Renia was relieved to arrive, which she did with a friend, Yochimovitz, from the ghetto, but she obsessed over her parents and their farewell. Leah and Moshe had been beside themselves when saying good-bye. Renia could not stop thinking about her father’s tears, her mother’s wails, the parting of their arms, hands, fingers. And Yankeleh, his little eyes flooded over, his warm grip on her back, the little fingers. No, she could not let that be the last time she saw them, never, never.
And so, soon after beginning her work on railway bridges, Renia convinced her supervisor to admit her father and sisters to the camp.
But it was too late.
A few days later, a sharp, sunny morning, Renia woke up ready for work, when a message hit her like lightning. Just a few hours earlier, at four o’clock, an Aktion had begun in Wodzis?aw. Renia would no longer be able to communicate with her family. Had they managed to leave in time?
But there was more. The Nazi camp commander approached the girls. He called Renia over and softly told her that women were no longer allowed to work at the camp. The Gestapo had asked him to add them to the upcoming transport list. “Escape,” he urged Renia quietly. “Go wherever you can.”
Go? Away? Again?
No, no, no, the despair was too great.
But he tried hard to convince her. “You are still young,” the German said. “Run away, and maybe you will make it out alive.”
What about Yochimovitz? Renia refused to leave without her.
If it was up to him, the German said, he’d want them to stay there. If it wasn’t for the great danger, he’d take them all in himself. “Good luck,” he said, honestly, gently. “Now go.”
*
August 27, 1942, the first day of the next phase of her life—Renia’s days of wandering. She was now one of those Jews meandering without a guide, sans destination. Aaron and his friend Herman had helped her and Yochimovitz, fetching water for the girls to wash with and a pack of food from the German. Then they brought the two of them to the forest, near where they worked, and left.
Now Renia and Yochimovitz were alone. Where to?
Suddenly they heard screaming, gunshots, barking in all directions.
Then a command to a dog, in German: “Stop the damn Jews, Rex! Bite!”
The girls ran, trying to flee. Within minutes, they were being chased by two policeman who accused Yochimovitz of being a Jew. They were taken to a cabin for train conductors where other Jews who had been caught were being held. From outside, Renia heard screams emerging from the basement.
Renia resolved right there that she would absolutely not go into that basement.
“Do you have children?” she asked the policeman.
“Yes, four.”
“I am also the daughter of a mother and father. I too have sisters and brothers,” Renia pleaded as the other officers urged him to take the girls downstairs. “Do you really think I’m a Jew?”
“No,” he said, tearing up. “You look and speak Polish. You are one of us. Walk away, quickly. Take your friend.”
The girls began to move, fast. This was not good. Yochimovitz had the wrong look. Was her friend a liability or a life support? Would Renia have to leave her?
Sometimes questions answer themselves.
She heard shots. Renia turned around.
On the ground in front of her.
Yochimovitz was dead.
*
In 1942 eighteen-year-old girls in New York City explored their new adulthood by ogling Humphrey Bogart, or singing along to Bing Crosby’s hit “White Christmas” while sipping milkshakes at the corner drug store. In London, Renia’s peers were jiving across the polished floors of the dance hall boom. Even in Aryan Warsaw, young people sought distraction from the war, promenading at the park, flirting as they rode on musical carousels. But weeks before her eighteenth birthday, in the forest, Renia’s coming of age played out differently.