed to cross to Bulgaria peacefully. Here the train tracks were blocked by a large boulder. Renia had to walk a half mile to embark another train. The Bulgarians—military, railroad workers, and civilians—helped Renia and the Jews willingly. Their kindness left a lasting impression on Renia as they meandered all the way to the Turkish border.
They were about to leave Europe.
Now, at last, sensing a future where she could look at people and not fear their stares, Renia began to feel a tingle of joy.
Benito was waiting for them at the Istanbul station, with another comrade whom Renia named only as V. Everyone was elated; they all stayed together at an inn. V barraged them with questions about people he knew. He happily bathed Muniosh, who’d arrived with the first group; he was constantly busy, trying to reach the handful of remaining Jews across Europe. He “cried like a baby” hearing their stories of loss. V was desperate to get Zivia out of Poland, but she would not budge. She still had so much work to do, her letters said. She needed to stay put.
Jews roamed freely through the streets of Istanbul. Nobody was after them, nobody pointed fingers. Renia spent a week marveling at how strange this was, to not be suspect, to not be hunted. Then, a boat ride across the Bosporus Strait, a train across Syria, stops in Aleppo and the Lebanese capital of Beirut.
On March 6, 1944, Renia Kukielka, a nineteen-year-old stenographer from Jędrzejów, arrived in Haifa, Palestine.