Frumka and Herschl decided to send out the children; the strong would go last. Aliza Zitenfeld, the Atid teacher, disguised the orphans as Aryans in order to ship them to German farms. Renia and her comrades transformed documents, covering up old data with false information and fingerprints. At dawn, Ilza Hansdorf snuck the children out and accompanied them to the town council of a rural village. The children explained that they had no parents and sought work. Many farmers agreed—the cheap labor was welcome. In a matter of days, Ilza found places for eight children. As per plan, the orphans wrote letters, directing them to a Polish address, reporting that all was well. Then two girls stopped writing. Renia figured they’d been recognized, “and who only knows what happened to them.”
The children who looked the most Jewish remained in the ghetto.
Zivia wrote to the B?dzin group from her hiding spot in Warsaw. One missive urged them to give up their dreams of rebellion. Having seen the results of her own uprisings, she no longer promoted fighting—the death toll was not worth it. If they wanted to stay alive, she told them, come to Warsaw.
Chajka was livid and called this message “a slap in the face that stunned us.” She guessed that the Warsaw fighters were “spiritually exhausted” and “afraid of what they had started with their own hands, and the responsibility that had fallen on their shoulders was too great.” Why should the B?dziners live in the shadow of their glory and rest peacefully on their laurels?
Zivia suggested that those with Aryan appearances could manage in the big city with false papers. Those with mixed appearances would live in bunkers. “The Poles would let them sit in their hiding places,” Renia explained, “naturally, for great sums of money.” The hidden business of hiding.
*
Later in the war, especially after ghettos were destroyed, a main role of the courier girls was the rescue and sustenance of Jews in concealment—either as Aryans or in physical hiding. The kashariyot relocated ghetto Jews, including many children, in the Aryan side of town; found them apartments and hiding places （melinas） inside homes, barns, and commercial spaces; supplied them with false papers; and paid the Poles who hid them, taking care of room and board. In the East, they placed many Jews in partisan camps. In Warsaw and western towns, the kashariyot visited their charges—but not too often—bringing them news and moral support. They constantly had to stave off schmaltzovniks who threatened to “burn” the hideouts, and frequently had to relocate Jews when their landlords gave them up or because they were on the verge of being found out. They did this all while maintaining a disguised life themselves.
Vladka Meed began rescuing children while the ghetto was still intact. The Nazis were particularly brutal with children, who represented the Jewish future. Boys and girls who were not useful for slave labor were some of the first Jews to be killed. Along with two other Bundist couriers—Marysia （Bronka Feinmesser）， a telephone operator at the Jewish children’s hospital, and Inka （Adina Blady Szwajger）， a pediatrician, she tried to place Warsaw’s few remaining Jewish children with Polish families. These women took children from crying mothers’ arms—mothers who had already saved their sons and daughters time and time again; mothers who knew this might be their final farewell but also knew their kids’ chances of survival were likely better on the Aryan side.
Jewish children had to cross the wall, keep their identities a secret, take on new names, and not slip up or mention the ghetto. They could not ask questions or engage in childlike babble. They had to speak proper Polish. They could not give away information if captured. And the host families had to commit and not pull out at the last minute. One hostess was upset that the ten-year-old twins delivered to her door had brown eyes and dark hair. In the end, she accepted them, but they were miserable away from their mother and stopped eating. Vladka visited them frequently, bringing letters. When the host family moved to an apartment facing the ghetto, the girls realized they could see their mother through the window. The children begged the husband—who worked in the ghetto—to bring food to their mother and tell her about the window. The mother passed by many times a day; the girls were overjoyed to see her but had to sneak their peeks. If a guard saw them, he’d point his carbine directly at the window. Vladka had to harden her heart and warn them that what they were doing could endanger everyone’s lives.