Though Leah was one of the first to be set loose, she did not run off. Instead, she waited nearby for other girls who were coming out and took their work papers. Then she sent the papers back into the building for those who didn’t have valid documents. She stayed outside the entire time, “bustling around,” Chajka desribed, and enabled a large number of girls to get out.
When the Germans finished their selection, they’d fallen shy of their quota and roamed the streets, capturing any women who remained in the area. Leah was among them. Now she couldn’t help herself with work papers. Straight into the wagon!
Leah was deported to a labor camp, the first one of their group. “We missed her terribly,” Chajka wrote. “How strongly we had connected with her.”
Leah wrote letters from the camp, telling of hunger and beatings, even for women. “I long for you, but I’m alright here,” she assured them. Half the day, she worked in the kitchen, the other half in the sick ward. Even under the Nazis’ watchful eyes, she managed to sneak in bread for prisoners who had ashen, dying faces. She knew that those with broad shoulders and strong bodies would not be harmed by the small portions, but the pale men who came straight from a yeshiva and refused to eat unkosher meat needed to be helped. Where did she get the food? Chajka wondered. How did she divide it all up without the Germans seeing? “Even the fields and winds did not know,” Chajka wrote. Working as a nurse was difficult, but Leah knew she had to stay, as she was useful to many, even though she imagined she would end up in prison.
The kitchen was no better. The female cooks took bribes and gifts, stole, and gave the best rations to their friends. Leah tried to appeal to their consciences, preaching and moralizing: “It can’t go on like this.”
“Leah,” Chajka wrote to her, “you are not alone in your fight. The same battle is being conducted by Rachel in Gutan-Bricke, Sarah in Markshdadt, and Guteh in Klatandorf.” The Jewish women of B?dzin were everywhere, smuggling, stealing, saving.
*
Despite its special status, the situation in Zaglembie deteriorated significantly. Work was no longer the ultimate savior. Following a smaller deportation Aktion in May 1942, the Nazis arrived en masse in August, at the same time as the Aktions in Warsaw. The Jews of B?dzin were called to the soccer stadium the next day for a document check. The youth movements were wary and warned Jews not to attend; the Nazis knew of this, and so they staged a pretend check of documents in a neighboring town to convince everyone that it would be safe. After that, the ZOB debated whether it was safer to attend or not. In the end, its members decided to go. Chajka too.
Thousands walked over at five thirty in the morning. They sat on bleachers, even in a good mood, dressed festively—as the Judenrat had encouraged them—until they noticed that they were surrounded by soldiers with machine guns. People fainted, children wailed. There was not a drop of water to combat people’s extreme thirst, until a lengthy rain shower drenched them all. At three o’clock, the selection started: Return home. Go to forced labor. Further inspection. Or deportation and death. The Judenrat, not wanting to rile the Nazis, had lied to their fellow Jews.
As people began to realize what the three lines meant, and families were torn apart, chaos erupted. Many tried switching sections. The Germans then started “having fun,” wrote Chajka, cruelly separating parents and their children—one to life, one to death—bashing people with their rifle butts, dragging frantic mothers by their hair.
Twenty thousand Jews had gathered. Eight to ten thousand of them were now locked into the public kitchen, the orphanage, and another Judenrat building, awaiting deportation to who knows where. SS guards prevented any food or medical supplies from reaching them. People began to kill themselves.
But as always, the youth leaders of B?dzin did not simply accept their fate. They knew that thousands of Jews outnumbered the Jewish police and the SS. That night, the movements decided to act. Without a plan, they improvised. Freedom members gathered children who had been slated for deportation, and at their signal, the children broke into a sprint and ran. Others got hold of Jewish police hats and made their way into the crowd, pushing and kicking people into the “safe” lines. When the Judenrat convinced the SS to allow in food, comrades donned makeshift police hats and entered one of the buildings, bringing people out in the containers used to deliver bread or in giant soup pots. Still others tried to dig escape tunnels.