B?dzin’s Freedom kibbutz, which had hosted sixty members before the war, became a social center for all the movements. Freedom organized sing-alongs, Hebrew classes, and a library, as well as children’s programs. Sarah, Renia’s sister, was a dedicated worker on this front, playing out a family passion inherited from her mother. She cared avidly for children and helped run the kibbutz’s orphanage, called Atid, the Hebrew word for “future.” The town of B?dzin’s relatively porous boundaries—there was no closed ghetto, and its postal service reached Switzerland and other countries—made it a center for education and training. Frumka frequently traveled here two hundred miles from Warsaw, organizing seminars; The Young Guard leaders did too.
At their peak, these underground activities involved two thousand Jewish youth and many took place at a nearby farm. The Judenrat had given the Zionists thirty fields and gardens as well as horses and goats, to plow, sow, and tend. Photographs show youths from various groups donning caps and kerchiefs—and no yellow stars—smiling while snipping crops and dancing the hora. Images of Sarah Kukielka depict her at an outdoor celebration among dozens of comrades seated at long, white-bedecked tables, honoring the birthday of the late Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik.
The youth organized memorial evenings, when they sat in the fields, sang about freedom, shared memories, and spoke out against Fascism. “Hundreds joined us for Shabbat,” Chajka wrote, “looking to breathe, looking for a patch of green grass.” The farm, where “the pots on the wall sparkled as if in a festive way,” was their rejuvenation, reflection, and renewal point.
By the fall of 1941, B?dzin’s Young Guard was in its prime, and Chajka was its mother.
*
Then, one night, a roundup. The evenings leading up to it had been terrifying. No one slept, including Chajka. They waited for the marching and whistles of military men coming to kidnap and take them to labor camps with horrific, backbreaking, disease-ridden conditions. That night, it actually happened. She hoped they’d missed her building, but alas. They were pounding on the gate, ready to tear the superintendent to shreds for taking so long to open up. She hoped they’d skip her apartment, but then they were inside, searching every corner.
“Get dressed,” they ordered Chajka. Her mother was crying, begging the Nazis to leave her alone.
“Be quiet!” Chajka shouted. “Don’t you dare beg them or humiliate yourself in front of them! I’m going. Be well.”
Outside it was pitch dark, and hard for Chajka to make out the convoys, all the girls. She could hear only the opening of gates. The Germans arranged the girls into rows, then escorted them into the enormous municipal school building. So many girls: two thousand of them.
Chajka immediately began to look around for her friends. Leah, Nacia, Dora, Hela—the comrades were all there. As they were on the second floor, she considered jumping out the window, but she glanced out and saw guards all over the courtyard.
There would be a selection and deportation in the morning. For now, Chajka and her comrades wanted to deal with their current chaos. It was loud, like a market square. The B?dzin girls were pressed together tightly, their faces nearly touching. An ocean of heads, crying, screaming, hysterical laughter, frightening suffocation.
Leah Pejsachson took action. Chajka’s strong and shapely Young Guard coleader always woke up first, at five in the morning, ready to sift, plow, and drive the tractor, nudging the others: “Get up, lazies!” Now Leah ran from one room to the next. She looked for people she knew, and on the way, opened windows so the women wouldn’t asphyxiate. She heard children crying wildly. With Nacia, she collected them all into one corner, combed their hair, and gave out bread. “Don’t cry,” Leah reassured the girls. “They are not worth your tears. This is a humiliation! They won’t send you away; you are too young.” Nacia made sure that the Nazis checked their ages and had them all released.
In the morning, the classification began. Each woman presented the German commissioner with her work certificate. The girls who worked for the weapons factory were freed.