The train from Katowice left at six in the morning. Renia put her hair up in a new style and wore fresh clothes, all so that she wouldn’t be recognized by the Gestapo or the police. “Only my face is the same.” She took nothing but the clothes on her back.
Banasikova said good-bye with great compassion, asking only to be remembered after the war. Parting from Aliza was painful. Who knew who would make it?
At five thirty on a cold December morning, Renia and Chawka felt their way through a pitch-black field. They spoke quietly in German so as not to catch the attention of passersby hurrying to work in the mines. At the Micha?kowice station, they met Mitek, who was to accompany them to Bielsko, as well the other six people who would flee with them—including Chajka Klinger.
Chajka had escaped from the liquidation camp, where entrances and exits were not highly supervised and the guards were easily bribed. At first, she hid with Meir at the Novaks but claimed Mrs. Novak became too nervous and greedy. She then went into hiding at various Kobiletz family locations, where she wrote the bulk of her diaries. Other comrades around B?dzin were placed in barns and dovecots, but because of Chajka’s assignment to chronicle their story, she was given larger, more comfortable melinas.
Chajka had initially resisted her documentarian role, but with so many comrades dead, she accepted her calling. It was terrifically difficult for her to write, to revisit her pain continually, while her comrades got to focus on day-to-day living. She had not heard music for four years, and now the sounds of German songs emanating from a radio reminded her of everyone who had been killed—of all that had been taken from her. Chajka, who had not cried when Zvi died, nor while being beaten, now wailed. David. Had she done enough? Her guilt over not saving her own family was so overwhelming that she could not write about them.
A depression lodged itself in her bones.
Now Renia, Chajka, Chawka, and the group took the train from Micha?kowice to Katowice, where, despite the early hour, they met heavy traffic. Renia walked confidently along the platform with Mitek. Every time they saw a police or Gestapo man, they stepped aside, blended into the crowd. Mitek joked, “How great it would be if we were caught together—me, a former political instructor for the Gestapo and fugitive, and you, a suspected spy who escaped from jail!”
Suddenly three Gestapo men approached. Renia recognized them from Mys?owice; they’d seen her while she stood in formation. Think fast. Renia lowered her hat and covered her face with her kerchief, pretending she had a toothache.
The men walked away.
Within a few minutes, the group was all aboard the train car, en route from Katowice to Bielsko. For Renia, who risked being recognized in this area, this was the most dangerous leg of the entire journey. But the ride was seamless. Nobody asked to see their papers; no one even inspected their bags.
In Bielsko, smugglers waited for them. They bought tickets to Jelesnia, the station closest to the Slovak border, where they arrived that evening. Mitek parted from them as if he were a close relative. “Please,” he pleaded, “do not forget what I’ve done for you.” Mitek promised to join them in Slovakia after helping the remaining comrades get out. He told the smugglers to take care of the Jews. The comrades quickly jotted messages to those staying behind. Renia composed a “Hurry up and meet me” letter to her sister and Aliza. Mitek took the pages, folded them up, and got back on the train.
The escapees spent a few hours resting at one of the smuggler’s houses, preparing for their trek through the Tatra Mountains. The rest of the way was by foot.
Then it was time. They stealthily exited the small village: eight comrades, two smugglers, two guides. In the distance they saw snow-covered mountains rising to the sky. The border. The goal.
The first few miles were flat. Their world was all white, but the snow was shallow. “The night was so bright it felt like morning,” Renia wrote.
She was wearing nothing but a dress—no jacket—but she didn’t feel the cold.