The group was not caught and stayed outside all of the next day, too, hungry and cold. Frumka and Hershel returned to the Judenrat to plea for the men. That evening, Renia and her comrades ate a meager dinner at the Atid orphanage. Then the militia came and unlocked the doors. The punishment was over. But where were Frumka and Hershel? Renia was afraid to even think about it.
Late that night, they all returned. No one was sent away, drafted to the police, or put in forced labor. The whole ghetto gossiped about Freedom’s bravery.
As they’d been learning, it was possible to say no.
*
News trickled in from Warsaw: the Aktion there was imminent. Zivia and Antek informed the B?dziners that they were preparing for defense, that the Jews no longer cared about party politics or ideological differences but were ready to fight. Comrades refused to escape to the Aryan side even when they could, so eager were they to die facing their enemies.
In February Zivia wrote to the Bédzin underground, once again demanding that Frumka travel abroad. She needed to stay alive and recount to the outside world the “barbarian butchering of the Jews.” Then another letter in March: Hantze needed to come to Warsaw to be smuggled out of the country. “No excuse, no argument.” This was her commanding order.
Like Frumka, Hantze refused. She didn’t want to hear about saving her life. How would she leave her sister for such uncertainty? “Those two sisters would go to hell and back for one another,” Renia wrote. Frumka also couldn’t fathom a separation, but she begged Hantze to go. Hantze couldn’t refuse her sister; she didn’t want her to worry.
A smuggler was called to come over as soon as possible.
Hantze was depressed preparing for her journey, packing a satchel of fashionable, Aryan-looking clothes. Would she ever see her comrades again? She begged Frumka to join her, but Frumka refused. “Hantze, with her semitic features, looked ridiculous dressed as a Gentile peasant girl,” Renia wrote, worried she’d never make it.
Two days later, a telegram arrived from Cz?stochowa. Trembling, Renia read: Hantze crossed the border into the General Government and would soon be moving on. Then, another telegram. She’d arrived in Warsaw! In a few days, she’d journey out of Poland. Everything had been arranged. Renia exhaled in relief.
Renia noticed that one Polish woman, who risked her life time and time again for the ZOB, was mentioned in almost all correspondence. Renia referred to her as A.I.R., hiding her identity, but she was speaking of Irena Adamowicz, by now a good friend of Zivia, Frumka, and Tosia. A devoutly Catholic woman from an aristocratic family, and a former Scout then in her early thirties, Irena was one of the ZOB’s main contacts with the Polish resistance movement. After graduating from the University of Warsaw with a degree in pedagogy, Irena worked with The Young Guard, visiting its kibbutzim, sympathetic to the Jewish nationalist cause. During the war, she became close with Freedom and Young Guard members—she even learned Yiddish.
Irena held a job with the Warsaw municipality inspecting children’s homes and had a permit that allowed her to visit the ghetto on “official business.” In 1942 she traveled to Vilna to tell The Young Guard leaders about the liquidation of the Warsaw ghetto; disguised as a German nun, she visited numerous ghettos, exchanging information and offering encouragement. She approached her friends, leaders in the Home Army, about helping Warsaw’s Jews. She distributed letters and publications between the Jewish and Polish undergrounds. She sheltered Jews in her apartment and helped groups cross the border. Though Irena hid her activity from her own housemates, she was a legend among the Jewish youth, even in B?dzin. “We were all amazed by her personality,” Renia wrote, “even though we had no idea what she looked like.”
On the other hand, the letters from Warsaw contained stories of tragic failures, mentioning couriers who ended up at Pawiak Prison and Auschwitz. In her diaries, Chajka also recorded tales of B?dzin couriers who were caught and murdered. Her coleader, Idzia Pejsachson, was the epitome of tough, curt, and stony, the kind of person Chajka would follow blindly through fire and water. “You can’t be occupied with feelings of love now,” Idzia would say. “The time has passed when sentimentality was the most important concern.”