When she began talking to him, however, she noticed his creaky Polish accent. She could hear it: a Jew from Vilna.
Antek and Renia spoke with sorrow about Ina’s sudden disappearance. “She must have stumbled at the border’s document control,” Renia said.
“We don’t know for sure,” Antek replied, trying to console her. “Maybe a mishap caused her to return home.” Later, Renia reflected that he treated her caringly, gently, like a daughter. In this world of premature orphans, his nine years on her felt like ninety.
Antek promised Renia that he would prepare the visas for the remainder of the group, as well as a bus for those who looked semitic, as quickly as possible. None of this was easy; it would take days to arrange. They parted, for now.
Until the comrades found a permanent apartment for Rivka, they decided to place her in hiding. Antek gave Renia the address and the 200 z?otys per night, plus extra for food.
Renia waited in Warsaw for several days, sleeping in the entrance to a cellar. A Jewish boy who looked Polish lived in this basement corridor; Renia pretended to be his sister. They told the head of the household that Renia had escaped from Germany illegally to see her brother, which was why she didn’t want to register her pass. Renia promised she’d stay only for a few days. She spent her time trying to avoid the landlady; she could not stumble in front of her or the neighbors. Most “passing” Jews concocted stories about daytime activity （work, family）， then left for eight hours, roaming town, acting as if they were on their way to something, anything.
Really, all Renia did was wait for the visas, for concrete information about the bus, her impatience growing exponentially. Each day, she met Antek, urging him to hurry. She simply couldn’t delay returning to B?dzin. The general expulsion could come at any time. Is it better to leave with the documents that are ready and not wait any longer? she mulled over and over. In Renia’s heart, she felt—she knew—that each passing day was critical. The clock was ticking, the hands circling faster and faster toward murder.
The waiting dragged on, postponement after postponement. Finally, after a few days, the bus was prepared, and Renia arranged for a telegram to be sent to her informing her of when it would approach the Kamionka ghetto. Several of the visas were ready. She had not been able to obtain any more weapons. But she took what she could get. Renia told Antek that she simply could not stay in Warsaw any longer.
Renia traveled home with twenty-two false visas pasted onto her body and sewn into her skirt, as well as photographs and travel papers for each visa. From the moment she stepped onto the street, her heart pounded wildly. At each instant, she feared she’d stumble. What had happened to Ina?
On the train, regular inspections, but now an additional personal search. The gendarmes approached her.
Even just glancing at them, she later wrote, could make her become confused. But she dared not lose her straight spirit.
She looked sweetly into their eyes. She bravely opened her packs. “They searched inside them like chickens pecking in sand,” she recalled. Holding herself assuredly, smiling confidently, Renia kept chatting with them, maintaining eye contact, so they wouldn’t want to search her body. No sign of fear.
They left, without any suspicion.
Still, the act had to go on.
Renia decided to stop briefly in Cz?stochowa to see operative Rivka Glanz and share updates. Temperamental, sensitive, full of life, Rivka was well known in the underground as a leader, smuggler, and organizer. When the Nazis first invaded, she had been on a mission in the port city of Gdynia; she’d watched comrades flee, some by ship right out to sea. She stayed—until the Nazis expelled her. Rivka quickly packed a small suitcase, then suddenly noticed the kibbutz’s harmonica. She was overwhelmed by a feeling of attachment to the little mouth organ that had brought so much happiness to the comrades. She dropped her valise and grabbed the musical instrument. But she arrived in ?ód? ashamed: here she was with no clothes, with nothing practical. She hid the harmonica next to the door of the kibbutz, entering empty-handed. “I couldn’t bring anything with me,” she announced. Later, she learned, the comrades had found the instrument. They understood her desire to save this object of joy. The harmonica became a movement legend.