Looking down the street to see more Nazi checkpoints, Renia feared that even though these false documents may have worked in the countryside, they were not good enough for the city. The side of her hand brushed her torso, and she felt the thick lump of currency. Still there.
“Papers!” another policeman barked. Renia handed over the ID, looked him in the eyes. He rummaged through her purse, then let her pass and board the tramway.
Arriving at her stop, Renia got off and walked some more. The police stopped each passerby; even the smallest streets were crawling with gendarmes and secret agents clothed as civilians looking for Jewish runaways who’d escaped the ghetto. They shot any suspect on sight. “My head was dizzy,” Renia later wrote, “seeing this terrifying image.”
Renia pulled herself together, then moved swiftly toward her target.
At last, she came to the address. “I’m here to see Zosia,” Renia said to the rotund landlady who stared at her from the open crack of the door. This was the Catholic Irena Adamowicz’s code name.
“She’s not here.”
“I’ll wait for her.”
“You have to leave. Guests are not permitted. We can be killed for letting in a stranger.”
Renia’s heart stopped. Where would she go? She knew no one, not a single person, in Warsaw.
She may have passed all the checkpoints so far, but it didn’t mean she wouldn’t be caught the next time.
“Besides,” the woman hissed. “I think Zosia might be a Jew.” She paused, then whispered. “The neighbors are suspicious.”
“Oh no, I don’t think so,” Renia replied. Her voice was calm, childlike, but she was sweating. “I once met her on a train, and she told me to stop by if I was ever in town. She looks Catholic, not like a Jew.” Could this landlady somehow see through the layers of her skirt, to the secrets sewn into its fabrics? Renia had been sent on this fact-finding mission because of her Polish looks, but was it enough? She barely wore any disguise; certainly nothing sophisticated.
“If she was Jew,” Renia continued, on the offense, not sure what game they were even playing, “we’d sense it right away.”
The woman looked at Renia, pleased with her answer. Then she coughed loudly and retreated inside. Renia turned around.
There stood Zosia.
*
Now it hit Renia. She wasn’t just a Jew in disguise, but an underground operative, privy to secrets and codes, tests and twists. She was one in this war’s lineage of couriers, or in Hebrew, kashariyot—a more nuanced term that better describes the job: connector. Kashariyot were usually unmarried women, aged fifteen to the early twenties, who had been leaders in or highly dedicated to their youth movements. They were energetic, skilled, and brave, willing to risk their lives repeatedly.
Connectors had many roles, and they shifted as the war progressed; Renia joined in a later stage. The courier practice began at the start of the war with Frumka, Tosia, and Chana Gelbard, who traveled between ghettos, connecting with comrades in the provinces to lead seminars, pass on publications, educate local leaders, and sustain spiritual growth. These women formed networks, using them to smuggle food and medical supplies. To prevent the Jews from obtaining information and help, the German occupiers saw to it that the ghettos were cut off completely from the world, becoming “carved-out kingdoms,” as Zivia described. Radios and newspapers were prohibited, and mail was often confiscated. Travel was not easy: trains had no schedules, women had to spend hours waiting in stations, and it was suspicious to appear to be lost in a new city. “One did not ask directions to a ghetto,” Bialystok courier Chasia Bielicka wrote. When a kasharit arrived with news about families and politics, it was a sign that they hadn’t been forgotten, that life went on outside their confined torture, that not everyone was depressed. These women were lifelines, “human radios,” trusted contacts, supply dispatchers, and sources of inspiration. Thanks to them, news “blitzed like meteors” across the country. Like Tosia, they were often greeted with hugs and kisses.