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Białystok changed its face. New people arrived, foreign Jews, refugees from the surrounding towns: Choroshtsh, Vashlikov, Supraśl, Zabłudów, Horodok, Goniądz, Jedwabne, Grajewo, and other small villages, who, fearing the retreating Russian Cossacks and soldiers, sought refuge in the large Jewish Białystok.

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Some of the Jews from the fortified towns are forced to evacuate by decree of the Russian government, because rumors are circulating that Jews are German spies and that it is “appropriate for the security of the Russian Empire to rid the fortified towns of the dangerous Jewish element”.

The “spy mania” hovers in the air.

People are looking for them everywhere.

Rumors spread in Białystok:

The old man with the childishly sweet face, who sells fragrant, vibrant flowers at the corner of the “Daytshishe” [German Street] leading to the “Gorodski Sad” [City Garden], and who speaks a “gentile” Yiddish, and who, while holding a bouquet of flowers in his hand, which he has taken from a large, woven straw basket, asks so softly and warmly:

“Buy a beautiful flower for a beautiful bride”, this old man is not supposed to be so childishly naive.

He is a spy! He is an Austrian colonel disguised as a pathetic, somewhat foolish flower seller for espionage purposes.

And another rumor spreads: the Italian artist there, the singer and magician who performed at public events in the Palace Theater, singing sweet, romantic arias from operas in Italian, catching pigeons from an empty cage and live rabbits from a top hat, and bowing so charmingly and gracefully after the enthusiastic applause - he is actually a German spy who was later arrested while photographing the Osowiec Fortress!

Espionage and sabotage were in the air. My brother, who was a loom master in the Zeligzon-Rafalovski factory, which worked for Gubinsky's blanket factory, was suddenly paid in gold coins. The same phenomenon was observed all over Białystok and Russia.

The banks began to put a lot of gold coins into circulation, and rumors spread that German saboteurs - directors of Russian banks - were trying to exhaust the Russian gold reserves. They put the valuable gold reserves into international circulation in order to cause inflation and devalue the Russian ruble.

Rumors of espionage even surrounded the Russian Tsarina Alexandra Feodorovna, who was of German descent and greatly idolized the famous, boisterous monk Grigory Rasputin, who indulged with the royal ladies-in-waiting

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in extravagant, saucy, daring orgies and parties with half-naked courtesans, among whom circulated the name of the lady-in-waiting “Vyrobova,” the Russian Tsarina's closest and most intimate friend.

Białystok is in turmoil! Soldiers travel to and from the front. Shops earn money. Arrivals from small towns, military and civil servants, Białystok residents, where “the rubles roll” and who earn money quickly and easily with contracts and the supply of provisions, lead a comfortable life and make money in the midst of the bloody nightmare of war. They are easy customers and pay well.

Military convoys clatter over the pointed cobblestones of Białystok, large cannons covered with tarpaulins but clearly showing the long barrels of the cannons, rattle proudly across the streets as if to say: “Look who the aristocrats are today!”

Large wagons with carts full of hay and straw, pulled by lazy, dragging horses, bring the smell of the village and mowed meadows.

A detachment of soldiers with red, steaming, sweaty faces and towels under their arms marches in the middle of the street with firm, drilled soldier's steps, coming from the old baths of Starashoseyne. They smile and wave to the passing girls and maids from the villages in flowered headscarves, singing soldier songs that smell of “high culture”.

There is a song about villages and eight girls whom the soldier follows through the forest and across the field. The soldier, the hero, does not let go of them. It is the famous soldier's song:

“Три деревни, два села, восемь девок, один я” [Three villages, two villages, eight girls, and I alone].

Or a melancholy song with a happy sound about a nightingale that sings so sadly. Suddenly the Russian soldier became sentimental - a romantic.

The Officers' Road leading to the Białystok Forest has been revived. The income is great. One gets rich quickly.

The half-naked streetwalkers on the verandas, in short, wide open dresses, showing parts of their naked bodies - what's to stop them?

Puffed-up women with shaggy hair wave their hands in a cheeky, ambiguous, drunken laugh, while women with black-rimmed eyes - a sign of their profession - smoke coquettishly and lead their guests into rooms with half-closed windows: Soldiers, workers and visitors from the small town who have never seen anything like it. They combine it with the exciting allure of the big city, full of unknown but juicy adventures.

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Russian military personnel are quartered in the town: The officers in wealthier homes, in particularly large rooms of nicer houses in the city- together with their staff, by whom they are served.

The common soldiers were quartered in groups in poorer houses or in empty, uninhabited apartments. They, the Russian defenders of “Mother Russia”, sleep on the hard, straw-covered floor, scratch and scrub themselves in the morning, eat black bread, drink “kipyatok” [hot tea] with it, and carefully count the remaining pieces of sugar wrapped in a rag, which is pushed together with a colored spoon into their boots. The latter exude the scent of blue, smeared tan and sweat from feet wrapped in rustic linen footcloths.

The unrest in the city is growing. Large white posters are put up with large Russian two-headed eagles at the top and a proud introduction at the beginning of the poster:

“We, Nicholas the Second, Great Emperor of All Russia, Prince of Poland, Finland and others, order the entire male population of Białystok and the surrounding area - aged 17-45 - to register at the military offices for evacuation to Russia as conscripts. The registration will take place from August 15 to 25, 1915. Anyone who refuses to comply with this order will be severely punished according to the laws of war.”

It is signed “The Police Master of the City of Białystok”.

Panic spreads through the city. Jewish mothers are wringing their hands. What to do now? To register is to send your son to war. And not to register means a severe punishment, after all, it is wartime.

The distant thunderclaps from occupied Osowiec can be heard more clearly.

The Germans have brought bigger cannons, the famous “Bertas”. In July, Warsaw falls and Osowiec is surrounded on all sides. Białystok is surrendered to the Germans. The State Bank, the Post Office and the government institutions had already been evacuated. A decree is issued to evacuate the factories of Białystok deep into Russia.

The Russian government promises all kinds of help with the evacuation, helping with loading onto trains and free transportation. The Jewish factory owners are in no hurry.

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They know the Russian disorder. However, the iron foundries of Vetshorek, Mazur-Shkurnik, and also the absorbent cotton factories of Nyevyazhski, Shpiro are evacuated. A large part of the textile manufacturers and traders leave for Russia, taking with them their warehouses with raw materials and finished goods.

The city begins to lose its rich and wealthy Jews. The factories begin to close. The rulers set up a demolition squad to burn the factories, destroy the machinery that could not be evacuated, blow up the boilers, and destroy government property such as barracks, food stores, and ammunition depots.

Some of the power plant machinery is destroyed during the night. The city is in semi-darkness in the evening because of the power cut.

Grief and shock spread throughout the city. The tram no longer operates. The train no longer runs for civilians. The railroad connection for civilians to other cities is completely cut off.

The police begin to arrest people at work: They are told to load machines onto the trains and dig trenches. The city is a large military camp, with armies of soldiers marching to their positions and departing units leaving the front.

Newspapers are closed. The people are cut off from the outside world because the railroads, which used to bring Russian and Jewish newspapers, have stopped. On July 5, the only national Jewish newspaper in Russian, “Golos Byelostoka” [The Voice of Białystok], published under the editorship of Y.S. Zeligman, ceased publication.

Rumors about the imminent evacuation of the Russian authorities from Białystok grew stronger. One date is given: the end of August, the beginning of September.

The inhabitants of the most distant streets behind the city move to the center. Afraid of the approaching cannonade and battles in the city, people look for apartments in stone buildings, leaving the wooden houses.

Confusion and fear are growing, the majority of the rich and powerful, wealthy merchants, manufacturers and suppliers of the city, have already left for Russia; among the only remaining social activists are:

Moyshe-Mordekhay Manisevitsh, A. Tiktin and M. Barash. The city is in semi-darkness, besieged by the military.

Distant explosions echo from unknown directions. The rattling of military freight trains and the clattering of horses echoed with terror in the hearts of the Białystok Jews hiding in fear.

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On August 25, it is already dangerous to go out into the streets. The wooden and iron gates are locked, and the population is anxiously awaiting further events. We live in the yard of Shmuel Tsitrin [Citrin]. The big, heavy iron gate is slammed shut, but it's only a weak protection for my mother and me, and our wooden house has its front windows facing Gumienna Street.

My brother David has been gone all day today, and my mother sits on the edge of the bed with a frowning, worried face, her hair carelessly disheveled, her eyes half mad and wandering, as they always do when she gives in to her nerves.

She shakes her head like a pious Jew at prayer and mumbles to herself, lips parted:

“Where could he be? He's been gone a whole day, and at a time like this, woe is me! He has no morals, he doesn't have mercy on his own mother, and at a time like this- when everyone is sitting behind seven locked doors - he's walking around outside”.

My mother is upset that my brother David isn't here. And my brother doesn't know what it's like to be afraid.

I admire him. In my eyes, David is a great hero who stops at nothing.

I'm burning with boyish curiosity to find out what's going on in the city. I crept to the window, carefully pulled open a corner of the silk curtain, and saw a group of Cossacks on horseback, riding slowly in pairs, one behind the other, as if on a walk.

The horses' hooves clattered on the pavement like the beating of a drum. The Cossacks wear high round fur hats on their heads, high pikes on their legs and red striped trousers.

A silver belt decorated with engraved patterns and a short silver dagger are wrapped around the rigid sides of the Cossack. The horse's gait is rhythmic. Their faces are heavily tanned, with a cold, steely gaze cast suspiciously to either side of the pavement. The thick, blond, well-styled hair is combed into a “chub,” a high, long curl on one side.

Suddenly it seemed to me that they were lifting their heads to the windows of the upper floors and looking at my window. Both my fear and my growing curiosity held my fingers tightly to the corner of the raised curtain. I can't tear myself away from the faces of the Cossacks, which radiate an ancient wildness of the Ukrainian steppe.

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It reminds me of the Cossack “Ostaps”^[1] of Zaporozhe from Gogol's book “Taras Bulba”. My mother notices that I've been standing too long at the window, quickly pulls my hand away from the curtain and says angrily:

“I have nothing but grief from my big one. Must I also suffer because of you? What now? Do you want them to shoot at us through the window, like Shabes on Tisha B'Av? You can do that with the Cossacks!”

The clatter of horses' hooves fades into the distance. It becomes quiet. An eerie silence where you don't know where it's going.

Suddenly there is a knock at our gate. We tremble with fear. But my mother's eyes light up. A mother's heart feels but does not betray. She quickly runs down the stairs and I run after my mother. We run down to the gate, look impatiently through the bars of the iron gate, and see my brother David. He looks around cautiously, knocks gently on the gate, and we hastily push open the heavy iron latch. David enters the courtyard, his eyes alive, alert and refreshed.

That's the way my brother David always looks when he's in danger. Then his eyes are calm and cold.

Mom is happy. She asks him questions. Her face has become brighter, rounder, and more graceful. She now has a youthful freshness about her. And, as she always does at such moments, Mother becomes jocular and witty, looking twenty years younger. David is in no hurry to answer. We went upstairs to the living room.

We are burning with curiosity, but David calmly says to Mother:

“Mom, I'm starving. Let's eat, and then I'll have a mountain of news for you.

Mother set the table. She puts down a bowl of porridge with milk, a piece of brown bread, and some potato pancakes. David ate slowly, looking at his plate. Mom looks at him with love in her eyes. And I admire my brother David, who has spent a whole day walking along the road, between soldiers and Cossacks, and is so calm.

Suddenly he opens his mouth and blurts out: “Mom, I've enlisted in the militia! I'll get a white armband with a badge on it,” he smiles calmly, “and maybe they'll give me a revolver too!”

His eyes were full of excitement.

My mother felt cold on this warm August evening and tried to hide her shock with a joke:

“Soon you will become a supplier for the town, get a badge and become a swashbuckler!!”

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When David is home, Mother is less afraid and takes the news of his becoming a militiaman better. The door opens and a neighbor enters. In Białystok it is not customary to knock on the door. You press the handle, open the door and there you are. The neighbor is a quiet, good-natured woman who always smiles. Her calm has a healing effect on my mother. She is delighted with David:

“Oh, David! You're like Noah's dove, flying into the flood. What news do you bring today? You're everywhere and you know everything. Your mother was very worried, and no wonder! Well, the main thing is that you're here! What's going on outside?”

David leaned back in his chair and smiled, his eyes sparkling. A sign that he had a day full of events and danger. Because then my brother David feels like a fish in water. (This impartiality of his character actually led to his tragic death a few years later).

“Listen, we get to say the Goyml [prayer of thanksgiving],” my brother David laughed, “what Jews are capable of. A strange people, a 'small nation'. It seems to me that they are a people of fear, but when danger threatens, they become heroes. You heard me - heroes,” said David excitedly, “the Jews of Białystok can sleep peacefully, there will be no pogroms. No attacks on Jews.

Everyone has already been bribed where necessary. The Jews even had the audacity to go up to the Cossack officer and make a heavy deal with him. I heard today from the newly recruited militiamen that the whole covenant cost a fortune.

And yet they made a bargain. The manager of the Ritz Hotel was the mediator, and the Cossack officer agreed to lead the soldiers and Cossacks of the departing army through the side streets and not through the city.

The Cossack officer is the deputy of the commander-in-chief Orlov, who entrusted him with the evacuation of the city. You understand that he took a financial advantage of this. Moyshe Mordekhay Manisevitsh is a brave Jew, and he is also bold. He, Tiktin and Barash negotiated. And tonight the Russians are leaving the city”.

The night was terrible. I often crept to the window. There were explosions of shrapnel, vibrations in the air from exploding bridges and railroad tracks. Fires broke out in some parts of the city.

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The railway station, the military depots, the steam-powered mills, the warehouses of the military administration and the military installations lit up the sky like a red torch, in magnificent red flames. A majestic spectacle for my boyish, romantic imagination. I was reminded of the historic Napoleonic battles at Waterloo. At times it occurred to me that this is probably how Nero must have felt as he watched the sea of flaming red tongues engulfing Rome on all sides.

My brother David was right. The news he brought was true. On the night of August 25-26, 1915, the Russians left Białystok. The Cossack officer was true to his word. The soldiers and Cossacks were led out through side streets behind the city to avoid robbery and looting. But only some of the population knew this, because money had been secretly collected from the wealthier Białystok Jews to give to the Cossack officer. The intermediary between the Jewish representatives and the Cossack officer was the manager of the Ritz Hotel, Leshgold, where the Cossack officer was housed.

On Thursday morning, August 26, my mother woke me up because we had to go down to the yard of Shmuel Tsitrin's [Citrin's] brick cloth warehouse. I could hardly wake up, so I lazily got dressed and went down to the cloth store. Semyon and Khayim Tsitrin and some neighbors were there. I had brought a large tin of “Landrin” candy, which I distributed to everyone there.

My brother David had already disappeared.

A few hours later he came back with the news that everything was all right. The Russians had already retreated and the German secret service agents had already entered the city on bicycles.

We all go to the gate. We open the gate carefully. Opposite us, next to Bulkovshteyn's Bes-Medresh, a few Jewish worshippers can already be seen sticking their heads out. We become bolder and step out onto the sidewalk. Next to me stands my friend, short and round-faced, with quiet movements and quick eyes. He is Maggid Yitskhok Barg's son. There was also one of the children of Slonimski, the shipping agent. Suddenly, a German secret service officer appears from a distance on a bicycle. He rides slowly, his rifle at the ready.

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We hurry back to the gate, but he calmly drives past, smiles at us with a slightly startled, tense face, and sends us a polite “Good morning,” after which we feel so relieved. A wild joy seizes us. We all burst out onto the sidewalk. One by one, windows and doors open.

The morning is already here, with blue skies and warmth. For me, it's a new world. New hopes. The young blood begins to play. The young imagination floats far up to the summery, blue, light-filled sky and the rising warm sun, which fills the heart with hope for a bright, sunny future.

1. Ostap is the name of a son of the Zaporozhian cossack Taras Bulba. The novel of the same name is set in the Ukraine and was published in 1835. See Taras Bulba - Wikipedia Return

At the end of August 1915, beautiful sunny days arrived, as if nature wanted to pay back all the bitter suffering, excitement and fears of the past year. The mood of the people suddenly calmed down.  Smiling faces shone with joy, hope, and lightness of spirit. The streets were full of people. Somehow it seemed that the number of Jews had doubled.

Especially striking was the large number of young people who appeared in the crowded streets, talking loudly, gesticulating, throwing words at each other, passing by with wild remarks, strolling.

They were girls who had returned, scattered in small towns for fear of the Russian soldiers and Cossacks. They had settled in Białystok. But they had also fled out of fear of the German planes and zeppelins which, for the first time in human history, were dropping bombs on open cities and civilian populations.

Among them were frightened Jewish sons who, for fear of being drafted into the army or arrested at work, were kept hidden in their homes by loving Jewish mothers or sent to small towns where they were unknown.

My brother David is already a militiaman, with a hat and a coarse, short cane, and a white armband with a militia stamp.

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My brother is happy. No more factory, no more clattering of steam-powered looms, no more night shifts. Instead, a simple, interesting life of wandering around the city begins. Now Mama doesn't say a word when he disappears from the apartment. After all, he is taking care of the Jews of Białystok.

The shops are open. There is trade with the Germans. Every word is followed by an additional “lieber Herr” or “gnädiger Herr” [dear Sir]. A simple corporal is called “Herr Leutnant” [Mister Lieutenant] and the words “Dankeschön” [thank you] and “Bitteschön” [please, here you are, you’re welcome] and “Jawohl” [yessir] flow.

The Christian children envy the Jews who are so good at talking to the Germans. And indeed, the Jewish shopkeepers are sincere in their love for the Germans, because they have freed their sons from the fear of Russian military service and being sent to the bloody war.

My brother brings the latest news. Fiskl has become a “komisar” and his friend Tapitser a “sanitar” [paramedic]. We laugh at the successful rhyme.  

And there is something else new: a delegation of three religions - Jewish, Catholic and Protestant - has presented itself to the German rulers. A “Citizens' Committee” is to be elected from among them, which will act as advisors and helpers to regulate the needs of the urban population. However, the Jews and the Christian Poles on the “Citizens' Committee” do not live in harmony.  Although the Christian Poles are a minority of 25% compared to the 60% of the Jews, they want to play “first fiddle”.

A German resident of Białystok, Mr. Luterer, who was quite anti-Semitic, is elected “militia leader”.

The Jewish members of the Citizens' Committee are M. Manisevitsh, M. Barash, A. Tiktin, Sh. Hershberg, Vilbushevitsh, Dr. Ziman and others.

Białystok is supplied with ration cards. Food is rationed. Each inhabitant receives cards for bread, potatoes, vegetables and sugar. The quality of bread deteriorates from time to time. Bran and ground peas are added. The “mantshke” (powdered sugar) also changes from white to yellow. This is “mantshke” for horses with syrup mixed in, but it is given to people.

The women have already discovered a secret:

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Yellow “mantshke” is very good for cooking a carrot stew and baking honey cakes. There is also news in the food supply, which the Germans call “Kartoffel-Flocken”. These are simply potato peels that have been cleaned and dried with chemical substances, and are one of the substitutes that made Germany so famous during the war- under the government of the German-Jewish minister Walter Rathenau, who was later murdered by a Nazi who could not forgive him, “the damned Jew”, for being the city's minister.

With great triumph, my mother rolled up her sleeves and we all stood around her. She was working like a juggler, doing “hocus-pocus.” We watched my mother's fingers, which operated with extraordinary speed, and saw how she took the “proshek” [powder], kneaded it with a little water, formed chops out of it, put a few pieces of onion in it, dipped it in a jar of lyok [herring sauce], smeared some on a small tray, and put a chop down to fry. Suddenly, the chop began to pop, coming from the pieces of salt in the lyok, so loudly that the great juggler, our mother, was startled and blinked her eyes in shock.

We burst out laughing, much to our mother's dismay.

But when the popping of the salted lyok had stopped, Mom triumphantly pointed to a brown cutlet, which we all tasted with great curiosity. We praised the taste to please Mom, but secretly spat it out.

This was Mom's first attempt as a beginner to make potato flake chops.

Later, she progressed and became a real expert, giving advice to other women.

In fact, the chops already had a completely different taste, like a substitute for chops, you even have to congratulate the Germans that it was so good.

The German rulers began to reign.

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The orders and prohibitions came like a bolt from the blue: You can't go out after 10pm, the gates must be locked. The entire population must be registered and issued with “Personalausweisen” (a kind of passport). Food supplies have to be declared; hidden soldiers who had changed clothes have to be handed in (they were later deported to prison camps during the war). The names of those who fled to Russia and the furniture they left behind must be declared (it was later confiscated). All illnesses have to be reported and health regulations have to be observed. It rained with orders!

German guards were posted behind the town, on the main roads leading to the small towns and villages, and it was very difficult to bring in food. Bread was usually brought from Radoshtsh, Supraśl, Starosielce, Zabłudów and potatoes from Białostoczek, but when the Germans began to confiscate the produce they had taken from the small towns, hunger began to grow very strong. Love for the Germans began to cool.

The iron order, which reached the point of brutality, weighed heavily on the population. A series of sanitary regulations began. To be honest, the German rulers were forced to demand it. But, as usual, they carried it out with German harshness and arrogance, without a shred of sensitivity to human feelings.

This showed the Germans in their true form, as a brutal nation of cold automatons who, because of their super-nationalism and chauvinism, could carry out any order, however brutal, and who looked down on other peoples.

The superiority complex was already evident in the Germans in all its pure, cruel ruthlessness, which was later softened by doubts about victory and demoralisation as the war dragged on.

They began to send the Jews of Białystok to the “delousing centres”, carried out hygienic searches in the houses, stripped the beds and bedclothes, with anything but polite remarks about the “dirty Jews”. The beards of old Jews were examined, even of clean, modest, honourable Jews, and this was done rudely and impudently, without ceremony.

Physical examinations of young men's genitals to check for sexually transmitted diseases began.

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The examinations took place in the open air, in the courtyard of a government institute. Undressed and half-naked, the men stood in the bitter cold, at risk of bronchitis, severe colds, angina and pneumonia.

Epidemics of spotted fever, abdominal typhus and tuberculosis, caused by poor nutrition and vitamin deficiencies, began to spread. Added to this were germs carried in the air from the corpses of soldiers, from those killed and shot in battles on the nearby fronts, and from those suffocated by poisonous gases.

Later the Germans began to pour lime on the dead bodies as a remedy against epidemics. I saw many such dead bodies of fallen soldiers with my own eyes when I looked at the war wounded who had died on their way, doused with white lime, lying in Lakhanka's High Shool - which had been converted into a German military hospital - in “Hinter der Turme” [Behind the Prison] Street.

The German rulers were unhappy with the 'Citizens' Committee' for failing to carry out its duties of confiscating what was necessary for the German army, and as a punishment it had to pay a levy of 300,000 marks. Most of the levy was imposed on the Jewish population because the anti-Semitic leader of the militia, the German Luterer, helped the Christian Poles by arguing that they were unfortunately poor and the Jews were the wealthier part of the population and had a lot of money.

New wealthy and powerful lords sprang up like mushrooms. Jewish ingenuity and Jewish spirit paved the way for them to amass large amounts of capital and trade on a large scale, even during the years of famine.

I knew one such couple. They were brothers Mair and Tevl Krugman. They were said to have come from Narevka. They were simple people, uneducated and without a good upbringing. Although they had rough working-class manners, they were in fact already great, influential gentlemen. They used a coarse language, rude and rough, but they were really Jews with a warm-hearted soul, and they donated large sums of money to charity.

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The two Krugman brothers had transformed themselves from small timber merchants into forest moguls with huge companies. They employed hundreds of workers as lumberjacks in the forests and transported the wood to all the conquered territories and to Germany. The wood was exported mainly for paper.

The name “Geynovke” was on the tip of everyone's tongue because the Krugman brothers ruled there. They owned and managed a large part of the Byelovezher [Białowieża] forest.

The forests of Białowieża were the hunting grounds of His Majesty Nicholas the Second. They were fenced in on all sides and had the finest paved highways. Russian royal coats of arms with the two-headed eagle adorned the side roads of the majestic highways, which were visited only by royal guards and selected members of royal society. They accompanied the hunts for light-footed, horned deer, gazelles and stags, as well as the unique, strong, wild bison.

The hunters hunted by riding to the sound of horns, accompanied by specially trained hounds. They were also accompanied by elegant female Amazons, dressed in colourful gowns and mounted on black or white, proudly shining horses. These were ladies-in-waiting or titled, invited aristocrats of high Russian descent. The forests of Białowieża were now ruled by two Jews from Narevka: Mair and Tevl Krugman.

Also in the textile industry - of Białystok origin - new faces appeared, who in a short time were elevated to a prominent place among the old, established cloth factories with a world name. The two co-manufacturers were Amyel Kulikovski, who before the war had been a “prikaztshik” (clerk) in a cloth warehouse, and Gotlib Seletski, who before the war had been a traveller for a shoe company and a simple clerk.

In a short time, the two companies were making profits and led generous, rich lives. At the same time, the population of Białystok sank deeper into poverty, unemployment and hardship. Some of the Białystok Jews openly flaunted their poverty, but others hid it.  The motto was: “Knaypn die bakn di farb zol shteyn” [Pinch your cheek so that at least the colour remains].

Białystok's textile industry slowly began to recover, but many manufacturers were missing and many factories had been destroyed and looted. The Białystok “loynketnikes” [piecework companies] also began to reopen their steam-powered looms.

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On Belostotsyan and Tshenstokhov Streets one can hear the knocking of the “Grasenein Scheinersche” and “Swabian” steam looms; the houses of Yakev [Jacob] Burshteyn and Novinzon (Alterke Kleyn) are gradually filled with the noise of weavers, winders and “niterkes”^[1].

However, this is not on the scale of Russian times. The strict control of the Russian rulers, the lack of raw materials and the absence of the large Russian markets of the Russian Empire had caused the textile industry to shrink and dry up, and only a small proportion of the workers and employees were employed. Białystok convulsed with misery and hunger.

The confiscation of food by the German gendarmes on the roads led to a new trade: smuggling. The Jews do not give up easily, and ways are sought to organise a regular exchange of food between large and small towns, although this is forbidden. One wall has already been breached: The Germans “already take” (bribes). People give each other advice.

Some of the beautiful girls and women of Białystok have found a new line of business: Getting “paper tickets” to import food. These women make friends with majors or lieutenants, who give them permission to import food. The girls soon find partners with capital, and a large trade develops.

Jews earned a new income. The girls in this trade were called “tsukerpushkes” [sugar bowls] and they did not enjoy a good reputation. After all, it is not the way for Jewish daughters to become “close companions” of officers, even German ones. They speak a little German - which is almost like Yiddish - visit their homes, their offices in the “Kreis-Amt-Stadt” and their military balls. All for their financial gain.

In Białystok people whisper about this and that, names are spoken. Decent parents should take care of their daughters. But how can you take care of them when it has become a plague in the country that wherever there is a German, a Jewish girl immediately attaches herself to him. The German mark is kosher, but the way it is earned is unkosher. And the demoralisation of the Jewish daughters is growing. Oy, this hunger!

Many things are ignored. In some homes, parents cover their eyes and pretend they can't see. But in the majority of Jewish homes, daughters are kept under strict surveillance. The Jewish law of “family purity”, ingrained over generations, is not easily subdued, not even by hunger. And in decent homes, silent dramas are played out between the desire to preserve the decency of daughters

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and the poverty, need and desperation that creep through every crack and threaten to destroy honest Jewish family life.

A Russian proverb says: “Gol na vidumki khitra” - poor people have clever ideas. Especially the Jewish poor. They rack their brains for ways to fight poverty. In addition to the lack of food, there is also a lack of clothing. The weekday clothes are already worn out, so with trembling hands people take out their Shabbat or holiday clothes to wear during the week. If they see an acquaintance wearing a better suit on weekdays, they joke among themselves:

He's already rich. He's already wearing the dinner jacket of the ball!

The tailors hope to find work by turning the worn suits inside out and sewing them back together for reuse. It would have worked well if certain parts of the trousers hadn't been badly worn, especially at the ankles and where you sit.

There were women in strange, wild winter coats, with “varse” (the hair from the wool) sticking out in wild colours, and if you wear the coats a few times in the rain, they start to form hollows and bumps and look like an inflated bubble, and the colours take on the appearance of a rainbow. It turned out that the elegant daughters of Białystok had an idea:

They bought blankets from the German soldiers, which they had previously stolen from the barracks, dyed them in various bright colours and turned them into ladies' coats.

New problems arose: walking around without work meant that shoes, especially the soles, quickly tore. After rain or snow, water seeped into the shoes through the holes in the soles. And again they had an idea: they took some old shoe soles with heels to a cobbler in Białystok. They were hammered with pieces of cut-up straps from old conveyor belts stolen from factories, which had once been bought in the famous shop of a German named Scherschmidt on Nikolayevske Street. But later they realised there was a better way: They hacked round pieces of sheet iron onto the soles and heels of the shoes so they wouldn't wear out so quickly. This was just something for me.

I was so happy!

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And when I had hacked the iron plates onto my shoes, I used to walk deliberately across the tarmac, putting my feet down with as much force as if a regiment of Germans were marching. People who passed me used to cover their ears because of the noise my iron shoes made.

The number of trades increased. Clever people started forging the ration cards, and with forged meat cards, especially bread cards, people could breathe a little easier. Until the Germans found out. But the forged ration cards circulated in Białystok for a while. Then they started to forge German stamps, the so-called “Oberostmarken”, and the Germans insulted the 'damned Jews'.

But there were some Germans who cooperated with the counterfeiters and helped to spread them.

Patriotism among the Germans had already waned considerably. German songs circulated in Białystok:

“Die Wacht am Rhein” [The Watch on the Rhine] and “Deutschand über alles” [Germany over everything]. Jokes were added to the rhymes: “Nishto keyn broyt, nishto keyn khales” [There is no bread, there is no challah].

I knew a “tsukerpushke” from Yurovtser Street (when I visited my friend who was her neighbour). She used to have all the good things: rectangular loaves of bread, rectangular pieces of biscuits called “zwieback” made of dazzling white flour, tins of jam and brown “chocolate”. She used to hum the tune of a German song, snuffling through her shapely nose to make it sound even more German, and tossing her head with her jet-black hair and singing: “Darling, darling, buy me an automobile, it doesn't cost much”.

As you can see, the Białystok Jewish “tsukerpushkes” had a pretty good grasp of things. Even in those days.

My aunt Rutshke got help.

In Białystok herring came to light, coming from Holland. Because of Holland's neutrality, the clever Dutch Queen Wilhelmine made a good deal and sold the Germans whole wagons full of herring, which the starving, “victorious” Germany desperately needed. And this clever woman, my aunt Rutshke, the herring seller on the “Bremlekh”, enjoyed the merit of the clever Queen Wilhelmine. The merit of the Dutch queen also extended to us, for the dear, good, pious Aunt Rutshke had not forgotten us. When my mother came to buy what looked like a single herring, Aunt Rutshke would hurriedly wrap up three or four herring and look up at the shelves of lime pots with an embarrassed smile:

“Gut, gut, Teme!

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Vest mir shoyn a tsveyt mol batsoln!” [“That's all right, Teme! Surely, you'll pay next time!”].

And Mom would sneak out of Aunt Rutshke's herring shop, embarrassed and her cheeks flushed.

She held the herring in her hand and felt as if she had stolen them.

Where had the romanticism of Białystok's youth gone? Where were the discussions about Artsybashev's [novella] “Sanin”, about Verbitsky's “Vovotshka”, about Gorky's “In Opgrund” and about “Eugene Onegin”, written by the tragically deceased Pushkin? (He was shot in a duel for defending his wife's honour).

The conversation centred on everyday matters.Wherever you met with friends and acquaintances, in the family or even on a 'svidanye' [date], the topic of conversation was food. There was a joke back then:

It was so boring to talk about bread and potatoes that if someone started to talk about food, the other person would interrupt:

“Let's talk about happier things than food. Who died in your house?”

Never before had Białystok been so busy with the culinary art of cooking and baking as it was during the German occupation. The women of Białystok used all the artistry of generations of experience to find a way around the famous law of physics that 'nothing can be made from nothing'.

They made “povidle”, a kind of jam from sour lemons, gooseberries, orange peel and red “kalines” [berries from the viburnum plant], which you didn't know where they had been brought from. Because you never saw them in Białystok. Wine or brandy was made from “zhitshkelekh” (such rare small pears) to preserve strawberries or raspberries. Apple skins were dried and used to make tasty brown tea. All kinds of greens and parsley were used, along with chopped onions and a dash of egg yolk to make vegetarian chops.

The Germans gave us dried fish, hard and stiff like the Egyptian pyramids. A piece of leftover gizzard and of a chicken leg were chopped into it to make a kind of 'Hungarian goulash' or braised meat.

And yet “his majesty”, hunger, ruled over Białystok with an iron fist.

1. niterke: A technical term from the old weaving trade. I suspect it comes from 'nit' = iron pin. An Anglicism [knitter] would also be possible. Return

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In Białystok, the division into social classes began to disappear. The years of hardship, hunger, unemployment and idleness under the German occupation put an end to the privileges of leather and haberdashery merchants, textile manufacturers, commission merchants and world travellers. Their children were also affected by poverty, and the uniforms and hats of the Grammar, Real and Commercial Schools for both sexes were replaced and pieced together from the wardrobes of fathers or older brothers, mothers or older sisters, or simply bought on occasion.

Pupils at Grammar and Commercial Schools no longer showed off. And the mighty Lord, hunger, democratised the youth of Białystok and made them all equal: dear, warm Jewish children from Jewish homes, without the pompous arrogance of the foreign but so beloved Russian culture. And as always in moments of need, during national calamities, the Jews returned to Judaism, threw off the colourful feathers of the foreign “peacock” of assimilation, and returned to the ancient source of the “people of Israel”.

The slogan of the French Revolution, ‘Equality, Liberty, Fraternity’, prevailed in Białystok: everyone was equal before hunger, free from labour and brothers in need. As the Russian proverb says:

“Nuzhda utshit, nuzhda mutshik, nuzhda pyesenki poyot” (hardship teaches, hardship torments, hardship makes you sing songs).

And a new song was heard: ‘Go to work!’

The youth of Białystok, even the vast majority of the once wealthy ones, set off to seek work with the ‘“Victorious German Power”, which ruled in the conquered “Oberost-Gebiete” [territory of Lithuania and Belarus] and had brought “modern civilisation to the backward Russian territories”.

The Germans had set about installing electrical wiring in the smallest, most remote towns and villages, which had inherited from their grandfathers and great-grandfathers the system of lighting the village hut with the chicken coop with paraffin or simply with a ‘lutshink’ (a piece of pine chip) glowing over the stove to the sound of cricket music.

The German rulers also took care of the highways - they were widened, paved with smooth stones and a convenient network of central road connections was created.

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Whether this was done in the belief that this would remain “with the great German Reich”. Or whether it was out of fear of collapse on all fronts and the need to provide themselves with good roads for a quick retreat, we didn't know. But the fever for building highways and power stations throughout the occupied territory had flared up, and the Jewish youth were running to the Germans to get a job to bring home some of the much-needed ration stamps for rations of bread, rusks and potatoes.

“Mum, my friends have registered for work. Why should I be idle any longer? I want to register for work too!” I said to my mother one morning.

Mum narrowed her eyes suspiciously. She just couldn't believe that I, the dreamer, the anxious, well-dressed boy who blew every speck of dust off his trousers, could have the will to go to work. His mates had probably talked him into it.

She liked my loyalty a little. But she was much more afraid that her Yankele, who was still a “little child”, would have to do hard work. Although she said afterwards:

Bigger, more distinguished children than her son also went to work. And she could really use the few marks. But, God forbid, should she send such a young child to work?

Mama's heart wouldn't allow it. She reprimanded herself and broke it off:

“What, are you bitten by the bug? You must be doing too well. Look at my labourer! Don't you have bread and potatoes? Stay at home, little boys shouldn't be sent to work. The Germans can manage without you. Look at this worker!”

My Mum's firm decision not to let me go to work stemmed from the fact that my brother David was a 'militiaman', a privileged man. And every very early morning, after a night on militia duty guarding Białystok, he would come home with a long loaf of bread under his arm, which served as a bribe to keep the eyes closed when bread was baked in the bakery with smuggled flour and sold without ration cards.

One of the “luptes” where my brother often “scrounged” was the Dobnyevski bakery on Yurovtser Street, whose daughter, a girl with sparkling eyes and glowing cheeks, belonged to my brother's “khalyastre” [gang].  

(The famous union leader David Dubinsky, president of the International Ladies Garment Workers Union, was a relative of the

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Białystok baker Dobnyevski, and Dubinsky's real surname was Dobnyevski, which he changed to Dubinsky).

My brother David saved me. While he was chewing pieces of brown bread with jam on both cheeks after a night on guard duty, he made himself heard:

“What do you want, Mum? Many boys sign up for work, people more privileged than us and nobler people send their boys to work, and even girls are sent. A 'bar-mitsve' [13-year-old] boy is already a young man today, Mum, times have changed!”

I was suspicious that my brother was standing up for me. I had a strong suspicion that David wasn't doing it as a favour, but was looking for a way to get rid of a witness who was at home, saw too much and turned up his nose at his brother's behaviour, but above all couldn't stand his comrades.

But my brother's words had an effect on my mother. They calmed her down. And when my mother remained calm and stopped talking about it, I understood that her resistance had softened a lot and that I could catch up with other boys, achieve something and earn something.

The word “earn” made me feel proud. Soon I would be a man.

Three days later, a gang of boys from Białystok and the surrounding towns - and I was one of them - rode on a shaky farm cart to a small village behind Zabludove [Zabłudów] called “Ribale”, which I don't even know if it's on a map.

We arrived in Ribale in the evening and had already been hired by the Germans as labourers to help build the road from Ribale to Zabłudów. My bones were very aching from the jolting load, but I was in a good mood, looking forward to the new life that was beginning for me.

I jumped down from the cart with my rucksack on my back, which reminded me of my leather satchel from the “Remeslenoye Utshilishtshe” [Artisans' School], and with respect for myself - for I was already half a man and a full worker - I crawled with the other boys to the village barrack, which consisted of wooden blocks covered with grass. A German soldier had taken us there to put us up.

When he opened the door, led us in and pointed to a large wooden cot where we would sleep, all my heroism melted away.

I had one consolation.

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Through the small wooden window I could see a long field of green, cloudy trees that greeted me as they swayed back and forth, like old grandfathers greeting a young grandson.

The next day they woke us at seven in the morning, gave us black coffee with bread and jam, lined us up two by two, gave us spades, pickaxes and hammers to break stones into “shaber”^[1], and led us in military march to the highway.

I couldn't stand the work any longer than that day. From holding the wooden handle of the hammer in my scrawny hand, my fingers were swollen like red sausages. My skin began to peel and blister. That same evening, as I lay sick on my wooden bed, a good-hearted Jewish girl from Zabłudów, Genye Perlus, put compresses on my head and hands and compensated me for the burning pain of my hands and the burning shame that I was already leaving my role as a man and worker.

The only thing I had gained in Ribale from my work as a “shober hacker” was the acquaintance of the good-hearted Genye Perlus, with whom I became close friends, and to whom I wrote romantic letters that “marched” from hand to hand in Zabłudów, and of which the sentimental Genye with her beautiful, full face boasted to her comrades, friends and acquaintances. And the people of Zabłudów were my first literary critics.

This is how the “Ribale” episode ended for me, showing me that the will to be a worker alone is not enough. You also need strength, muscles and hard, calloused hands.

Many years later I got to know “human drudgery”. I saw how people work, and only then did I understand what flesh and blood workers with a saw, a hoe and an iron will can achieve. I also saw an extraordinary picture of a religious Jew who filled hundreds of Christian workers with awe at his preservation of Judaism, his unshakeable faith and his honest life. They flocked around the weak, physically awkward Jew, but with his observance of Judaism he was a spiritual giant in a remote corner of a wild forest.

This happened when Białystok already belonged to Poland, and when the then famous brothers Mair and Tevl Krugman owned the ancient Byelovezher [Białowieża] forest, which stretched for dozens of miles. (Incidentally, I was delighted to learn that Mair Krugman's daughter, Lyoba Palani-Krugman, is alive and in the Land of Israel.

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She holds an important position there and is a respected woman with education and language skills.

I also learnt that one of Tevl Krugman's daughters lives in New York, where she is a well-known painter. Mrs Lyoba Palani-Krugman told me an interesting story about her late father, Mair Krugman, peace be upon him, who was known as a man of compassion for Jewish needs, generous in his charity and devoted to his family with great love.

Although he himself was a simple man of the people, with excellent skills but no education, he made sure that his children received the best education possible. His daughter Lyoba told me that once, when he was in Karlovy Vary, Mair Krugman bought a large, beautiful hanging chandelier, brought it to Białystok and gave it as a gift to the courtyard of the great Białystoker shul [synagogue], where the greatest cantors in the world prayed and gave concerts of liturgical singing).

Tsvi Hirsh Cohen, my God-fearing father-in-law, the treasurer of the Krugman brothers, lived in a lonely, remote, moss-covered green log hut in the middle of the forest. He lived there, subsisting on a few potatoes and some grits. There he kept the huge books of the Krugman brothers, and there, in the midst of all the busyness of the world, he kept his Shakhres, Minkhe and Mayriv prayers and Shabbats quietly, calmly, piously and with a firm, unbending will- his world of absolute devotion to the Creator of the world and to Judaism, which had nothing to do with financial calculations and the intoxicating ambition to make financial gain from the people who were fast disappearing from the earth in the midst of brilliant plans to accumulate capital.

One summer I visited my father-in-law in Białowieża, and he embraced and kissed me. My father-in-law loved me very much. I brought him a cheerful greeting from his beloved wife, the righteous Mrs Reyzl, a rare type of woman of the old generation, kind-hearted and pious, who was often left alone with little money, but who gave people interest-free loans that were very often not repaid.

Her door was never closed to poor people who knew that you don't go empty-handed, especially not on Friday - the day of giving for the holy Shabbat.

I have often thought:

For all our faults, we are a great people, with ethics and social aid built up over thousands of years, laws of justice, purity of family life and holidays of different colours:

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Each Jew was endowed with his own special complexion, his own sense of belonging to the people and his own faith, based on rock-solid laws, traditions and rituals designed to preserve the unity, health and moral purity of the people of Israel.

Even in the remote hut in the Białowieża Forest, the firm belief in Jewishness breathed in the figure of the physically weak Jew, who had inspired a kind of admiring respect among the hundreds of non-Jewish workers.

I remember a picture that was a testimony to the incredibly noble relationship between the rough, coarse village “goyim” and the weak, religious Jew.

It was on a Shabbat evening. In the hut of the Białowieża forest. Tsvi Hirsh Cohen was praying Mayriv [evening prayer], quietly singing every word with the special nign [melody], preserving every sentence, and he put a lot of longing and invincible trust in every letter of the Mayriv. Outside, on Shabbat night in the Białowieża Forest, dozens of goyim stood around the hut, waiting patiently until the treasurer would finish his Mayriv, perform the Havdole ceremony and begin to pay the wages.

One rolled a cigarette of “makhorke” [cheap, high-nicotine tobacco] in cigarette paper and covered the edges with saliva. Another was talking quietly to his neighbour, who was sitting with him on a sawed-off log. He spoke in a hushed whisper, as if afraid to disturb the treasurer at prayer. A third person, who began to laugh out loud, was met with a reverent remark from another worker:

“Tshikho, pan kasirer modli shen!” [Quiet, the head treasurer is still praying!]

And another worker turned his head to the sky, searching his eyes to see if a star had already appeared somewhere in the slightly bluish sky.

But I, in the hut, held the colourful, woven havdole candle, and my brother-in-law said the Havdole, lifting his head to the whitewashed wooden beams, and with tearful eyes he watched every word. He must have been thinking of his wife and children in faraway Białystok, and he sent a prayer to God that the children would walk in the ways of Judaism, and that he would soon return home to his wife, sons and daughters, to his Jewish neighbours in Byelostotshanske, and to his fellow worshippers in the great, festive, wide synagogue of “Nayvelt” [Nowy Świat, New World].

1. shaber= This word can have many meanings, so it can mean 'crowbar', but it can also mean the act of plundering or looting. I think in this case it means something like 'gravel'. Return

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The years of the German occupation dragged on. It seemed as if the state of paralyzed inactivity of the youth would last forever. We didn't know to which nationality we actually belonged: Russians? Germans? Or even future Lithuanians or Poles? Białystok was somehow stuck between countries, peoples and borders.

The problem of employment was agonizing. Strange, peculiar trades grew:

“tsukerpushkes”, smuggling, fencing, speculation.

We were everything together and yet nothing. They were “air trades” with no today and no tomorrow. We traded in flour, groats, linseed for pressing oil, leather and manufacturing. Everything was on the tip of a fork, you grabbed something small quickly, in the manner of Menakhem Mendl^[1], some things were very large, others smaller.^[2]

The majority struggled with a small number of ration stamps and pennies.  Morale was low.

Everything was “kosher” according to the devaluation of terms: even the trade in the bodies of women and daughters. But according to German law, everything was illegal.

Everything had become a commodity:

Rotten potatoes, candles without wicks, moldy cloth, rotten chaff, hard yellow German soldiers' shoes, yellow oatmeal, red string, and combs with large, sparse teeth for the village women. Kerosene and salt were as precious as gold. And in the midst of the symphony of hunger and decay, our little family turned and turned, not knowing the day before what the next morning would bring. And I grew like a wretched plant in a barren field.

My cousin, David Kovalski, the eldest son of my uncle Abraham Kovalski, was swimming in those days like a fish in water. He was the right man in the right place. Small in stature, strongly built, with bubbling energy and the head of a genius, full of ideas, without education but with many skills. He quickly became an electrical engineer and traded in electrical materials. He brought in Germans to steal from the military depots so that he could sell the electrical materials, which were as valuable as gold. He traveled all over the occupied territory with military passes from German personalities and set up power stations in small towns and villages.

My cousin asked me to become an electrical engineer. He wanted to teach me.

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He was building a power plant in Supraśl, and I was able to help him. He talked to my mother about it, and it was easy for him to get his way, because the main thing was that it wasn't about “shaber” hacking on the highways.

So Jacob went on a trip - Jacob got up and went to Supraśl with his cousin David.

Suprasil enchanted me. The small town had everything: beautiful forests, large rivers, Jewish houses with verandas and benches, and beautiful Jewish daughters.

Shmuel Tsitrin [Citrin] and his two sons, Semyon and Khayim, ruled the shtetl with their large factory for finishing and tearing cloth. And half the shtetl lived off them, worked for them, and called Shmuel Tsitrin “nash krul” (our king).

My cousin, David Kovalsky, was friends with everyone and everything. He was always busy. He was always looking for people, and people were looking for him. He always needed somebody and everybody needed him. He spoke fast, in half-sentences. His mouth turned like screws and his head was a laboratory of projects and plans. And he built the power station of Supraśl in the neighborhood of the big fabric finishing factory of Hirshberg, who was actually the “money shooter” and the owner of the power station.

I became my cousin's private secretary because I was better at writing and arithmetic, but he had more brains.

I also became his assistant, laying electric cables under the rafters of the low wooden houses in Supraśl. The work was botched. The electric cable did not fit well with the porcelain buttons and hung in the air like a rope for hanging laundry in the attic.

But who among the Supraśl Jews was an expert in the field of electricity? The main thing was that it lit up, that there was an electric cable dangling in the middle of the ceiling under the rafters, swaying there and giving off a reddish fire that glowed constantly, sometimes brightening and sometimes dimming, as if the fire was wondering if it was worth the whole business of burning. And often the electricity would actually go out, plunging the shtetl into darkness.

The small fires reminded me of the kerosene lamps in the Białystok street lamps of Khanaykes.

The first electric lamps of those days were very primitive. The head of the household, who had such a lamp burning, felt like an aristocrat and called the neighbors together.

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Surrounding the faint, red electric light that could barely keep itself alive, they marveled at God's miracles and man's ingenuity.

One day my cousin David told me the good news: “We are going to the palace of Baroness Bukhholts [Buchholz], or 'Bukholtszove' as the Supraśl Jews called it, to lay electrical cables. When we arrived there to work, I was delighted to see the large halls with high semicircular domes in the Byzantine style, which made the interior look more like a church, like a palace with high semicircular ceilings painted with pictures.

It was an old palace of Baron Buchholz, from the dynasty of German barons. They were probably among the first pioneers of German technology who introduced the textile industry to Russia and Poland and established a network of textile factories in the following cities: Białystok, Lodz, Tomashov and other centers.

The German textile industry, so artfully described in Gerhard Hauptmann's drama “The Weavers”, in which the first strikes and struggles of the weavers are reflected. They were afraid of the mechanical looms, those iron monsters that would take away their last piece of bread by flooding the market with goods and displacing the weavers who worked with their hands.

Yes, the workers of that time did not know that the mechanical looms would be used to support the workers.

My cousin David was a smart guy in everything: in electrical engineering, but also in courting girls, carrying around wads of money, and drowning in debt.  As usual, he told us the latest news and announced that this Shabbat evening we were going to see a Białystoker “lyubitel” (amateur actor) who had come to Supraśl to visit his friends. There would be a play in a local house.

That same Shabbat evening, I sat with my cousin David in a low, whitewashed shack, along with a few dozen other boys and girls from Supraśl. We were sitting in chairs in various places, applauding a broad-shouldered, burly young man with a full, round face and chestnut hair like a big fur cap, with a sympathetic, manly, full-throated laugh. The young man was wrapped in a large white linen shawl and was reciting Dranov's famous monologue from “The Crazy Man in the Hospital”. The amateur actor's name was Avigdor Peker (Viktor Packer). He came from an intelligent family of Białystok pharmacists.

When Packer, with a voice like a lion, growled, “Today I will be king of all Spain”, and stood up in the majestic pose of a king

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I admired his manly beauty and simply envied him. I looked so small and pitiful compared to him. And when he was staring madly with his eyes, humming and tapping his forehead with his index finger, when he was shouting in ecstasy, “Eldad and Medad were by day and not by night”, I did not understand anything, but I saw before me a real madman in the pose of the Białystoker “Sane” or the “Khayim Stai” (the two well-known Białystoker madmen).

I admired his talent, but even more his masculinity, and Avigdor Peker used it quite well, he was surrounded by girls, flirted to a fare-thee-well, and in the summer nights sailed in a boat on the Supraśl River with the fair sex, which is not as beautiful as it is bad (may the women forgive me).

Even I, the little tender, romantic boy, did not remain alone in the love-soaked Supraśl. And one Shabbat, as I was walking alone in the forest, roaming among the green, tall roses, I saw a little white-skinned girl with a head full of blond hair, with a pair of sky-blue, wondering eyes fixed on me, as if asking, “Where do you think he came from?”

She was accompanied by a skinny, bony dog on tall, slender legs, snarling and looking at me with evil, bloodshot eyes. She kept the dog under control with a leather leash, probably not having much faith in its good nature. And on the banner of green and solitude, the young blonde girl with the light pink body, in a white dress trimmed with lace and white linen slippers, looked like a planted heroine from Andersen's fairy tale.

I was attracted to the girl, though the dog frightened me. But the girl shouted at the dog in a firm, stern voice, with the commanding tone so characteristic of the German breed:

“Stay calm!”

And the dog looked submissively and quietly stretched out beside her feet, licking his paws.

We met like old acquaintances, like two little children who had just passed from childhood to maturity and had childlike trust. The play of young blood and childlike imagination quickly brought us together. My knowledge of German helped me a lot (I had the opportunity to practice speaking German with our neighbor:

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The divorced wife and her three daughters of the German Knepel, who had a coffin shop on German Street).

The blonde German girl had stood before me with curiosity mixed with impudence, a characteristic of German girls. She took me under her arm and walked with me for the next half hour, looking me in the eyes and babbling her whole biography. Often she looked at her half-naked legs with their short white socks, trustingly walking with me step by step.

The fresh, rosy-skinned, blonde creature aroused in me feelings of vague desire, a mixture of restlessness, the desire to see her and to hear her beautiful, melodious voice. And yet I was a little afraid, especially of her boldness, which didn't match my shyness.

I met her several times in the woods, only on Shabbat, in the early morning hours, when brilliant drops and bubbles of morning dew played with the colors of the red rays of the rising sun. I learned that she lived in a wooden house in the forest, surrounded by tall, massive trees and with a flower garden that she, as a lover of botanical art, helped to plant and water.

Once I met her father, the forest ranger, and this put an end to our quiet romance in the dense forest. It was one Shabbat when the German girl was in an aggressive mood. We were both sitting under a tree, picking off the bark and arguing about where life was better, in Białystok or in Supraśl. She envied me for living in the “big, fabulous city” where life was “flawless”. For my part, I tried to convince her that she was lucky to live in the beauty of the fragrant green forest with its fresh air.

“Oh, what do you understand?” she dodged. But her anger quickly dissipated, as it always did, and she wrapped one arm around me and snuggled against me.

A minute later we heard heavy footsteps and the sound of breaking branches. A medium-sized, powerfully built man with a tanned face and sharp eyes, dressed in a green half-length jacket and a rifle slung across his armpit, appeared before our eyes.

My German girl jumped up and as if she was hypnotized by the horror,

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looked at her father and crouched down beside a tree like a hunted animal. Her father didn't even look at her, but stood next to me and looked at me intensely with his eyebrows furrowed and his eyes filled with hatred, as if he wanted to know who he was dealing with. Then he hissed in my face:

“You cursed one, make sure you get away, and fast!”

I didn't even wait for his second request, but ran away quickly, taking one more look at the blonde girl who was turning to her father, her face turned to the side in hatred. Her eyes sparkled, her face had actually turned green. I could never understand how a girl could look at her father with so much hatred, how a person could have so much hatred in them, especially a young girl.

I saw such eyes, full of hate, dozens of years later in Brussels with a group of “Hitler Youth” returning from Paris after a “friendly visit”. I had been discussing with them in German in a restaurant and was surrounded by Belgians who were listening to our conversation with excitement. I tried to explain that their power-hungry, fanatical “leader” was bringing the world closer to a terrible bloodbath.

Their bloodshot eyes pierced my face with an indescribable hatred. At that moment the blonde Supraśl girl appeared before my eyes with her hateful gaze directed at her father.

I believe that only Germans can hate like that, even their own father and mother.

1. This refers to the optimistic Menakhem Mendl (in the book by Sholem-Aleykhem), who dreamed of becoming rich but failed with every trade. Return
2. Free translation Return

Human life consists of three periods: youth, when we dream of the future; middle age, when we live with the present; and old age, when we dream of the past.

It's strange that young people think they have an infinite future that never ends.

That's how I and my childhood friends felt in those romantic years of the First World War.

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We were too young to understand the horrors of human hatred, the struggle for power, and the merciless murder of war. For us, those war years were filled with poetry and prose woven together without meaning, without understanding, without logic.

Science and emotion go hand in hand in youth. There is no strict barrier between them, no boundary. Everything is poured together.

That's how we felt then. At school we were taught in Russian that the forest and the trees give us “kislorod” (oxygen), which is so necessary for human beings, and the trees absorb “uglerod” (carbon) from human exhalation. But when we were in “Tsertl's” Forest, walking in groups along the “Green Alley” of the Białystok forest, we forgot all scientific theories and made the forest resound with our children's voices, perceived with joy the sound of the echo, followed with childlike happiness the golden spots of the setting sun, chasing each other like rabbits on the branches of the trees, and completely forgot the scientific theory that the sun emits fiery hydrogen, which will have cooled down in three trillion years, so that our Earth will sink into a dead, cold rigidity. It would then rotate with a world of dead, frozen inhabitants, a dark world of empty houses, bridges and extinct cities.

And in the evening, when a piece of the round moon accompanied us on our nightly walk, casting mysterious pale shadows on the sides of the trees, looking like night spirits in a cemetery, devils from that world disguised as “mekhblem” [demons of destruction] - who would have thought then that the moon is a planet illuminated by the sun, 240,000 miles from us, and that we see only half of it? That a human being there weighs only one-fifth of its weight and can leap into the air, and that the pensive, pale face of the moon is actually mountains and craters.

And when we have stepped on the flowers of various colors, which looked so beautiful with their bright, pink-white-green, innocent shades, and so delicate, who thinks that they are waging a bitter, murderous struggle among themselves, and that the stronger flower is sucking up all the sap of the earth for itself, thus starving and suffocating the weaker. All this according to Darwin's theory of evolution and the victory of the stronger species.

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I also saw and observed Darwin's theory of “natural selection” in nature in a different context in those romantic years. I saw it and didn't understand it, but today I do understand it.

In a strange and original way, the theory of “natural selection” was realized in Białystok at that time. Circles and groups of the same educational level or upbringing, as well as class or capital and economic position of the parents were created.

The educated youth of merchants and wealthier families recruited students from Commercial Schools, Real Schools and the Aleksandrov Gymnasium, and paired with girls from Commercial Schools, Bishkovitshe’s High School and Khvoles‘ Middle School.

Yafe's School was already at a low level because a significant number of its students had proletarian parents.  Couples from the two-grade Primary Schools of Babitski, Menakhovski and Fridman got to know each other. The groups became veritable marriage institutions, with one couple leaving at a time to build a family life.

The “matches for marriages” among the religious youth took place mostly in the Hasidic shtiblekh, in the Bote-Medroshim, and in the “minyonim” [prayer quorums].

The group to which I belonged consisted of the boys from the “Remeslenoye” [Artisans’] School and the girls from the “Professional” School. Among the latter there was the first girl who made my heart beat faster, who gave voice to hidden feelings - vague but deep, nebulous but strong - which enveloped my boyish body and threw it into an ecstasy between torment and happiness, jealousy and despair, heavenly hopes and melancholy depression.

Her name was Sonye Lifshits [Sonya Lifschitz].

Down the street “Behind the Prison” to Nikolayevske lived my friend Khayim Kruglyanski. A fresh, smiling boy with red cheeks, always dressed in a well-ironed, clean black suit or school uniform, with polished shoes and a well-combed parting of shiny black hair.

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His father was a simple, quiet Jew, a kind of “Bontshe Shvayg”. He worked in the kosher slaughterhouse, was always smiling, and never let his wife worry.

His wife, Esther, was a short, plump Jewish woman with fiery red cheeks, as if they were dyed. She was always cheerful and witty and loved youth. She herself was a woman with a young soul - she liked to tell jokes and was maternal with her broad, softly flowing limbs. She attracted the boys and girls, the friends of her son Khayim. Theirs was a loving home where we met on Shabbat evenings. Esther also had a daughter, Yashpe. She was wild, kind, and smiling, just like her mother. But she didn't look like a girl, she looked like a mature mother.

Shabbat evenings at her house were especially pleasant. It was usually in the winter, when the snow swirled in the air, covering the asphalt and cobblestone streets so that the tracks of the carts and sleighs were indented. And the winter blizzards used to drive the inhabitants indoors. On such Shabbat evenings, we would meet at my friend Khayim's house.

The hospitable Ester served us hot, boiling tea from the copper pot in the preheated “top stove,” along with raspberry jam and homemade cakes on small plates, cut from a piece of dough with a glass and sprinkled with granulated sugar and nuts.

Then we went into the bedroom, a low room with beams overhead, where there were two wide, inviting beds with flowered “Ladner blankets”. We took benches and chairs into the room and sat down comfortably, each boy sitting close to the girl he liked, or into whom the god of love had already shot his arrows, and where a hidden or open love affair had already been kindled.

My friend Khayim always arranged it so that he sat next to Rivke Shvartsman, a tall girl with a chubby body and a beautiful round face. She spoke quickly, in choppy sentences. Khayim loved her very much and really devoured every word she said. Rivke Shvartsman, her sister, and her brother-in-law had a shop where clothes were cleaned and dyed. It was located on Surazer [Suraska] Street, not far from Tsarep's hardware store.

My friend Lampert, a big boy who grew up with his grandmother, looked like a “yeshive-bokher” [student at a Jewish college].

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He had a lean, tall body and thick hair, which is why his cap with the black peak always sat on his side, and two thick mops of hair stuck out at the sides like a Don Cossack. He usually spoke Russian, and he spoke it well, laughing after every few words. Despite all his masculine beauty, somehow no girls clung to him. It has to do with the mysteries of the sexes, why someone who is not at all handsome is successful with women and they run after him, and another, a personality, a Don Juan, remains indifferent to women.

The opposite of him was Sheymke Zak, a well-educated boy with sensible manners from a “better family”, who had a lot of charm and was popular with our girls. Sheymke had a pleasant, soft voice and usually sang Russian songs because Russian was spoken at his home- although Yiddish was also spoken. I knew his beautiful older blonde sister, Tinya, and his brother, Nyomke, who looked like a physically well-developed blond gentile peasant boy - in contrast to his brother Sheymke, who was brown-skinned and thin, with fiery black eyes and dark hair.

But his cousin Sheymke Plavski, who came from an intelligent family and lived in the street “Behind the Prison”, was considered a frivolous boy, a cynic who already knew a lot about life and how a child is born... The girls liked to talk to him, but they were afraid of his sneering, cynical laugh and too much boldness with his hands...

Such a boy was a rarity in our circle.

Our circle also included two close, intimate friends: Odel Sheynman and Sonye Lifshits [Sonya Lifschitz], who always went out together and were an inseparable couple, like Bobtshinski and Dobtshinski in Gogol's “Revisor”.

They were two opposites, outwardly and inwardly: Odel Sheynman had a brother, Betsalel. He was a boy with poetic abilities. She, Odel, was full-figured, with a broad face and broad limbs, very charming and sensitive, wise and serious.

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Sonye Lifshits was slim, slender, with a pair of lively, irresistible eyes, and she was always laughing. When she laughed, her eyes closed into two narrow slits, and she always had something to say quickly, to which she laughed brattily. My feelings for her were so strong that I tended to forget and search for words in her presence, although I was not usually at a loss for words. My rich language skills at that time, especially in Russian, could bring out the many nuances of feelings in a poetic and flowery way and describe them clearly and precisely with my vocabulary.

I felt that I was lost and that the girl could do whatever she wanted with me.

High mounds of sparkling white snow covered the low windows of the wooden cabin of Khayim Kruglyanski's small house.

A dreamy silence enveloped us and carried each of us to other worlds. Each boy sat next to his chosen girl, humbly feeling the warmth of touching elbows and the quiet happiness, tenderness and shyness that were part of our upbringing. We looked at a girl differently. Our pure, chaste, sublime feelings had to do with exultation and sweet naivety...

Absolutely far from raw, sexual, cynical relationships.

A soft song could be heard in the sentimental atmosphere. It was Sheymke Zak singing the melody of a Russian song, “Karye Glazki”. It was about eyes that were hidden, disappeared forever, and could no longer be seen... And it was about eyes that reappeared in powerful dreams...

Immediately after that Sheymke segued into the song “Za mig naslazhdenye” (For a minute of pleasure I am ready for eternal suffering).

And then he jumped to the song “Bublitshki” (which is translated into Yiddish as “Buy bagels, fresh bagels”).

Sheymke's pleasant voice echoed softly in the magical silence, harmonizing well with the surrounding darkness, shrouded in deep thought, where ten boys and girls sat. Then the popular Russian songs began: “Otshi Tshornye” [Black Eyes], “Kutsher, treyb nisht di ferd” [Coachman, don't rush the horses]

The most successful song was the melancholy, deeply philosophical and pessimistic “Ti sidish au kamina ay smotrish s'taskoy” (“You sit by the stove and watch with melancholy how sadly the stove is going out”...). Years later it was translated into Polish and became a hit, “Przy Kominku”.

[Page 176]

But when it came to “Eyda Troyka”, everyone joined in the chorus. - The fluffy snow, the frosty night all around, the silver moon shining, and a couple riding in a sleigh. He murmurs words of love, looks tenderly into her eyes, and she is completely distracted, what will this love bring her? –

The songs join together: “Vikhozhu Odin Ya Na Dorogu” [I Walk my Path Alone]^[1] by Lermontov, “Volga, Volga mat' rodnaya” [Volga, Volga, dear mother], and then, to create a cheerful mood, we brought out the Russian folk song, “Ukhar' kupyets” [The dashing merchant], which tells how a young merchant enters a village, gets the whole village drunk, and spends the night with Natashka's daughter after the night lights in the windows have gone out... But the village girl doesn't leave empty-handed; she returns to her hut at dawn with an apron full of silver money.

But the hot-tempered boy Lampert can't control himself and wants to show what he can do.  He turns the mood around, stands in the middle of the hut and almost reaches the ceiling beam with his disheveled Cossack mop of hair.  He begins to recite Pushkin's “Kto on” [Who Is He], a declamation dedicated to Peter the Great. “Between the stars and the dense forest, between the ditches and the grass, a horseman rides to the bright banks of the Neva”.

And immediately after that, Lampert babbles another declamation about the “prophet Oleg” who predicted that the king would be killed by his own horse. When the horse was already dead, the king laughed at Oleg's prediction and went to check on his dead horse, stepping on the horse's head with his foot and mocking Oleg for his foolish prediction, but then a snake crawled out of the dead horse's head, bit the king's leg, and he died in great pain.

The prophet Oleg's prediction had come true.

A sense of transfiguration hangs in the air, as it usually does when one is immersed in mysterious, enigmatic forces.

But my friend Khayim can no longer contain himself. His Jewish blood is boiling: “Why only Russian songs and poems?”

And he sings, stretched out, a cantorial New Year's song, “בְּרֹאשָּׁנָה יִכָּתֵבוּן” [Rosh Hashanah will be written]^[2] and everyone supports him. The squeaky soprano voices of the girls hover over the alto voices of the boys, and it seems as if we are in the Białystok “shul”, as if a rehearsed choir is performing a cantorial concert under the direction of the Białystok conductor Rubin.

It is strange how the Białystok girls decorate the “כחלום יעוף” [As a dream will fly], the “כחרס הנשבר” [As a broken vessel] and the “וכל מאמינים” [And all the believers] with embellishments. Yes, these are hearty Jewish daughters from Jewish homes in Białystok.

And then we sang, prolonged, the “Kol Nidrey” [All Vows], and a deadly torpor and seriousness enveloped us all in darkness.

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It seemed to us as if the figures of the Jewish martyrs, wrapped in white shrouds, were floating around us. It weighs on our hearts, which are full of love for the Jewish people and reverence for its past and its great Jews. But we are also gripped by fear. Our childish hearts are throbbing with fear because we have touched something hidden that has to do with Jewish prayers for the dead, Jewish cemeteries, death and the afterlife.

1. Выхожу один я на дорогу (youtube.com) Return
2. בראש השנה ייכתבון - זֶמֶרֶשֶׁת (zemereshet.co.il) Return

My mother had set her sights on my brother David to get him married:

“How much longer are you going to wander around by yourself? You've been around enough. It's time for you to become a man, to have a wife and a home. You're not getting any younger, and I don't have the strength any longer to bustle about such a big boy. If I only live to see this with Yankele, Tate Ziser [Sweet Father]!”

My mother looks at me and asks me to help her find the right words to convince my brother David that “tis enough of the prowling,” but I diplomatically remain silent. Although I often argue with David, I love him and will be sad when I'm alone. And all in all, at least I have a “bit of a brother”.

My brother David gets angry:

“What do you want from me? I still have time before a wedding. It's wartime, and where am I going to earn money to support my wife? What then, mother, do you find it difficult to cook and wash for me? So I will look for a living quarter!”

If my mother had been hit on the head, it would have hurt less than my brother's objection. Mother turned her head toward me, crossed her arms with an expression of offended innocence, and said theatrically, with feigned excitement:

“What do you think of him? He's even twisting my words! I would find it difficult to serve him, I would find it difficult...”.

She turned to David and said, emphasizing each word:

“A mother never finds it difficult to work for her children.

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Nor should it be difficult for children to work for their mothers. As the saying goes: “A mother can feed ten children, but ten children often cannot feed a mother...woe!”

Surely you understand that my mother went through with her plan. So one day a little Jew with a white freckled face, a red-blond beard, and the naive, innocent eyes of a little rabbi arrived. And - not at all in the manner of a matchmaker - he spoke softly and shyly of a suitable girl for David, who was just right for him.

She was from a middle-class family.  She was beautiful and kindhearted, nobility personified. She is also a businesswoman who helps her mother run the business. And she also had money.

David went to meet the girl, and when he came back, he was completely changed - he liked her very much.

“Mom, the matchmaker was telling the truth - she's a fine girl and seems to be a good soul, just like the matchmaker said. She is nobility personified. Well, Mom, what do you think? You saw her too, didn't you?”

My mother sobbed, wiped her eyes, and, as all mothers do, already felt regret because she sensed the loneliness her son would leave behind at home. So she hesitated and said softly, with motherly wistfulness:

“Yeh, she looks like a very fine woman. But why are you in such a hurry? You're still a young man, why are you so hot-headed? Do you really think I'm going to chase you away from home?”

David turns to me, shakes his head in despair, and says to me:

“That's how Jewish women are. Just now she's giving me a hard time because I don't want to settle down, and now she's doing an about-face. Mom! I like her,” David turned to our mother, “and you've been bustling about a big boy like me long enough. You said so yourself.”

Our mother sobbed even more, raised her hands to the ceiling in a tearful, pleading voice, and exclaimed piously:

“Riboyne- Shel- Oylem, Lord of the world, you rule the world, so it should be with Mazl! I am a poor widow, and it is time for me to have a little joy”.

And our mother fell into a silent weeping.

My brother David was getting married and had done very well. His wife's maiden name was Sore [Sarah] Fabrikant. She was the daughter of Malke Fabrikant, the owner of a shop in the “Bremlekh” that sold haberdashery and accessories for military tailors.

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They were wealthy, and Malke Fabrikant, a widow who was fat and obese and had difficulty moving, was supported by her children: her son Itshe, a capable, hard-working and very honest lad, and her two daughters, Sore, the elder, and Babshe, the younger. They came from a fine “balebatish” family, related to the Belous, who were well known in Białystok.

Sorele was a chubby, fair-skinned girl with a pair of gentle, loving eyes that shone with kindness, and it was hard to find another woman with such a good character. She loved my brother David very much. He was of medium height, slender, with a dark, weary face, lively black eyes, and a small black moustache that made him look like a personality.

He also dressed very well, and even on weekdays he wore a black pressed suit, tailored according to the fashion of the time, and lacquered shoes. These were left over from the good pre-war years, when he was a master weaver in the large piecework weaving mill of Nokhem- Leyzer Zeligzon and Sholem-Mordekhay Rafalovski - in Nadretshne Street, opposite the city baths, not far from the “Polkovoyen” Bes-Medresh.

Sorele used to look at David with a radiant smile and loving eyes, and what David said was law for Sorele. To her, David was always right, even when a conflict often broke out between her brother Itshe and David over a business deal.

Sorele's voice and speeches were as noble and tender as she was. You could give your life for such a woman, and my brother David gave his life for her in a very special, tragic way that shook Białystok.

My brother David started looking for a way to make a living. The entire textile industry had shut down. The steam mills of the factories stood cold and frozen. The spinning mills, ripping mills, weaving mills and looms were abandoned, rusted and dusty.

The war trade flourished: smuggling of bread, flour, cereals, salt, sugar, saccharine, kerosene, herring, jam, old leather, shoes for repair, German soldiers' biscuits, “makhorke” [cheap, high-nicotine tobacco] and tobacco - the devil knows what the yellow, dried leaves were made of - and poorly made soap with bruises in the middle from local soap makers.

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There were also smuggled socks with holes in them, knitted on worn-out circular knitting machines where the sock was pulled down by an old-fashioned weight that dangled around as if wondering what it was for. There were also sweaters made from pulled threads from old jackets in strange rainbow colors.

I saw some knitting machines at the home of the talented music conductor Rubin, whose wife had to support him financially by working on knitting machines. She was a hardworking, energetic woman with short-sighted, narrowed eyes, constantly running around the apartment in a hurry to take care of their three children.

All kinds of dried German vegetables were smuggled in, as well as dried potato flakes, flat salted herrings, as thin and wide as a board of wood, which had to be soaked in water for a week until they looked a little like a photograph of a piece of fish.

There was trade in everything and among everyone. Cheder boys and old Jews, little girls with red ribbons in their braids and old Jewish women with swollen feet they could barely carry, became war merchants, trading shoelaces, combs, sweet rare pears and sour apples for cider, bringing home their contribution to the living.

My brother David racked his brains as to how he could get into the “war trade” and support his wife. His easy years as a boy were now over and he had to face the serious side of life.

My brother's brother-in-law, Itshe Fabrikant, was a boy with great business skills and ideas, and was able to adapt to all conditions. He came up with the idea of setting up a candle factory in partnership with my brother David. Trading and manufacturing candles was not a bad business and my mother was beaming with joy. David was already married, David was already settled, and David was already a candle manufacturer with Mazl. However, some customers complained that on Friday evenings, after the blessing of the light, the candles somehow began to crackle, the flames began to rebel, jumping up and down in protest, until they went out completely in anger, plunging the room into darkness.

When our mother found out about this and received accusations about her son's manufacturing, my mother was deeply affected. She complained to David, but he wasn't to blame either and said mockingly to our mother:

[Page 181]

“Mom, do you think these are candles to burn? They're candles to sell!”

The truth was that there was often a shortage of cotton for the wicks, and the workers poured candles without wicks. But neither my brother David nor his brother-in-law Itshe knew about this. It was wartime, after all, and who cared about such trifles? The main thing was that they were candles that looked like candles. A lot of goods were made to be sold, not used.

But Itshe, my brother's brother-in-law, was too honest for that kind of income, and the two brothers-in-law didn't see eye to eye.

The partnership collapsed, and one day David came to our mother with the news that he, with Mazl, had given up the candle-making business and were already looking for another source of income. Mother didn't like it very much and said with a sigh:

“Mazltov to you! May you soon have other news to tell... what are you going to do now? Cut up ration coupons? Or become a partner in Horodishtsh's bank or Shmuel Tsitron's factories? If you don't have Mazl, you'd better not be born at all. What will you do now?”

But my brother David didn't feel like a failure - after all, he was not a candlemaker, but a fabric manufacturer. He had a background in textiles, and there were still a lot of hidden textiles in Białystok that hadn't been reported to the German occupiers. There was an illegal trade going on, with all the skill and Jewish zeal. So, what about him? Does he have no impulse? Has he become a lame tailor? Everyone trades in “korelekh” [bark], in “kastorke” [cheap suit fabric], in “drap” [coarse, two-ply winter fabric] - so he will trade too!

So my brother David became a war cloth merchant, where you had to know to whom you could sell without being denounced, where you could store the cloth without being discovered, and which carriers and packers to use at what time: With those who already had practical experience of when and through which roads the goods could be transported, and who were already practiced in the whole art of smuggling cloth.

It was not an easy job.

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