The next morning, in April 1958, on the fifteenth anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising, Chajka Klinger hung herself from a tree, not too far from the kibbutz nursery where her three sons played.
Not everyone survives surviving.
Chapter 31
Forgotten Strength
1945
Renia might not have had luck speaking to that particular group in the kibbutz, but her lecture rounds led to other revelations. One day some couriers in a displaced persons camp mentioned her name. In front of them, a man fainted.
He was Renia’s brother.
Zvi Kukielka had escaped to Russia and joined the Red Army. Their younger brother Aaron was also alive, having survived the work camps because of his blond good looks, charm, and melodic voice, singing in a church choir. Now Zvi was detained in the squalid DP camp on the island of Cyprus with survivor refugees. Both brothers eventually reached Palestine.
Despite her premonitions, Renia had harbored hopes about Sarah—one never knew for sure. But after she arrived in Palestine, she found out that her sister had been caught, in Bielsko, near the Slovakian border, along with a group of comrades and orphans. “Please take care of my sister Renia,” was her last recorded request.
In 1945 Renia found an audience with her book. Encouraged by poet and politician Zalman Shazar, she completed her memoirs in Polish. Hakibbutz Hameuchad, an organization that published many survivor stories from the movement, had her work translated to Hebrew by Chaim Shalom Ben-Avram, a renowned Israeli translator. The Hebrew edition was well received; the early fighters of the Palmach, the elite brigade of the Yishuv’s underground army, carried it with them in their backpacks.
Renia’s story was excerpted and translated to Yiddish, printed in Freuen in di Ghettos by the Pioneer Women’s Organization （now Na’amat）。 In 1947 the full book was published in English by Sharon Books, a publisher with the same downtown Manhattan address as Pioneer Women, and titled Escape from the Pit. The introduction was penned by author Ludwig Lewisohn, a translator of important European works and a founder of Brandeis University.
Escape from the Pit was mentioned by essayists in the late 1940s: in one, about the （excessive） proliferation of Holocaust publications in America; in another, as suggested reading for students. The book was referred to in the testimony of at least one other survivor, who was critical that the story focused only on Freedom. Renia contributed to the Zaglembie memorial book published by survivors, as well as to an anthology about Frumka and Hantze. Writing was therapeutic. She channeled her torment into words. After this catharsis, Renia felt able to move on.
Her English book, however, faded with time. Perhaps flooded out by the deluge of American Holocaust publishing, or, as some suggest, the 1950s “trauma fatigue” experienced by many Jews, her tale fell out of fashion. The story may also have lost traction because Renia, unlike Hannah Senesh and Anne Frank, remained alive. It is harder to lionize the living. She did not promote it or become a spokesperson; if anything, the whole point of its publication was to put Poland behind her.
Renewal was so very important. “It happened, and it passed,” was her motto. Renia stayed close to her brothers and comrades, in particular Chawka. But she also threw herself into the life of the kibbutz, doing manual labor, joining social activities, and, for the first time, learning Hebrew.
Then Renia was introduced to Akiva Herscovitch, a man from J?drzejów who had made aliyah in 1939, before the war. Renia had been friendly with his sister and well-to-do father back in Poland. Akiva remembered Renia as a young, attractive teenager. They quickly fell in love. She was no longer alone, and in 1949 officially became Renia Herscovitch.
Akiva did not want to live on a kibbutz, and though Renia was sad to lose the social camaraderie and the Kibbutz Dafna community that she adored, she stuck with her love. They moved to Haifa, the country’s principal port, a picturesque coastal city set on the slopes of Mount Carmel. She worked at the Jewish Agency, receiving immigrants from ships, until two days before her first child was born, in 1950. After all she’d been through, she was faced with another hurdle: Yakov, named for her little brother Yankeleh, who had been killed, was born partially paralyzed. Renia stopped working and dedicated herself to healing him—which she did.