Vitka didn’t settle into the kibbutz women’s life of the kitchen and sewing; instead, she helped with children’s education. At age forty-five, she went to university and trained as a clinical psychologist, completing a bachelor of arts and advanced degrees. She was a disciple of Dr. George Stern, a fiery and unusual practitioner who specialized in using instinct—her forte—to work with young children. She devised a method whereby disturbed children expressed themselves through color, navigating their prelinguistic minds just as she’d done in the forest, without a map. She developed a successful and busy practice, and trained many therapists interested in her technique. She retired at eighty-five.
Vitka’s daughter, Shlomit, with whom she had a complex bond, wrote poems about Vitka for a book about her published by Moreshet after her death. Her son, Michael, an artist in Jerusalem, has created graphic novels and texts about both his parents’ lives. When asked about his mother’s personality, his immediate response was: “She had a goyish temperament. Despite her very Jewish looks, she had a non-Jewish personality in that she was someone who went toward danger.” He explained that Vitka was attracted to intimidating people, from Abba to Stern; she gravitated toward fire, dared to touch it, figuratively and literally. “She didn’t care about the rules. She had true chutzpah.”
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Vladka Meed arrived in the United States on the second ship that brought survivors to America, and settled in New York with her husband, Benjamin, the man who had helped her make hidden compartments in her valises. Soon after landing, she was dispatched by the Jewish Labor Committee—which had sent funding to Warsaw—to lecture about her experiences. Both Vladka and Ben became deeply involved in establishing Holocaust survivor organizations, memorials, and museums, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Vladka was formally recognized as one of the country’s leaders in this area. She organized exhibits about the Warsaw ghetto uprising as well as initiated and directed international seminars about Holocaust pedagogy. Vladka stayed connected to her Bundist roots and became vice president of the JLC, for which she served as a weekly Yiddish-language commentator on WEVD, the New York Yiddish station. Their daughter and son both became physicians. She retired to Arizona, where she died in 2012, a few weeks short of her ninety-first birthday.
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Renia was always petite and thin, physically feeble. Yet she never stopped being a force. “When she walked into a room,” her son explained, “it was like a fire hit.” Her joyful demeanor and optimistic outlook eluded her own family. “How could someone have gone through what she went through and be so happy?” her eldest granddaughter, Merav, wondered. “Usually it’s the pessimists who survive, but not in her case,” Merav said while reminiscing about how much her savta loved the sea, walks on the beach, promenades through town. At age seventy-four, Renia even traveled to Alaska.
Her husband, Akiva, died in 1995, and until Renia’s late eighties, she was constantly being wooed by new suitors. Her primped and polished appearance never waned. But it became apparent that she needed more day-to-day help. So Renia convinced her friends to move into a senior home, try it out, set it up, and then, when her social world was already established, she came too. She continued to be funny, quick, and center stage, hypnotizing people with her looks and energy. At eighty-seven, she frequently left her assisted living facility, not returning until midnight. Her children panicked every evening.
“What am I doing here with all these old people?” she asked them, exasperated, theatrical as always.
“Mom, they’re the same age as you.”
But they were old in body and soul, while Renia was still frisky and full of life.
Many of the female fighters were decisive, instinct driven, goal oriented, and optimistic; many of those who survived were blessed with energy and longevity. Hela Schüpper, who also settled in Israel, died at ninety-six, leaving behind three children and ten grandchildren. Vladka passed at ninety, Chasia at ninety-one, and Vitka died at ninety-two. At the time of this writing, Fania Fainer, Faye Schulman, and several Vilna partisans were still alive, all ranging in age from ninety-five to ninety-nine.