Caring for families in the ghettos, keeping Jewish children alive—physically and spiritually nurturing the next generation—was a mother’s form of resistance. Men were wrested away or ran away, but women stayed to look after their children and often their parents. Like Leah, many were familiar with budgeting money and apportioning food, only now they had to work with extreme deprivation. A day’s stamps—which procured dishes like bitter cornbread made from grains, stems, and leaves; a few groats; pinches of salt; a handful of potatoes—did not provide adequate nourishment even for breakfast alone.
The poor suffered the most, Renia noted, as they could not afford goods sold on the black market. A mother would do just about anything to avoid having to watch her children starve—“the worst kind of death,” Renia reflected later. Unable to provide basic existential needs, they foraged for nutrients, hid their children from violence and, later, deportations （silencing them in hiding spots, and sometimes forced to smother their own crying babies）， and treated illness as best they could without medication. The women in the ghetto, always vulnerable to sexual assault, went out to work or smuggle, risking being caught and leaving their children alone in the world. Others handed over their babies to Polish caregivers, often with hefty sums of money, and sometimes had to watch from a distance as their children were abused or told lies about them. In the end, countless mothers who could have been spared for work ultimately went to the gas chambers with their children, refusing to let them die alone—comforting and holding them to the last second.
When husbands remained, marital conflicts often erupted. Men, who arguably had less tolerance for hunger, tended to eat whatever food they found. Women had to hide rations. Sex in cramped quarters and between starving bodies was usually not a possibility, also adding to the tension. According to the ?ód? ghetto records, many couples filed for divorce, despite the fact that being single made one more susceptible to deportation and death. In many cases, they were the first generation to enjoy love matches rather than arranged unions, but romantic bonds disintegrated with chronic hunger, torture, and terror.
Women, who had been trained in domestic skills, also took great care to delouse, clean, and stay primped—skills that helped them survive emotionally and physically. Women, some said, suffered more from the lack of hygiene than even from starvation.
Despite best efforts to cope, the insufficient food, crowding, and lack of running water and sanitation had led to a typhus epidemic in the J?drzejów ghetto. Each infected house was shuttered, and the sick were taken to a Jewish hospital set up especially for this disease, which spread through lice. Most patients died from lack of treatment. Special bathhouses disinfected bodies and clothes, often rendering the garments unwearable. Renia heard rumors that the Germans prohibited treating typhus patients and ordered the sick to be poisoned. （The Nazis were notoriously germophobic. In Kraków, noninfected Jews mingled at the contagious hospital to save their lives.）
Hunger, infestation, the stench of unwashed bodies, the lack of work and of any daily schedule, and the constant fear of being snatched for forced labor and beaten was the everyday reality. Children played Nazi-versus-Jew in the streets. A little girl yelled at her kitten not to leave the ghetto without its papers. There was no money for Hanukkah candles or Shabbat challahs. Even affluent Jews ran out of the money they’d brought into the ghetto or the money they received selling goods. While their items sold to Poles for next to nothing, the black market was exorbitant. A loaf of bread in the Warsaw ghetto cost a Jew the equivalent of $60 today.
Now, at the door, was Renia’s chance; she was desperate for funds. Like so many Jewish women across the country, she did not think of herself as a political person. She was not part of any organization, yet here she was, risking her life in action. She reached out her fist, each knock a potential bullet.
A woman answered, ready to bargain. They buy happily, Renia thought. They have nothing else to spend money on. Hastily, she offered a small amount of coal. Renia asked for a few coins, so much less than the heirloom lace placemats were worth. “Okay.” Then she walked away quickly, heart thumping. She fingered the change in her pocket. Measly, but at least she had done something.