In another family, Vladka brought a Jewish toddler dresses, toys, and food, but the host gave them all to her own children. Vladka kept moving a six-year-old boy because his hiders either could not deal with his depression or became fearful of German raids—despite the fact that they were being paid 2,500 z?otys a month. （Currency values fluctuated a great deal during the war, but according to rates for 1940–41, that would have been the equivalent of about $8,000 today.） In a testimony given at the Holocaust Survivors’ Centre in London in 2008, “hidden child” Wlodka Robertson recalled being shipped from family to family. Each month, she worried that no one would come pay her “rent,” but each month, Vladka Meed arrived, courageous and flirtatious, gaining access wherever needed.
Once the ghetto was razed, the resistance workers on the Aryan side were at a loss—the uprising had been their raison d’etre. The stench of burning still lingered, the Germans were everywhere, searching and arresting Poles, killing those who helped any Jews. Local Polish defense forces were established: they provided security for their neighborhoods but reported all outsiders, which made Vladka’s job even harder. Now the ZOB’s efforts went toward helping the surviving fighters as well as other surviving Jews. Several Jewish relief organizations, based on party affiliations, were established. ?egota （the Council for Aid to the Jews）， a Catholic Polish organization founded in 1942, was also hard at work. ?egota’s leader—an outspoken antisemite before the war—claimed that they would do everything to help Jews, and risked their lives to do so （though, apparently, with the hope that after the war, the Jews would leave Poland for good）。
These organizations, which found Jews hiding places, supported them, helped children, and kept up contact with the Polish underground, labor camps, and partisans, had many overlaps. They all received foreign money, some via the Polish government in exile in London. Funds came from the US Jewish Labor Committee （supporting the Bund） and the American JDC, the same body that financed the ghetto soup kitchens and the uprising. Before 1941, the JDC was able to send money—donated mainly by American Jews—directly to Poland. After 1941, borders were closed, and funds were borrowed from wealthy Jews within Poland （who were not allowed to possess more than 2,000 z?otys）， and from those who were fleeing and could not take their savings with them. Most of the capital came from prewar wealth, though some Jews continued to earn money in the Warsaw ghetto, as smugglers, from selling off the goods stored in warehouses in the ghetto area, and in manufacturing for the German army and the private Polish market. Other money was smuggled into Poland illegally. Memoirs tell of cash that arrived from London and was converted from dollars to pounds to z?otys on the black market—and, how groups accused one another of skimming off exchange rates. Overall, the JDC provided more than $78 million in US dollars to Europe during the war, or roughly equivalent to $1.1 billion today, with $300,000 donated to Poland’s Jewish underground in 1943–44.
Rescue groups used the funds to smuggle crucifixes and New Testaments into camps for Jews who wanted to escape, and to support penis and nose surgeries as well as abortions. ?egota had a “factory” to forge fake documents, including birth, baptismal, marriage, and work certificates, as well as a medical department with trusted Jewish and Polish doctors who were willing to visit melinas and treat sick Jews. Vladka found a photographer who could be trusted to come to Jewish hiding places to take pictures for fake documents. She became a main courier for rescue; her organization helped twelve thousand Jews in the Warsaw area. And the young woman did all this without keeping written records of Polish names or current addresses, which was too risky. Some couriers used fudged receipts that they hid under their watchbands; many used code names. Vladka remembered everything.
Most of the Jews who survived until late 1943, Vladka found, were adults, and of the professional class. They’d been able to pay smugglers, they’d had Gentile contacts, they spoke a more refined Polish. Some of them had stored valuables with Gentile friends, but most were left with nothing. An estimated twenty thousand to thirty thousand Jews remained in hiding in the Warsaw area, and Vladka’s work spread by word of mouth. Jews found her through mutual friends, approaching her at random on the streets. To receive aid, Jews had to submit a written application detailing their position and their “budgets.” Vladka read through these scribbled appeals.