“I’m on the way to see my relatives,” Renia lied. “I don’t have a certificate proving my Aryan origin, and I know the Nazis are searching. I need to wait out the night somewhere safe. If Germans see me during the day, they’d know right away I wasn’t a Jew.”
The man cocked his head sympathetically and gestured her inside. She breathed. He gave Renia a warm drink and showed her to a bushel of hay where she could sleep. “You must leave in the morning,” he warned. “I’m not allowed to accept guests without registering them.”
The next morning, Renia set off again by foot, but at least she was rested, invigorated. She kept on going, prompted by the hope that her family was still alive; that she had something to live for.
The Jews of Kazimierza Wielka, knowing that the nearby villages had already been “exterminated,” were gripped by tension. Few had escape plans, few had money. Even the best-hearted Christians were not helping Jews hide at this point, fearing for their own lives.
The Nazis had decreed that the Jews in town could not take in Jewish refugees, and the Jews obeyed, hoping that doing so might save them from deportation. Renia knew this was delusional, but what could she do? She felt completely naked, with no roof over her head, no money. She needed work. But how? How did one get a job in the middle of an annihilation?
She wandered this town of strangers, helpless, nauseous, consoled only by the sight of the Star of David armbands, which reassured her that a few Jews still lived. One evening she spotted a Jewish militia member and declared desperately that she was a “yiddishe kind.” A Jewish child. “Where can I spend the night?” she asked.
Warning her not to meander through the streets, he let her stay in the corridor of his house until morning. Renia got to know the family, the only Jewish home she knew. And they, in turn, were the only people who knew she was Jewish. Who knew who she was.
*
Renia’s charm took over. It wasn’t long before she met a Polish girl who became fond of her, and, thinking she was Polish, got her a job as a housekeeper in the home of a half-German family. Renia had already defied the Nazi regime by smuggling, hiding, scheming, and running; now began her chapter of disguise.
Life at the Hollanders was a calm reprieve. A day of work, she felt, was the best medicine for the wounds and insults she’d incurred along the way. Sure, she still had to disguise herself, constantly pretending to be a simple, happy-go-lucky girl, each evening muffling her all-night sobbing and insomnia, perpetually disguising her agitation with a smile. But at least she had a temporary home. She could focus on her goal: tracking down her family.
Renia’s boss adored her. Occasionally she called the young woman over and overflowed with praise. “I’m so lucky,” Mrs. Hollander gushed, “to have found such a clean, hardworking, God-fearing, experienced, knowledgeable, and educated girl.”
To which Renia, of course, smiled. “I’m from a wealthy, educated family,” she semi-lied. “But after my parents died, I needed to find household work.”
The Hollanders gave Renia gifts, never treating her like a servant. Mrs. Hollander did not register her new housekeeper with the police; she must have sensed that Renia was a Jew. In order not to further arouse suspicions, Renia took an aggressive strategy, complaining that she did not have the right clothes for church. How could she, a religious Catholic, not pray and observe? The Hollanders eventually gifted her a set of fancy clothes. Only now, a new problem: she would have to attend church.
On that first Sunday, she rushed to get dressed, trembling. Though Renia grew up around Polish children at school and in the schoolyard, she had never been to Mass and had little clue about Catholic traditions; she certainly didn’t know the hymns and prayers. Would her behavior betray her as a fraud? Nauseous as she entered the building, she was scared that everyone would be looking at her; that they would see through her act. “Everywhere I go,” she wrote, “I must play a part.”
With a wildly beating heart, she joined the throngs in the pews, wondering what her parents would think if they saw her now. Renia glued her eyes on her neighbors, imitating every motion. When they crossed themselves, she crossed herself. When they kneeled, she kneeled. When they prayed to the heavens with great devotion, so did Renia. “I hadn’t even known that I was such a good actor,” Renia later reflected, “able to impersonate and imitate.”