“From that moment on,” she later wrote. “I was on my own.”
*
September 12, 1942
It’s a beautiful night. The moon shines in all its glory. I am lying in a field between potatoes, shivering from cold, recounting my recent experiences to myself. Why? Why should I bother to suffer so much?
And still, I don’t want to die.
Renia awoke to the dawn. Days and nights in the field, nothingness but the odd barking dog, and suddenly she knew could not just stay there, nibbling on grains she’d collected from the ground. She needed to move, to find a place where Jews still existed. Where the idea of herself existed. Her legs dragging like lead, Renia was lost and filled with sorrow for her friend. It was too much to go through this hardship alone. But after hours of wandering, she finally came across a small village.
Renia tried desperately to fix her appearance—which meant everything now—before finding the nearest train station and boarding a train to a town where she knew a railway worker: a client at her parents’ shop. After disembarking, she moved quickly, despite her thick exhaustion. All Renia could think about was how badly she wanted to shower and resemble the people around her.
Suddenly a miracle. On the ground was a woman’s purse. Renia rummaged through it and found a bit of money. But much more important: the owner’s passport. Renia clutched it, knowing this was her ticket to travel, to make her way.
Renia scurried through town, finally knocking on her acquaintance’s door, her hands shaking with fatigue and fear. He opened up to reveal a warm, clean, comfortable abode—a sight from another life. He and his wife were elated to see her, but shocked by her courage and appearance. “Rivchu, you look terrible,” was their greeting.
“My face is flabby,” Renia wrote, “but who cares?” The couple fed her tomato soup with noodles and gave her clean clothes and underwear. They all sat in the kitchen, crying over the incredible Leah, her mother, their friend.
That’s when, through the window, they overheard the young son tell the neighbor that Rivchu, a girl from whom the family used to buy clothes and socks, was visiting.
“That’s a strange name,” the burly neighbor asserted.
“Well,” the boy said, “she’s a Jew.”
Renia’s hosts bolted from their seats and pushed her into a cupboard, covering her in piles of clothes. Renia could hear the knock on the door, the muffled accusations.
“No, no, no.” The couple mocked their child’s imagination. “We had a guest, not a Jew.”
That night, her hosts handed Renia money and a train ticket. After a brief respite of semisecurity, one she had not allowed herself to sink into too deeply, she was off again. Only now, she was off with new clothes and a new name: Wanda Widuchowska. This may have been the name on the ID in the pocketbook she’d found; in another account, Renia relayed that her family friends sought help from their priest, who gave them the papers of the recently deceased Wanda Widuchowska, a local woman in her twenties. The husband used a marker to blur the original fingerprint and put Renia’s on top.
Fake documents for Polish Jews included identity cards （Kennkartes, which everyone was required to carry）， birth certificates, travel permits, work, residence and food cards, and baptismal certificates. Most Jews held a mix, especially as different IDs were required in different regions. The best type of fake ID was a real one from a deceased or even living person. （The Gestapo sometimes called to see if a person was verified in town books.） Like Renia, Jews would supplant their photographs and/or fingerprints on top of the originals; sometimes they needed to replicate the stamp or part thereof, as it might have overlapped with the original photo. The second-best type of ID was real papers with false names. To obtain these, someone had to steal or procure blank forms, stamps, and seals, and then submit an application to the town hall. Some forgers carved out seals from rubber erasers, or requested municipal documents by post—the return envelopes had seals that they would save and use.