Bela’s mother was a religious Zionist who allowed her to attend movement activities—just not on the Sabbath. In 1939 Bela was selected by local leadership to participate in a special self-defense course, preparation for life in Palestine. Bela learned to use weapons, as well as sticks and rocks; she attended lectures and was especially moved by Frumka’s and Zivia’s talks. Excelling at her exams, she was chosen to be a defense instructor at the Freedom kibbutz in B?dzin. She went straight to Zaglembie, scared that if she returned home first, her mother wouldn’t let her go. Her mother was indeed angry and did not reply to her letters for three months before ultimately asking Bela’s forgiveness. By that point, late summer, she was trying to find papers for the whole family to make aliyah.
Bela was practicing defense training when Hitler invaded. The comrades sat in the kitchen listening to the radio, aware that Nazis would arrive in their border town within minutes. The leadership decided to relocate members deeper into Poland—that is, except for a few men and Bela, who would stay back to care for the B?dzin kibbutz. The German bombardment, however, was so violent that Bela and her comrades fled for their lives. The roads were crowded with panicked, shoving people; as were the platforms of cargo trains. Bombs exploded all around them. After wild days of running, Bela returned to B?dzin, where at least she had a roof. She cried with belonging—this was her home.
Soon after, however, she was urged by Freedom to go to Vilna, from where aliyah might still be possible. Her chaotic journey included a nighttime boat ride across a river and three weeks in a Russian prison, where she was forced to stand for the entire time. After days of pleading, she went to the head prison guard’s house, cried, and insisted—successfully—that they release her fellow comrades. Back en route to Vilna, Bela went to see her mother, who thought she’d been killed. The joyful reunion lasted only two hours, though: Bela had to leave by car and foot to head east in her attempt to reach Palestine. She promised her family she would bring them over. It was the last time she saw them.
In Vilna, Bela participated in the thriving yet hungry youth movement scene, where agricultural and cultural work continued, even under the Russians （just more quietly）。 Germany’s invasion in 1941 brought horror. One image that stood out to her from the first days of occupation was finding a Jewish man glued to a tree with his penis cut off. Soon after, all the usual anti-Jewish laws were put in place. Stars of David, shootings, ghettoization.
But Bela never caved. From the get-go, she would leave the ghetto with a work group or through small passageways or via the houses on the ghetto border; then she’d tear off her Jewish patch （which she’d pinned on instead of sewed—a criminal offense）， head to the market, and buy food and medicine for her friends. She was a stranger in Vilna—and a blonde one. She didn’t worry about being identified as a Jew by sight, but her Polish accent was very Jewish, and so she spoke as little as possible. In the ghetto, she lived in a three-room apartment with thirteen families—they always welcomed refugee Jews. She slept on a Ping-Pong table. Though she had no medical background, Bela found a job in a hospital as a “nurse” in the operating room. She mopped up blood and once had to hand tools to the surgeon as he operated with just candlelight.
After hearing of the mass slaughter at Ponary, in the forest outside Vilna, the comrades began to organize the resistance. Abba Kovner of The Young Guard initiated a rebel group. Freedom leaders sought non-Jewish-looking girls to work as couriers between the ghettos. Bela already had experience going out as an Aryan, and she volunteered. Still, she needed papers to be able to move freely. She approached a non-Jewish acquaintance at the hospital who was just a few years older than her, claiming that she wanted to go see her family. Her colleague didn’t ask questions and gave Bela her own passport, though she warned the girl never to come to her house because her husband hated Jews. And so, at age nineteen, Bela Hazan became Bronislawa Limanowska, or Bronia for short. The Freedom leaders replaced the photo and stamp; though clearly a forgery, it lasted for years.
Bela’s job was to connect Vilna, Grodno, and Bia?ystok, smuggling bulletins, money, and weapons. She was instructed to find a safe house for couriers in Grodno and to set up a base. She left the ghetto in the morning with a work group and, for ten gold coins, bought a cross to wear around her neck and a Christian prayer book. The wild wind screeching in her ears, she journeyed by military vehicle, wagon, and carriage, sleeping in demolished houses, until she made it to the colorful medieval Grodno, with its bold sloped roofs and cobblestone streets. She knocked on the door of an older Polish woman’s house, and, as the woman did laundry by an oil lamp in the kitchen, Bela told her that her house had been bombed, her family killed, and she needed shelter—terrified the whole time that a Hebrew or Yiddish word would accidentally emerge from her mouth, or that she would say “God” instead of “Joseph Mary.” The woman consoled her and put her up. But Bela didn’t sleep that night, afraid she might shout in Hebrew in her sleep.