Renia watched as Frumka’s grief expressed itself in action, in anger and passionate cries for both rescue and suicide missions. She had felt the same when she learned of the death of her parents. It was fuel to the fire. Frumka became obsessed: anyone who is capable of fighting should not wait to be saved! Self-defense is the only means of redemption! Die a heroic death!
But it wasn’t just Frumka: the fervor for hagana grew within Renia, too—in fact, within the whole B?dzin group. The six-week battle in Warsaw was the first urban uprising against the Nazis of any underground, anywhere. Fighters in every ghetto wanted to follow the example set in the Polish capital. Chajka wanted the Zaglembie effort to not only mirror but also surpass Warsaw. The B?dzin group developed plans to burn down the entire ghetto and offered classes on how to use the weapons that trickled in. After Idzia Pejsachson’s mysterious capture in Cz?stochowa, the underground’s policy changed: all couriers who were transporting weapons had to travel in groups of two.
Renia would now become one of those kashariyot.
She was paired with twenty-two-year-old Ina Gelbart of The Young Guard, whom Renia described as “a lively girl. Tall, agile, sweet. A typical daughter of Silesia. Never for a moment feared death.”
Renia and Ina both had fake papers enabling them to cross the border into the General Government. Obtained from an expert counterfeiter in Warsaw, the papers had cost a fortune, but as Renia reflected later, it was hardly the time to negotiate a bargain. When the girls arrived at the border, they assuredly handed over the mandatory documents: a government-issued transit permit with photo ID, and an identity card, also inlaid with a portrait. At that time, the road to Warsaw was more lax, so if they passed document control peacefully, they knew their trip would likely be successful.
The guard nodded.
Renia was now more confident operating in Warsaw; she felt seasoned, like she knew the city. The two girls had to find their contact, Tarlow, a Jew who lived in the Aryan quarter and was connected to forgers and weapons dealers. “He took care of us,” Renia wrote, “and got paid dearly.”
The revolvers and grenades that Renia smuggled came primarily from the Germans’ weapons storehouses. “One of the soldiers used to steal and sell them,” Renia explained, “then another sold them; we got them from perhaps the fifth hand.” Other women’s accounts speak of weapons coming from German army bases, weapons repair shops, and factories where Jews were used as forced labor, as well as from farmers, the black market, dozing guards, the Polish resistance, and even Germans who sold guns they’d stolen from Russians. After losing Stalingrad in 1943, morale in the German military fell, and soldiers began selling their own guns. Though rifles were the easiest to come by, they were hard to carry and hide; pistols were more efficient and more expensive.
Sometimes, Renia explained, a weapon was smuggled and brought all the way to the ghetto only for them to find that it was too rusty to fire or did not come with compatible bullets. There was no way to try before you buy. “In Warsaw, there was no time or place to try out the weapons. We had to quickly pack any defective one up in a concealed corner and get back on the train to Warsaw to exchange it for a good one. Again, people risked their lives.”
The girls found Tarlow without a problem, and he directed Renia and Ina to a cemetery. That’s where they would buy the cherished merchandise: explosives, grenades, and guns, guns, guns.
*
To Renia, each weapon smuggled in was “a treasure.”
In all the major ghettos, the Jewish resistance was established with barely any arms. At first, the Bia?ystok underground had one rifle that had to be carried between units of fighters so that each could train with a real weapon; in Vilna, they shared one revolver and shot against a basement wall of mud so they could reuse the bullets. Kraków began without a single gun. Warsaw had those two pistols to start.
The Polish underground promised arms, but these shipments were often canceled, or stolen en route, or delayed indefinitely. The kashariyot were sent out to find and smuggle weapons and ammunition to ghettos and camps, often with little guidance, and always at tremendous risk.