Then they reached the mountains. Walking became more difficult. The group progressed single file, stepping as fast as they could. The snow was knee deep, and where it wasn’t, they slipped and slid. Every moving branch startled them—could it be police?
The guides knew the route well. One of them led, the other and the smugglers helped the comrades. It was blustering, which was actually helpful, as the sound muffled the crunch of their footsteps. But the walking became harder and harder. Without coats or boots, they climbed toward the peak, 6,233 feet—more than a mile high. Once in a while, they stopped to catch their breath, lying on the snow as if on a bed of feathers. Despite the cold, their sweaty clothes clung to their skin.
The group entered a forest; they toppled over like toddlers learning to walk. They were amazed by little Muniosh from the Atid kibbutz: Brown hair, pale skin, pointy ears, he was all grit, leading the line, mocking the rest of them for their substandard hiking skills.
Suddenly, in the distance, they saw black spots against the snow: border patrol.
They lay down, covering themselves in snow, until the officers passed.
Renia, wet, barely dressed, was still so weak from prison. She could hardly breathe in this altitude. I’m not going to make it.
The smugglers helped, walking her along like a child. She remembered her escape from Mys?owice; if she could make it out of there alive, she could make it now too. Push.
Slowly, quietly, the group carefully passed the border patrol building and approached the summit. Exhausted, they had to pick up the pace. They stumbled on each step, sinking into the snow. But this was the last leg of the trek, and they managed to find a miraculous second wind. Flight.
After six hours of torturous hiking, they found themselves in Slovakia.
Their most incredible crossing yet.
Renia had left Poland.
Now, for the rest of the world.
Chapter 29
“Zag nit keyn mol az du geyst dem letstn veg”
Never say the final journey is at hand
Never say we will not meet the Promised Land,
The longed-for hour shall come, oh never fear.
Our tread drums forth the tidings—we are here!
—From “The Partisan Song,” by Hirsh Glick, written in Yiddish in the Vilna ghetto
Renia
DECEMBER 1943
Slovakia, a state newly formed on the eve of World War II, was no Jewish paradise. The country, whose ruler was an outspoken antisemite, was aligned with the Axis nations and became a Hitler satellite. The majority of Slovakia’s Jews had been deported to death camps in Poland in 1942. After that, there was a pause in deportations that lasted until August 1944. In those two years, Jews lived in relative security, either protected by papers or pretending to be Christian, or because of political pressure and bribes.
This period of calm can be credited partly to resistance leader Gisi Fleischmann. Born to a bourgeois, orthodox Jewish family, she, like most Slovakian Jews, did not speak Slovak or fit in with the country’s new national consciousness. Gisi joined the Zionists early on. In the capital Bratislava, she was president of the Women’s International Zionist Organization （WIZO） before taking on several public leadership roles. （In the much larger Poland, even the left-wing groups had no women in public positions. Gisi was unique.） By 1938, she ran an agency that aided German Jewish refugees, then became head of Slovakia’s JDC. International money was funneled from a Swiss account to her.
At the outbreak of war, Gisi, then in her late thirties, was in London trying to arrange for large-scale Jewish immigration to Palestine. Her efforts were not successful, and though colleagues encouraged her to stay in England, she insisted on returning home, feeling obligations to her sickly mother and husband, and her community. She sent her two teenage daughters to Palestine for safety.