When the officers reached her, she used the same tactic as Bronia and pretended she was a food smuggler. “Just a few potatoes, sir.”
He took a few for himself and let her go.
During the entire trip, Renia and Ina were ready for anything to happen at any second. They were ready to be shot and, if necessary, to jump from the moving train. They had to know exactly what to do during a thorough search. They had to know what to do if they were captured. They had to know how to never be caught as a Jew; to never look unhappy or respond to a Nazi stare with anything but a smile. They had to know that even under torture, they could not say anything, could not disclose one iota of information. Some couriers carried cyanide powder with them in case they were taken to interrogation. If they pulled a thread, the powder, wrapped in a paper bag and partly sewn into a pocket of their coat lining, would be in hand.
Renia, however, had no such escape. “You had to be strong in your comportment, firm,” she explained. “You had to have an iron will.” This is what she repeated to herself, on the train, speeding through forests, past inspections, guns taped to her torso, a smile pasted on her lips. A lesson she came to know well.
Not quite the life of a stenographer that she’d envisioned.
Chapter 18
Gallows
Renia
JUNE 1943
Back in B?dzin. In the early morning hours, Renia heard faraway shots. She looked through the window to discover the sky lit bright as day. Searchlights illuminated the turmoil. Police, Gestapo, and soldiers surrounded the ghetto. People ran through the streets wearing only shirts or stark naked, “like bees who’d been driven out of their hive.”
Renia jumped out of bed: the deportation! Just days after her return from Warsaw, after the comrades’ glee at her weapons stash, after Sarah nearly fainted in relief at her safe return. And now this.
But, at last, they were prepared.
It was four o’clock. Frumka and Hershel ordered everyone to go down into the bunker. Almost everyone. To stave off suspicion, a few were to remain in their rooms—those with Zonder passes. If the Nazis found the building empty, they would search. If they found the bunkers, everyone would be dead. Better to seem as if they were going about their business as usual.
No time to think. No time to implement any ambitious plans. Nine people stayed in their rooms. The rest, including Renia, crawled through the top of the stove, which was lifted off. One by one, they entered their prepared safe room. One of the comrades who stayed above fastened the cover back on the stove.
Renia sat.
An hour later, the stomp of boots. Then, German voices, cursing, opening closets, turning over furniture. Tearing rooms apart. They were searching—for them.
Renia and her comrades did not move, did not twitch, barely breathed.
Stillness.
At last, the Nazis were gone.
But the members stayed seated, immobile, for many more hours. Nearly thirty people were stuffed inside their tiny bunker. Air flowed in from a tiny crack in the wall. Absolute stillness but for the quiet buzzing of a fly. An unbearable heat set in. Then the stench. People flapped their hands, sending air to each other, trying to keep friends from fainting. Suddenly Tziporah Marder collapsed. Fortunately, the group had stashed some water and smelling salts and tried to revive her, but the young woman remained completely soaked and still. What were they supposed to do? They themselves could barely breathe. They pinched her all over until, at last, she stirred, weak. The lack of oxygen was nauseating. “Our mouths were thirsty, so thirsty,” Renia remembered.
Eleven in the morning. No one had returned. Seven hours in the bunker; how much longer could they go on? They sat for thirty more minutes. Then from afar, a single voice. A sound that seemed to emerge from a grave. A chorus of horrific cries and screams. Renia could hear thrashing, convulsing bodies above them.