Again, she was amazed that she and her comrades were alive. No casualties, even. The fighters collected the dead soldiers’ weapons and left through the attics, where they stumbled upon a camouflaged hideout. The Jews hiding there welcomed them in, and a rabbi sang his praises for their work. “If we still have you left,” he said, “young Jews fighting and taking revenge, from now on, it shall be easier for us to die.”
Zivia blinked back tears.
The Germans returned to the original building. But there were no Jews left for them to kill.
*
The January Aktion lasted only four days. Eventually the ZOB ran out of ammunition, the Nazis were sleuthing for their hiding spots, and many comrades fell. Thousands of Jews were snatched from the streets. Even Tosia was caught and driven to the umshlagplatz, but a double-agent militiaman who was helping The Young Guard rescued her.
Overall, however, it was a grand success. The Nazis’ intention to clear the ghetto was foiled by Zivia’s and other fighting groups. A Bundist fired at an SS commander during a selection at the Schultz workshop, killing him. Masked ZOB fighters threw acid at a Nazi at Hallman’s furniture shop; they bound the guards at gunpoint and destroyed their records. One comrade leapt on a Nazi, threw a sack over his head, and tossed him out a window. Another poured boiling liquid on Germans’ heads below. What should have been a two-hour operation took the Nazis days, and they apprehended only half their quota. The Jews had almost no food, but they had new hope. This small uprising helped foster unity, respect, morale—and status. Both the Jewish masses and the Poles considered the German retreat to be a ZOB victory.
The fighters were elated by their success, but also regretful. Why had it taken them so long to act when it hadn’t even been that hard? Regardless, they had no choice but to keep fighting for honorable deaths. The masses, on the other hand, now believed that hiding might keep them alive. The ghetto was becoming a united fighting post. It was the “golden age” of the Warsaw ghetto.
*
Despite the excitement and growing hope in Warsaw, and its reverberations across other towns, B?dzin was “a literal shambles,” Renia wrote. After Renia’s initial burst of heaven, winter was “torture,” physically, existentially, emotionally. “Hunger was a constant guest in our house. Sicknesses multiplied, there were no medications, and death carved its graves.” Each day, convoys of Jews over age forty, apparently too old to work, were sent away. Any minor infraction was reason for execution: crossing the street diagonally, walking on the wrong side of the sidewalk, breaking curfew, smoking a cigarette, selling anything, even owning eggs, onion, garlic, meat, dairy, baked goods, or lard. Police entered Jewish homes to inspect what they were cooking. The Judenrat and militia aided them, following every German order. They were ruthless in their white hats, Renia wrote, and if they heard that a Jew was hiding something, they’d demand hush money. They fined people for the slightest of infractions and pocketed the cash.
Hantze became ill. Nightmares tortured her day and night. Gripped by the horror she’d witnessed in Grochów and on the way from Warsaw to B?dzin, she burnt up with fever. Still, she had no choice but to stand on shaky legs and work in the laundry. The kibbutz barely had provisions. Renia, too, began to feel the effects of hunger: fatigue, confusion, a relentless obsession with food.
Through all this, manhunts ensued, and Renia was a target. She had to be doubly careful, as she was a “nonkosher.” At night, the gendarmes and Jewish militia hunted for her and other refugees from the General Government. Just taking in nonkoshers would lead to immediate deportation for her comrades. Renia, Hanzte, Frumka, Zvi, and another boy spent their nights in hiding places, tortured by night terrors. Without sleep, in the mornings, the group went to work in the laundry, so that the kosher members could do more public-facing chores. “But we took it all with love,” Renia wrote later. “Our desire to live was stronger than all the torture.”
Then, one morning, Renia sat in the main room, overhearing group members discuss how they needed a small piece of metal for their oven. A seventeen-year-old boy, Pinchas, decided to search at work. “Little Pink” saw one, picked it up, looked at it. That was enough. His German employer noticed. He was deported. Killed.