Ten in the morning. They arrived! Renia scanned around her: everyone was engaged with her own bricks, her own burdens. All clear. She swiftly left the work site.
But before she reached the girls, the head guard was next to her, yelling. “How dare you leave work without my permission!”
Sarah tried to appease him, flirting, pleading.
“Come back at two with cigarettes and liquor,” Renia murmured to Halina.
The workers were angry with Renia for disobeying the head guard—she was putting everyone at risk.
Renia went back to the bricks, calm for now. Then, just before lunch, a guard called her over. “So you’re a political prisoner,” he said, to her horror. “You’re very young, and I feel sorry for you. Otherwise, I would have informed the camp commander.’”
He wagged his finger in Renia’s face and told her not to even think about trying to escape. They would cut her into pieces.
“There’s no chance I’d escape,” Renia answered. “I’m smart enough to know that I’d be caught. I was arrested for stealing across the border; I’ll probably be released soon. Why would I spoil my chances?”
Renia assumed that the women had told the head guard her secret. No wonder: if Renia escaped, they’d all suffer. Everyone was extracautious since the partisan jailbreak.
All this made escaping even more difficult. Everyone was watching her: the guards and her fellow prisoners. But Renia also knew that her cover was up. They knew she was a “political.” She was doomed either way.
Where were Sarah and Halina? Renia was not wearing a watch—of course, it had been taken—but it felt like hours since they’d left. What if something happened? What if they didn’t return? Could she jet on her own?
Finally, two silhouettes in the distance.
This time Renia played aggressive. “Come with me, please,” she asked the head guard. He followed.
Three Jewish girls and the Nazi stood behind the wall of a bombed building.
Halina passed the guard several bottles of whiskey. He gulped down an entire flask while they stuffed his pockets with cigarettes. Renia picked up a few small bottles of liquor and packs of cigarettes and wrapped them in her kerchief. She distributed them to the watchmen and asked them to stop the other women from going behind the wall. Her acquaintances had brought her hot soup, she told them, and she didn’t want to share it. The watchmen weren’t too concerned, as they knew the head guard had his eye on her.
By now, the head guard was completely intoxicated. Renia needed to figure out how to handle him. “Why don’t you go see if any of the women are looking in our direction?” she suggested. He stumbled off.
Now was her time. Now or never.
*
Renia was not the only Jewish female operative to attempt a jailbreak.
After the Kraków bombings, Shimshon Draenger had gone missing; Gusta went to every police station until she found him, then refused to leave his side. For the second time, his wife adhered to their marital pact and handed herself in.
Gusta was incarcerated at Helzlow, the woman’s section of Montelupich Prison. Perched in the center of the beautiful old town, Montelupich was another horrific Gestapo jail priding itself on its use of medieval torture. After beating Gusta badly, the Nazis brought her to her husband, hoping to use her wounds to get a confession out of him. Instead, Gusta told them, “We did it. We organized fighting groups. And if we get out of here, we’ll organize even stronger ones.”
Gusta was placed in the large, lightless “cell 15” with fifty women, including several Jewish underground operatives. She organized a daily routine for her fellow prisoners: as long as water was available, she made them wash and brush their hair and clean their table, all to maintain hygiene and humanity. She initiated regular discussions of philosophy, history, literature, and the Bible. They celebrated Oneg Shabbat. They recited poems and composed new ones. And when a group was taken out to be shot, those remaining shared their grief in song.