That night, a car waited for them on the outskirts of the village. The driver was a customs clerk—he’d been bribed. He asked them questions about the Jews in Poland.
Suddenly he stopped the car.
What now? Dark, the middle of nowhere. They were completely vulnerable.
The driver got out, went to the backseat. Everyone clenched.
“Don’t worry, I won’t hurt you,” he said.
To Renia’s surprise, he hugged little Muniosh.
Then he asked each of them about their relatives. He could not believe that they were the sole survivors of their families. He was incensed by their stories of German atrocities.
The driver took them through Slovak towns and villages. It was dark, but here and there, they saw a glimmer of light from a window that wasn’t properly blacked out, as was the law. The driver told them that he was taking them to Mikulá?, a town with a Jewish community that would take care of them. Renia was in awe of how well planned the whole operation was, everything arranged to the smallest detail.
In Mikulá?, the car stopped at the community center. The driver fetched a Jewish person, who took them to an inn. There they met Max Fischer, looking all dark haired and dashing. Max relayed that the rest of the first group was already in Hungary, from where they hoped to make legal aliyah to Palestine. Suddenly Renia felt like a bird released from a cage, finally able to untuck her wings.
The Mikulá? Jews were happy about their escape, but no one offered to host them, for fear of police raids. The comrades were put in a school auditorium set up for refugees. As far as the police were concerned, the shelter housed only people who had been caught by border patrol and were waiting for the authorities to look into their cases; when a few found out about the additional refugees, they shook them down for bribes. Here, Renia learned quickly, you could get anything from the cops for the right amount of money. The large room had beds, a table, a long bench, and a heater. Food was available for purchase from a special kitchen set up by refugees themselves. The comrades were to wait here for a few days until the next group arrived; together they’d continue to Hungary. Would Sarah be there?
The next day, Benito, a local from The Young Guard arrived, asking about the surviving comrades. Benito was constantly busy, making arrangements for escapees. He warned Renia not to get too relaxed—a huge number of Slovakian Jews had been deported to Poland. Here, too, Jews were required to wear a patch to identify them. Who knew how much longer they’d be able to stay?
Each day in the shelter, Renia met Jews arriving from Kraków, Warsaw, Radom, Tarnów, Ljubljana, Lvov—a hodgepodge of tortured asylum seekers brought together by fate. Chatty and energized, young Jews were different people when not in constant, mortal danger. But out of habit, they still whispered. Some had been caught by border guards, most had been hidden on the Aryan side. Hardly anyone had relatives, but everyone wanted to live—for many, they were driven by dreams of revenge. Renia learned about communities across Poland, the ghettos and labor camps that still existed, the thousands of Jews hiding in each large city. Could any of them be her family? She tried not to kindle any hopes.
Meanwhile, Chajka had an entirely different awakening. She and Benito fell for each other instantly. From a middle-class and assimilated Slovak family, Benito was the same age and had been a longtime Young Guard leader. He had survived the Slovakian deportations by escaping to Hungary—that is, after he arranged for sixty of his comrades to escape too. Following several arrests in Hungary, he returned to Slovakia to help receive incoming Jewish refugees. He was connected with movement leaders in Europe and Palestine. Chajka had lived through the horrors he’d only heard of secondhand. She stayed up late, telling him her stories, warmed by the auditorium’s large oven. “She found everything she’d lost in the Slovak activist,” their son explained many years later. “Like her, he was willing to risk his life for friends, and he also believed in the ideals of the future.” Benito instantly felt the need to protect Chajka. As he recalled: “An entire generation was screaming through her mouth. She talked for hours and hours, as if fearing that she would not have time to deliver all of the information. . . . And I was listening to her, occasionally holding her hand, to feel the person who is carrying all of this on their heart and soul.”