The crowd agreed, saying that the girls did not actually look Jewish.
The older lady now felt ashamed. Renia slapped her again, this time in front of the Gestapo detectives and gendarmes. “Find her name and address,” Renia told the Gestapo. “Maybe one day I can get back at her.”
The Gestapo men laughed. “You’re both Polish pigs,” one said. “What in the world could you do to her?”
The girls turned away. Behind them, children goaded, “You should have broken her teeth for suspecting you were Jewish!”
“She has gray hair, she’s elderly,” Renia answered them. “I wouldn’t want to disrespect her.”
*
That night, the girls stayed with a German woman, a sympathetic acquaintance of Sarah’s. If only she could, she told them, she would help save the comrades. She tried to calm Renia, consoling her after the day’s drama. Renia was gearing up to meet Bolk the next day and tell him about the trouble he’d caused them.
At five in the morning, with the town still asleep, Renia boarded the tram and headed to the meeting place with money from Warsaw. She waited for an hour. No Bolk.
At first, Renia was surprised. Then she grew angry, so bloody angry. He should have known how dangerous it was for her to stand in one place, to make her wait. After two full hours, Renia felt it was just too unsafe. She left. But now what? She needed to find someone else who could sneak into the camp, who knew his way around it.
Several days passed, the question constantly occupying Renia, who knew only too well, too tragically, that in this sick world, every minute counted.
And then suddenly, at the German woman’s house, an apparition seemingly from a dream.
Sarah.
Renia’s joy was enormous, staggering.
Right away, her sister told the story of her escape: she dressed up as a Gentile, a militiaman bribed the guards, and she snuck out into the Aryan zone. Now that she had a system for escape, she had to find a place where she could hide a few people. Sarah had promised she would do everything to help their comrades get out.
Sarah returned to the camp that very day. There was never a second to spare.
Meanwhile, Renia needed to take Ilza to Warsaw and settle her on the Aryan side. After that, she would have to figure out where to settle herself.
*
Katowice to Warsaw. The tickets were purchased. Ilza and Renia held passports and travel papers for crossing the border, two hours away. As they both had fake documents from the same dealer in Warsaw, the girls sat in different cars. Renia kept reminding herself of her success crossing the border when she’d brought over Rivka Moscovitch, praying it would be simple this time too.
A quarter past midnight, and they reached the border crossing. She could see guards walking outside, preparing to enter the cars. Ilza was at the front of the train—they would check her first. Renia waited, cautiously optimistic. It had worked so many times before, she told herself.
But then she kept waiting. Why was it taking so long? Were those heavy footsteps? Usually, inspecting tickets and passports took less time. Or was it her imagination acting up? Finally, the door to her car opened. Renia handed over her passport and papers, just as she’d done countless times before.
They examined her documents.
“This is the same one as in the previous car,” one of them said.
Renia’s heart skipped a beat, then began to race. She said nothing, pretended as always that she didn’t speak German.
They did not give her back her papers.
Firmly, in German, they told Renia to take all her belongings and follow them.
She pretended not to understand.