After trying a few Yakov Harels on Facebook （with hipster moustaches, they did not look to be the right age）， I managed, via my wonderful Israeli fixer, to contact the bus company. It was indeed him! He agreed to meet at his home in Haifa. It seemed he might even have a sister, and she might be interested in joining. I was going to meet the children of this writer with whom I’d felt years of intimate connection. Not to mention, the person who had to carry my whole tale.
But before even meeting Renia’s family, there were so many others. I trawled through the country, north to south. From upscale and sleek suburban cafés, to Tel Aviv’s Bauhaus living rooms. From a Jerusalem restaurant that happened to be on the corner of Haviva Reich Street, to the Israel National Library, where the 1940s books of obituaries and literary essays that had been the source material for Freuen were on open access, available to me in rooms where I could converse. （Not quite the same vibe as the British Library.） From the wide-open, wood-paneled, and elegant Ghetto Fighters’ House to the vast archives of Yad Vashem （its entrance blocked by a pile of machine guns from soldiers on a lunch break）。 From the basement of Moreshet, where a gallery that was unlocked and lit especially for me displayed extensive exhibitions on women in the resistance and prewar Polish Jewry, to the International Style basement of the Yad Mordechai Museum, designed by renowned architect Arieh Sharon. I met scholars, curators, archivists, and the children and grandchildren of Ruzka, Vitka, Chajka, Bela, Chasia, and Zivia.
I had already visited Holocaust museums and archives in North America, and had interviewed many children of partisan Bundists and Yiddishists from New York to California to Canada. But the Israeli families felt different. The language, the mannerisms, the etiquette—their world was more political, more live-wire, with strong feelings and high stakes. I often met with the “Holocaust spokesperson” of the family, the relative who worked or hobbied passionately in the subject. I was grilled by one who worried that my interest was superficial; another was concerned I would steal the work her group had compiled; and another did not want to reveal much unless I agreed to write a movie with him. Yet another told me of legal battles over the portrayal of their family member in academic publications. Each archive—all Labor Zionist—reiterated its specialty and why its view made more sense than the others.
Of all the meetings that week, it was the one with Renia’s children that made me most nervous, barely able to eat my gourmet schnitzel beforehand. I had staked my project on this woman, whom I felt for, with whom I had a writerly bond. What if her family disliked me, refused to tell me anything, were cold or difficult, or had their own agendas?
But when I entered her son’s home, a condo on a hill above breezy, blue Haifa, I found the opposite. Kind, welcoming people who were not in the “professional survivor business,” they were grateful for the things I knew about Renia that I could share with them. I sat on the sofa, Renia’s daughter, Leah, on an armchair—Renia’s armchair, she told me, which no one was throwing out. The face from the photographs of my heroine that I’d dug up on archival sites stared at me in different embodiments: the strong jawline, the intense eyes. It was like seeing a childhood friend in their own children, the genetics knocking me for a loop. We were all amazed that we’d found one another.
And then I was amazed by what they told me. Yes, of course, Renia was funny, sharp, sarcastic, theatrical.
But also a fashionista who traveled the world. A ball of fire and laughter. A social whirlwind. A force of joy.
As I listened to them speak of their mother, whom they clearly adored and mourned deeply, it dawned on me that in all my questing, I had not actually been looking for my kindred soul. I stared out at the hills and valleys, the golden sunset over Haifa, and knew that Renia was not the writerly companion on my same page, but the opposite. My hero was the surrogate ancestor I’d wished for: the “happy relative” who survived, thrived, and celebrated life.
*
A month later, I was flying from a research trip in London to Warsaw. Or at least, I thought I was headed to Warsaw. I hadn’t realized that the delayed budget airline flight I’d chosen would deposit me in a former military airfield an hour north of the city. In the middle of the night. Alone. Welcome back to Poland.