Had you met Renia Hershkowitz at the reception desk of the health clinic in Haifa, where she worked for many years as a medical secretary, you likely wouldn’t have guessed that this warm and pleasant woman—a happily married mother of two—was once a daring wartime courier as well as a pioneering writer.
She wasn’t a professional author, and the only book she ever wrote was completed at age 21. But the slender volume she produced was revolutionary in many ways. Holding the 80-year-old book in your hands—small, yellowed, and crumbling—its fragile appearance gives no clue to how groundbreaking it was at the time of its publication.
The book’s cover features only the author’s first name: “Renia”—as if that alone said everything, needing no further elaboration. Renia was Renia Kukielka (later Hershkowitz), a young Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust under extraordinary circumstances. She managed to escape Poland in December 1943 and arrived in the Land of Israel in March 1944, at just 20 years old.
Renia was born in 1924 to the Kukielka family, a deeply religious and Zionist household in the town of Jędrzejów, near Kielce, Poland. One of seven siblings, her parents supported the family by running a small notions shop. She attended two schools: a Polish school in the mornings, where she learned the language that would later serve her well, and the “Beit Yaakov” Jewish girls’ school in the afternoons. She was just 15 years old when World War II began.
Renia and her family endured life in the local ghetto under horrific conditions until mid-1942. At that point, she disguised herself as a Christian and worked for a Polish family. Following her sister Sarah, she later moved to Będzin and joined the underground “Dror” youth movement, where Sarah was already a member. Renia became a courier, delivering messages and documents between various resistance cells across Poland. She was eventually caught and imprisoned by the Gestapo, where she suffered brutal torture—but ultimately managed to escape. Along with several fellow youth movement members, she made her way through Hungary and Turkey to the Land of Israel, then still under British rule. As far as we know, she was the first woman in Mandatory Palestine to publish a memoir of Holocaust survival. The book she wrote, recounting her experiences, was published in 1945.
Beyond her harrowing personal journey—first as a young girl with her family, later on her own, and eventually in the resistance—Renia’s memoir also highlights the bravery, leadership, and resilience of many other women around her.
“Despite everything, we were still alive, even if we walked about like shadows, with our dearest ones taken from us. Nothing was left for us but to continue to struggle against fate. Who could know what it held for us in the future?
But this I did say to myself: If it were destined that I, too, should fall – I would not fall like a hunted animal.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 47)
This modest book is, as far as we know, the earliest firsthand Holocaust account by a woman to be published in memoir form—while the Nazis were still laying waste to Europe. Her story of survival, both alone and as part of the underground, defies belief. It is told in the first person, in her own words, written so close to the events themselves, and untouched by later notions of how such a story “should” be told or what it “ought” to contain.
To Write and Not Forget
“The first survivors who wrote immediately after the war wrote with utter sincerity,” says historian Anat Livneh, whose doctoral research examined how Holocaust survivors shaped their memories in light of their encounter with the Land of Israel. Her study focused on Holocaust memoirs published in Israel between 1945 and 1961. “They didn’t yet know what had happened elsewhere, what had become of their extended families, and so they didn’t write about that. Nor did they weave broader historical or ideological narratives into their accounts. That’s what makes these books so unique and authentic.”
The books written during this period gave rise to a new literary category. As Livneh writes: “The early personal Holocaust memoirs are neither purely literary works nor conventional historical documentation—but they are a phenomenon in their own right, essential to understanding how survivors sought to preserve memory and raise awareness of the extraordinary experiences they had endured, and to give those experiences meaning” (p. 91 of Livneh’s doctoral thesis).
“September 12, 1942 – The night was beautiful, I remember, and lit by the moon. I lay in a field, shivering with cold and trembling at my thoughts during these last passing minutes. Why, indeed, should one toil so arduously for a life as inane, foolish, and disgusting as this? Nevertheless, one does not wish to die.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 38)
According to Livneh’s research, in the fifteen years following the end of World War II, only a handful of survivors published accounts of their traumatic experiences. During that time, approximately 70 Holocaust memoirs were published in Israel. “To grasp just how limited this phenomenon was in the early years,” she explains, “consider that by the 1990s, around 180 such books were being published every year.” Before Renia’s memoir appeared, only two autobiographical accounts by Holocaust survivors had been published—both by men, one year earlier. Six more were published the same year as Renia’s, all of them also written by men. Later, memoirs by female survivors began to appear, but these were mostly written by well-known underground leaders like Róża Robota and Zivia Lubetkin. Renia’s story, by contrast, was told from the perspective of an ordinary woman.
“Her book is strikingly authentic, and she writes with humility and honesty,” says Livneh, who interviewed Renia in 2005, about a decade before her death. “She wasn’t a leader like the other women who published books at the time, and maybe that’s why it’s easier to relate to her.”
What prompted Kukielka to write? The kibbutz movement played a significant role. In her early years in Israel, she lived on Kibbutz Dafna, on the northern border. The movement encouraged Holocaust survivors—particularly those involved in resistance or youth movements—to document their experiences. Survivors were allowed time off from their regular duties to write, and they received support for publication. Although Renia hadn’t been a member of any movement at the outbreak of the war, she joined one during it. That dual perspective—knowing both the world of traditional Jewish families and communities struggling to survive, and the world of young resistance fighters—infuses her writing with rare insight.
In the First Person
Kukielka accepted her kibbutz’s invitation. She wrote her gripping account swiftly, while everything was still fresh in her mind. She wrote in Polish, a language in which she was fluent, and the book was translated by writer and translator Chaim Shalom ben Avraham (Abramzon).
Her frank and powerful narrative does not spare the reader. The first chapter alone contains harrowing descriptions of the annihilation of Jewish life. And at the chapter’s end, she explains why she felt compelled to recount these horrors: it was the final wish of her beloved parents, from whom she had been separated in 1942. In their last letter to her, they wrote:
“If we are not found worthy of remaining alive, you, at any rate, keep on fighting for your lives with everything you possess, so that you be witnesses to the world; so that you may testify by what cruel means your own dearest ones, and your whole people, have been robbed of their lives. May God protect you always.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 46)
Kukielka describes how, in her struggle to survive, she left her family, assumed a Polish identity, and worked as a housemaid for a Christian family. After a short time, and much deliberation, she followed her sister to the underground “Dror” kibbutz in Będzin. This chapter of her life occupies the heart of the book. As a courier, she transported weapons, money, and intelligence. She matured quickly—perhaps against her will—revealing a strong, courageous spirit:
“The examination of documents and searching of the baggage dragged on interminably… The gendarmes were drawing closer. Bravely I untied my bundles; they dug into their contents. I engaged them in conversation hoping to divert their attention and prevent them from searching my person, as many others had been searched. I summoned all my courage and faced them confidently. They finally went on to the next passenger, suspecting nothing of the forged passports in my possession.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 83)
“Put an end to it all, my weakness counseled. But I was immediately overcome with shame at the thought. What, that I should help the designs of the Germans? Perhaps I would still have a chance to share in the revenge against them.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 85)
Her strength was revealed when she was caught by the Gestapo and thrown into a high-security prison, where she endured unimaginable torture:
“Two Gestapo men began lashing me. Blood began to flow freely from my nose and head […] I no longer felt the blows. I dropped in a dead faint.
A long time seemed to have elapsed. Then I felt water trickling down my face and running into my mouth […] A chill racked my body. A great regret that I had regained consciousness overcame me. Now I would be beaten again. But I had grown dreadfully weak and could not possibly endure much more.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 105)
Astonishingly, she managed to escape. She describes the escape as a defiant and daring act, requiring incredible strength:
“…now I had to flee. Since the guards knew I was a political offender, I would never get another chance. It was today or never […] we broke into a run […] My coat was caked with mud from climbing the hill. The decisive moment in our lives had come. We ran faster and faster, trying to put as much distance as possible between ourselves and the prison yard. We were bathed in perspiration, the wind beating against our flaming faces.
I kept looking back to see whether anyone was chasing us. It seemed to me as if my father and mother were by my side, protecting me from evil.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 120-121)
After hiding with sympathetic Poles, she escaped Poland with several fellow partisans:
“We waited impatiently for the day of departure, which was constantly postponed […] The longed-for day finally arrived. […] Everyone envied me, but my heart was sad. The memory of the millions who had been exterminated, the memory of comrades who had devoted their lives to the Land of Israel and who had dreamed the same dream but had not lived to see its realization, haunted me with redoubled force on this day. Nor did I imagine how I could bring to the Land of Israel the terrible news I had.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 133, 135)
The book ends on a powerful, painful note about the survivors’ reception in the Land of Israel:
“We arrived in Haifa on the sixth of March, 1944. Our wanderings were finally at an end. But the burden of our experiences weighed heavily upon us, and the memory of those who had perished was in our minds and gave us no peace. We felt somehow smaller and weaker than the people about us, as though we had less right to live than they.”
(Escape From the Pit, p. 137)
Livneh, who read dozens of Holocaust memoirs for her research, highlights Kukielka’s uniqueness. As a young writer, she carried a tone of hope rarely found in older survivors’ accounts. Her transformation—rapid, astonishing—takes her from a sheltered girl in a conservative home to a fearless, independent wartime courier with a firm worldview. Her writing may be uneven, even scattered, but her emotional and intellectual growth is clear between the lines.
When her book was published, it left a strong impression. Davar wrote: “As long as we have such human material, we need not fear for the success of our endeavor!” And Hed HaMizrah added: “This time, a human voice is heard… one in whose heart the bitter, painful echo still beats—the hardships, the tortures, the suffering, and the courage endured by the destroyed exile… That echo tears at the reader’s heart, still trembling with the memory of those terrifying days of horror, when the Jews of the East were nearly wiped off the face of the earth…”
A Love from the Old Country
Renia, who had come from an ultra-Orthodox background, chose to join a secular kibbutz in northern Israel—Kibbutz Dafna—where she sat down to write her story. Only two of her siblings also survived the Holocaust and immigrated to Israel, where they remained religious. Her sister Sarah, with whom she had lived in Będzin, was killed while attempting to escape Poland, as were all other members of their immediate family.
It was on the kibbutz that a piece of her past reappeared—this time as a future. “In the village where she grew up in Poland, she had a close friend who had an older brother named Akiva,” recalls her granddaughter, Merav Waldman. “He was nine years older than her.” Akiva had immigrated to the Land of Israel before the war, but like Renia, most of his family—including his younger sister, Renia’s childhood friend—were murdered. When he happened to hear that Renia had survived and was living on Kibbutz Dafna, he came to visit her. Their old connection turned into a lifelong bond. They married and moved to Haifa, where they raised two children.
In later years, Kukielka said her book received heartfelt responses and that it had even been distributed as a personal gift to Jewish Brigade soldiers stationed in Europe. The book was translated into English and published in New York later that same year, and a new edition was released in Canada in 2023. Her granddaughter Merav explains that the family didn’t know for years that the book had been translated: “Even Hebrew copies were hard to find. I remember once seeing one pop up in a second-hand bookshop in Jerusalem, and I rushed to get it. It had a bar mitzvah dedication written inside. But it’s a rare book today.”
Kukielka’s story would go on to inspire author Judy Batalion’s 2022 book The Light of Days, which tells the stories of brave Jewish women who took active roles in resistance movements during the Holocaust. Renia’s story opens the book, which recounts how women resisted the Nazis—with courage, creativity, solidarity, and a level of initiative that was exceptional for the time.
The Strength to Heal
Kukielka worked for many years as a medical secretary. Though her book had made a lasting impression, she never returned to writing. Instead, she continued sharing her story aloud wherever she was asked—especially before groups of students, soldiers, and visitors to the Ghetto Fighters’ House museum. “She always told strangers more than she told us, her grandchildren,” Merav reflects. “When we tried to ask questions, we saw how much it hurt her—so we stopped. Of course, I regret that now.”
Renia Kukielka passed away at the age of 89, in old age, peacefully and surrounded by her loving family. “She was sweet and funny,” her granddaughter says. “The Holocaust wasn’t part of our daily lives—not in the sense of sadness or depression. She had somehow put it behind her.”
“Her story reminds me of the young female army observers who were recently discharged,” says Anat Livneh in a recent conversation. “I think part of the healing process for young people, who still have most of their lives ahead of them, is the ability to give voice to their experiences—to tell their stories in a way that reflects who they are as women and what their values are, and then move forward. That’s a tremendous source of strength.”
