I Ilya Magid

MY MILITARY TIME

That book could be written only with the help of Steven Siegel

11/1997
Boston

MY MILITARY TIME

OUTLINE

Preface
1. Escaping to an unknown destination
2. Plant 254
3. My Plant Career
4. Vignette

PREFACE

A brief word about me before Would War II.

My mother, Freda Chernikovsky, and four of her brothers lived in the town of Orsha, Belarussia. One of her brothers was the owner of a plant producing beverages. I was born in 1924. When I was maybe 2-3 years old, my mother and father were divorced. The attitude of her brothers about that divorce was unknown to me.

My father did not contribute to our support. Probably in 1928, when NEP (New Economic Policy) ended (it began in 1923), the government began to persecute business owners. Then my uncles moved to Leningrad. They sent us each month 50 rubles. (That was very small income). In the beginning of World War II I completed the ninth grade of High school.

The "People's Socialist" state did not give us any money.

1. Escaping to an unknown destination

On June 21, 1941 Fascist Germany attacked the Soviet Union.*
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*England and France began war with Germany early in September 1939, in response to Germany's attacks on Poland.
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Our town Orsha is located on the shore of the Dnepr River. It is located about 300 kilometers from the new border of Germany and the Soviet Union.*
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*In 1939 Fascist Germany and the Soviet Union divided Poland. The western part of Poland went to Germany and the Eastern part of Poland went to the Soviet Union. (Those parts became West Byelorussia and West Ukraine. Those western areas were united with the republics of the Soviet Union, Byelorussia and Ukraine.)
 
In 1940 Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia lost their independence and identification and became recognized as Soviet Republics.

One part of Rumania also was taken by the Soviet Army and became the Soviet republic of Moldavia.

In the winter of 1940 the Soviet Army attacked Finland. The reason was that the border of Finland was very close to Leningrad. The Soviet Government demanded that the Government of Finland move its border back. The Government of Finland did not agree with that. There was a very bloody war. The result was that part of the territory of Finland with town of Vyborg was occupied by the Soviet Army.

At that time were about one hundred thousand people were exiled from those territories to Siberia and Middle Asia. (Those people were owners of shops, other businesses, religious leaders, political activists, etc.) Many people died on the way or in exile.

Some people might say that the surviving exiled Jews were saved from the Holocaust by the Soviet Army.

Alternatively, some people might say that the Soviet Army saved all the Soviet Jews from the Holocaust. But at that time the Government never thought about the Jews.

I think that the defeat of the Soviet Union in the war with Germany allowed the Russian people to begin the "perestroika" in the 40's. They could not have anticipated Gorbachev in the 80's.

The Communist elite and the Jews needed only victory

G-d made the order of history.
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I remember the beginning of the war. All roads were overcrowded with refugees. They pushed wheelbarrows, traveled by cabs, and on foot. I saw a wounded soldier from the city of Minsk in hospital dress.

They came from West Byelorussia, Lithuania, etc.

There, in Orsha, was a square on which was the building of NKVD. (NKVD is the abbreviation for the words, "People's Commissariat of the Interior", that was the old name of KGB). People crowded there. Suddenly the crowd began to stomp on one person: "He is a spy". A soldier of the NKVD cursed these men for shedding blood and took the victim into the building of the NKVD.

If the refugees walked on the road and a plane appeared they left the road to hide in the bushes. If someone said that Germany did not attack the refugees (I think that was the truth), and another person repeated that to the NKVD, he would be denounced as a Germen spy.

But I saw, maybe a real spy. He ran alongside the fence and shot the people running towards him with a gun.

I remember I stayed on the bank of the Dnepr, which was located very close to the railroad bridge. A plane was flying above the bridge and the anti-aircraft artillery fired on the plane. One commander observed quietly that situation. Maybe the young adjutant was very nervous. He tried to move to the safety of a wall. People said that the exploding debris could wound somebody.

Once I was under a bombing. All soldiers fell to the ground. I ran home. My leg was trembling. The bombing was far from that place. The soldiers were cowards. Maybe later they acquired experience.

Why did we decide to evacuate? I think about that right now. We lived in a big almost all Jewish neighborhoods in a big two-story building facing the street. (Lenin Street house 43.) Around the courtyard were located maybe 4-5 one-story long buildings. They surrounded a big field. In our buildings lived the director of a shop. Maybe he had a short wave radio and understood the situation. Maybe he received information another way.*
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*Very few people had short wave radios. After the beginning of the war all people had to give their short wave radios to the Government "for storage".

In the period 1939-1941 the Soviet Government had a non-aggression pact with Germany. Hitler was the best friend; the newspaper wrote only good things about him. After the beginning of the war the newspaper wrote that fascists sought genocide for all the Soviet people. However in reality only Jewish and Gypsy people were intended for total annihilation.

Some Jews remembered the period of World War I (1917) when the Germans had good relationships with the Jews. A lot of Jews did not know the real situation and they did not evacuate.
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The director of the shop with a driver of a three-ton lorry with an open top came to our yard. The director's family and some other families were taken in the lorry. The lorry was overcrowded with people and baggage. My mother and I were located on the top of the lorry. We went out and left our paternal home forever. (Maybe the director of the shop knew my mother's brother.)

In the evening we arrived in the village, where there lived somebody named Stachvan. I think he was connected with the director of a shop. (It's strange for me that I remembered only that name.) He made a prediction of the outcome of the war based on whether a flower would be opened or closed in the morning. He told us, "We will conquer the Germans." (Maybe he was afraid to tell us any other outcome.)

We continued our way to the east. When we were close to one railway station the director of the shop told us, my mother and me, a railroad train had been made available for the evacuation of the people. This alleviated the condition of the lorry.

We began to go with two big suitcases in the direction of the station. The fascists bombed the station; we hid in a dark cellar. Somebody else was in the cellar. One person said to another about me, "That is a kike." Maybe I had a Jewish accent.

In the station there really was a train with cattle cars which the refugees used for evacuation.

We traveled for one month in those cattle cars to reach our destination. We did not have enough food. We did not have warm clothes and especially boots (valenki) for the winter. I looked like a black man because of the Engine's soot.

My mother and I were evacuated to the Urals, to the settlement called Fershepenuaz.

The settlement Fershepenuaz was a district center. Close to us there were settlements named Paris, Berlin, etc. In the War of 1812 with Napoleon, the Russian Cossacks* division entered in the Russian Army conquered Paris, France. The Cossacks later called Russian settlements by the names of European cities.
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*Once there were military settlements of Russian people on the border of the Russian states. In the Tsar's time Cossacks had some benefits. In the civil war in 1917 they fought against the communists. After the revolution the Soviet Government suppressed them.
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The District Soviet (Raisoviet) was ordered to receive the evacuees and to assign them to various households for shelter.

Very soon I was employed in the region's printing house. It produced maybe three thousand copies of the region's newspaper. It was a half page of one American newspaper. There was a draft of the newspaper. It printed the important articles from the Central newspaper "Pravda" and other articles with a Communist propaganda bias about the region's life.

I had to manually turn the wheel of the printing press. (I had not had much experience with physical jobs.) The better positions were filled by the local people. I earned income of 60 rubles a month. We could not live on that amount of money. The local people had apartments, kitchen gardens, cows, etc.

I do not remember any food shops, but only a shop with school and office supplies. We ate in the mess hall. Once it did not open at the scheduled time. I knocked on the door. A militiaman took me to a militia site. They held me maybe for four hours. They threatened me and then they dismissed me, as this was my first time being arrested.
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*The evacuated families, whose relatives were officers (not soldiers) in the army, could have received the officers' "attestat".
(Attestat was the families' entitlement to the officers' wages). Those families received those wages each month and maybe additional food.
Some other families had their own money, or jewelry, etc, that permitted them to have a better life.
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I remember one young person in the printing house (he had tuberculosis). He said,"All people have to leave their jobs, close all plants and go to war and conquer the Germans".

I became friendly with one boy (maybe older than I). He suggested to me to run away with him and become a tramp. I saw in the school shop how he stole by pulling a pen from the case near the salesperson.

Once I received 50 rubles from Risobes (like Welfare). I had to fill out many papers. My friend was a witness. He signed that paper as witness.

After some months I was fired from that job and was hired to weigh the crops in a kolkhoz. I had to take down the big dry sacks and put them on the scales and then another person stored them away.

In the beginning of the winter, I became ill with pleurisy and went to the hospital. I had a severe form of pleurisy. I could hear my heart beat only from the right side of my breast not the left side.

Very soon I discovered that my woman doctor was Jewish. She kept me all winter in the hospital.

In the hospital I lay by one other patient. He had a chronic illness. He told us, "I have 2000 rubles in savings in the bank. After leaving the hospital I could live well". He thought that was big money at that time. More importantly, he did not know that the Government did not give money back. All investments were frozen at the time of the War.

When spring began, the doctor discharged me from the hospital. I have forgotten her name.

During the time I was in the hospital, my mother died. She was 42 years old. Her doctor told me that she died from hunger, but the documentation stated another reason for her death. (It was forbidden to give a death certificate with that real reason.) My mother had visited me, but I had not understood her real situation.

I could not find my mother's burial place because I didn't have boots (valenki) for the deep snow. I had only summer shoes.

When I went to my home after the hospital, the hostess did not want to let me back, "Your mother died and you should die also". (I understood that dying in the lobby of her home would not be pleasant.) However she could not refuse me because the Raisoviet directed us to her.

I went to the military registration and enlistment office (voenkomat) and asked the military commissar (voenkom) to send me to military school or other services. He answered me, "Right now we cannot take you but before we could have".

Very soon I was mobilized "under komsomol proclamation"* to work in a military plant in the town of Zlataust.
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*Komsomol is a contraction of the words, "Young Communist League." Communists all the time loved loud phrases: one is "Lenin Komsomol is the vanguard of the building of Communism by the youth"; another is "under komsomol proclamation", but we were mobilized and did not have any other choices. Another time they told us about "the World Peace Council", "the World Congress of the Defenders of Peace", "The Soviet Union liberated the People of the World from the brown plague (fascists)", etc.
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The settlement boys, healthy with big bags of food and I, one Jew, sat in the train and we traveled toward our destination.

In the town of Chelyabinsk we had to change trains. I was left behind by the group. Probably they organized that intentionally. We had one common ticket for the whole group.

In wartime all stations were overcrowded. Near the station there was a big flea market where citizens bought and sold dry goods and food. Since I didn't have an individual ticket, I could not continue that trip. The train went without me.

After several days my belly began to swell because of hunger. Someone told me "You have to go to the Regional Committee of the Party (OBCOM Party) of Chelyabinsk. I went to them. They changed my papers and directed me to plant #254 NKB*, near the town of Chelyabinsk (15 kilometers from downtown.)
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*#254 is the number of the plant. NKB is the contraction of the words, "People's Commissariat Ammo". That name was similar to ministries in America. All military plants had the same contraction. They wanted to take the job of the spies more seriously.
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2. Plant 254

I was hired at plant 254 on March, 6 1942.

I worked in that plant until WWII ended. I learned later that it was an ammunition plant. At the plant grenades were filled with trotyl; the fuse of the shell, light bombs and hunting weapons were filled with other special materials. Shipments of grenades, fuses of shells, etc. came to our plant from other plants.

Our plant was continuously under construction. Before WWII there were built some brick buildings (two-story administrative buildings, two-story buildings for housing for the leaders, and many factory buildings.)

Construction of the plant was done by "construction battalions." Many of the workers in those battalions were deported Germans from the republic "German Volga".*
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*About "German Volga"

At the time of Tsar Ekaterina II she invited German citizens to relocate to a special farming area near the River Volga. During the Soviet time this area was an Autonomous Soviet Socialist Republic, "Germen Volga", whose capital was Engels. After the beginning of WWII all Germans were segregated. Men were exiled to an NKVD camp and women and children to other places, primarily Kazakhstan. Witnesses said, "There were left empty villages, with hungry animals." Russians from nearby areas gradually occupied the villages.
Later a similar fate overtook some other peoples: Kabardin-Balkars, Chechenchevs, Krimmer Tatars.
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Other was mobilized from West Belarus and Ukraine (they were not drafted in the regular Army at first.) There also were mobilized the Kazakhs* who were elderly.
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*The Kazakhs are native people of Kazakhstan, one of the republics of the former Soviet Union, and are not Cossacks.
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I saw a Kazakh sitting on the frozen ground (-30 C) with his legs spread apart while he beat with a pickax on the frozen ground. They laid pipes for water. Some of them became ill. Then they were sent home.

In the plant there worked girls and boys from the handicraft and factory-and -workshop schools.*
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*In the Soviet Union before World War II the system of handicraft and factory-and-workshop schools developed. In the handicraft schools a student studied 2 years, and in the factory-and-workshop schools only 6 months. The Government fed them. After graduation they had to work two years wherever the Government wanted them to go.
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Also old people were mobilized for those jobs. Later wounded soldiers from the war, no longer fit for continuous fighting were mobilized to work in the plant. Young men (such as I) had special documents called "armor", that meant they could not be drafted.

The plant workers were in a more privileged condition than the construction workers. They were isolated from us. I do not remember where they lived. We worked 12 hours a day, with one hour for lunch, 6 days a week. We received for a bread card 800 grams of bread per day. They gave us a product card each month, which entitled us to 600 grams groats, 200 grams fat, and 1000 grams meat. That quantity of food was divided into small portions. When you went to the mess hall you presented, for example, a coupon for 20 grams of groats, 5 grams of fat, and 30 grams of meat and received for dinner: a plate of fat-free soup and a plate covered with kasha. Each small coupon had a date so you could not receive dinner more than one time for each coupon.*
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*The sales people had to glue those coupons onto a paper for a report. The food that was sold had to correspond to those coupons. (That situation was for each kind of food: bread, meat, fat, etc.) Another person audited the reports.

There were different kinds of food cards: for children, for dependents, for white-collar workers, for laborers. The laborers' card provided maybe 2-3 times more food than the dependents' card. All the people tried to receive the laborers' card. Money was not so important at that time (see below).
I want to tell you that each plant, office, house management, etc. had a special division issuing the food cards. That division had enough workers all the time.

I think that the number of those workers connected with the cards was no less than the number of American farmers.
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Leaders of the plant (engineers and others) had a special dining room. They had special tickets to enter that room. The table was covered with a table cloth and they were served by waiters. Their meals were better than the meals of ordinary workers.

At first we lived in a dugout. There were two levels of planks for beds and 8 persons lived in a dugout. Some time later the dugouts were destroyed and wooden barracks were built. There was one accommodation for every 100 persons. During the winter in front of the entrance to the barracks there was a big mound of frozen urine. The barracks for women were divided into rooms for 4-8 people.

The plant security was made up of military personnel, mostly girls who had been drafted into the army. They hand searched each person entering and leaving the plant.

About technology of production the grenades were filled with trotyl chemical. Girls tied cotton wool over their mouths and noses. With the arms equipment they put trotyl into grenades. I think the fuse of a shell was filled up the same way. All girls who filled up grenades were painted with yellow color on their faces and the girls who filled up the fuses of shells were painted with silver.
The workers of that division were given additional food each day of 20 grams of butter, cup of milk, etc. That program was called "intensified dietary feeding (IDF)". As a joke, some person translated it," Die one day later" which coincided with the first letter of the same Russian words.
In 1943 in the fuses workshop there was an explosion. The roof of the building was blown off. Some 15 girls were burned to death and many others were wounded. Many NKVD cars arrived at the plant for investigation.

In 1943 the plant obtained military status. All leaders received a military uniform and rank of lieutenant, major, etc. They built a guard house for those who did not observe the rules on the plant. Our plant director was a colonel.
After the end of the war among the girls of the hostel there were many suicides. Leaders of Comsomol from the city of Chalyabinsk came to investigate the situation.

When the war ended, boxes of defective shell's grenades were found in the plant. The war effort would have been strengthen if this very large quantity of grenades had not been defective.

The director of the plant changed many times until the director became colonel Belenki. He was a Jew. He was director for about 3 years until the end of the war.

3. My Plant Career

In the beginning I was assigned to work in the big workshop where other people, primarily young women, and I inserted a bit of mica into fuses of shells with the help of a wooden stick. The night shift was very difficult for me, especially very early in the morning at the end of the work shift.

Later I was assigned to be a helper to a carpenter who made the wooden sticks for the workshop. He was a vigorous man from a nearby village.

A container of soup was delivered each day to the workshop. They gave each worker a plate of soup, (without a food card) in exchange for a special ticket. The foreman gave that ticket each day to each worker who came to work. The ticket was very simple. It was stamped each day with a different number. I reproduced secretly that ticket. My boss and I then could eat a lot of plates of soup (without bread).

A few times the form of the ticket was changed and I could not duplicate that ticket. The relationship with my boss deteriorated. He began to display anti-Semitism to me although there seemed to be nothing Jewish about me except the designation on my passport.

I wrote a report about that to the personnel department. They sent me to work in a gas station.

The gas station was located outside the plant. It was surrounded by barbed wire. There were some metal barrels with gasoline and around the perimeter there were bottles with nitric acid, sulfuric acid and acetone, etc. Inside that area there was also located the gas station of the construction plant.

Inside the area there was also a wood shed with stove. That was very important in the winter time. The gas station was operated only by me, one guard and also one man from the construction organization. Their gasoline barrels were located close to us.

When a car would come to receive gas I would use a rubber tube to pour the gas from the barrel to a can, then I would pour that gas into the tank of the car. When the barrels of gas became almost empty I tipped the barrel to pour gas into the can. When I went home the guard had to watch our barrel and every thing else.

All the time I wore a quilted jacket and quilted trousers soiled with oil. We heated our oven in the following way. We put a long log into the oven. When part of it was burned up we pushed the log further into the oven so the next part could burn. Afterwards we put in another log. Usually we sat around the oven to keep warm.

Once when I sat huddled around the oven a mouse ran inside my clothing through the open fly and began to run around my body. I had trouble trying to get it out of my clothes and to kill it.

In another case, a cow pushed its horn into a bottle of concentrated nitric acid and when the acid came in contact with the surrounding wood chips, a fire started. (The bottles were in open wooden boxes cushioned by chips). Yellow smoke began to spread. I took the fire extinguisher and put out the fire.

If I had not acted very quickly, the fire would have spread to other bottles. The poisonous cloud spread over the gas station which could have caught fire. Nobody ever praised me for this incident. (Maybe if somebody had investigated that case, the cow in the dangerous storage area that would have been bad for my supervisors).

Unwisely, our wood shed was located about 50 yards from the gasoline barrels and fire sparked from our stove's chimney could spread in all directions.

In another case my guard drank acetone instead of vodka (He couldn't buy vodka.) He took acetone from bottles in our storage. He slept several days after drinking. At night he slept in the shed, and during the day we hid him under a bush where he slept all day. There he was hidden from a leader who might have punished him.

My co-worker from the building organization was German. He had been deported from "German Volga." He had been a school teacher. Our plant had more privileges than the construction unit. He told me later, that my guard had sold him a barrel of gas for a pair of pants.

That German colleague suggested to me that we move together to the nearby village (about 3 kilometers from the job.) We lived in a house with a landlady and her daughter. She was a good woman. My friend had a dream about the hostess, but she had a lover, who came to visit her very often from Chelyabinsk.

The construction organization had a truck which we began to use to deliver firewood to the villagers. Once I remember that we secretly went to the forest at night to the forester who allowed us to deliver wood to the villagers. We received as pay one wagonload of frozen cabbage. That frozen cabbage lay in the yard all winter. Our landlady prepared in the oven for us one kettle of cabbage each day. Very soon my colleague, the German teacher, left that house. When I had eaten all the frozen cabbage, I went back to the hostel also.

Shortly after this one trade leader found me. They gave me tickets for vodka. I had to fill their cars with gas. Those tickets I could sell or buy the vodka which I could sell. The Government price of vodka on the ticket was low. However, a short time later my good life ended. Maybe my supervisors began to suspect me*.
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*That was a big crime in war time. I knew another case in our plant of a man who tried to steal from the plant about 1/4 pound of glue. The glue was mostly starch which he could prepare for eating. He was caught by the guard when he exited from the plant. There was an open military court. He was sentenced to join a "penalty company" on the war front. They sent them into a dangerous situation. A majority of the soldiers were killed in that company. But the soldiers, who were wounded, after leaving the hospital, would be assigned to regular companies.

We heard that if members of a "penalty company" retreated, a special line of soldiers of the NKVD behind them killed them.
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I think that my supervisors did not send me to court because the court could have investigated the situation in the gas station. That would have been dangerous for my leaders.

The leader sent me on a business trip to the town of Towda. My task was to expedite rail shipment of wood to our plant.*
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*In the Soviet time each plant had a production plan which they received from Moscow (from Narcomat, which after the war became a ministry.) That plan designated not only what to produce but also to whom and when the plant had to send their production. In the Soviet practice if they wanted to change slightly the time of receiving production they sent a representative of the plant to the other plant with vodka or spirits, and they arranged for the schedule change informally. (You had to have all documents also).

During the war there was organized the State Committee of Defense under the leadership of Stalin. That Committee could change a plan and order what it had done. If the order was disobeyed, those culpable would have been arrested and maybe executed.
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Our plant was not scheduled to receive lumber until the fall. But we needed move lumber much earlier in the spring.

The town was located in the north. Prison camps were there. I took with me some bottles of vodka. It was winter at that time. I lived in a house with a hostess. If I poured water on the ground, it became ice. There worked the prisoners. Somebody showed me the man to whom I had to give vodka. Then he promised to help me. When I ran out of vodka he told me "they sent the wagon with wood according to plan."

Once I was stopped by an impressive-looking man on a cart with a driver. He was dressed in a rich fur coat. Maybe he was the commander over the prisoners. He checked my documents.

I did not complete my task. When I came back by railway to my plant I was checked by the military patrol. They spoke among themselves, "He has tuberculosis."

At the plant the leaders changed my job. They assigned me to the market division. (Late, I found out, that the job at the gas station was given to another Jew. He lived in the barracks with his family, wife and two children.)
They directed me to the storage of finished production. Inside the area of the plant that department had a wood shed with a stove. (That was very dangerous according to safety standards). Maybe 5 persons sat there. The leader of that service was an old partisan* and a communist. (He had a daughter. I thought he had a problem with her. She worked in the city garden of Chelyabinsk as a cashier).
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*Partisan was a person who fought with the communists in the Civil war from 1917-1922.
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I never understood what other persons did. I remember one old person who wrote very beautiful calligraphy, and he very often fell asleep at the table. I thought those peoples appeared to work only because wanted to receive the laborers' food carts. Sometimes there appeared my supervisor. Later he became a lieutenant. What he did I did not know.

I became the leader of a horse and four men. We had to ride on a horse-drawn vehicle to the division of the plant to pick up the day's production. Each day we added to the storage of finished production (primarily of grenades.) On occasion they provided wagons onto which we had to load the grenade boxes. The wagon then went to a military front. Very often we did the last job at night. That was a long procedure especially in the night. When I approached the storage area, the guard cried, "Who goes there?" He raised his machine gun. I stopped. He called his guard and with other guards they all went to the storage area. I opened the storage. That procedure took 1.5-2.0 hour.

We acted differently. A guard was walking around the long storage building. When the guard went to the other side of the building, I would go to my storage area and break the seal on the door. Then I opened the door. The guard became embarrassed. He knew me. We explained to him that we loaded some of the grenades onto the railroad car very quickly and sealed the door. That procedure occupied 0.5 hour and we went home.

In free time we warmed ourselves near the stove in our wood shed.
All the time my workers sought spirits. We could not bring spirits with us because that was dangerous. Before we left the plant we drank spirits. I remembered one case. One of my workers was a wounded soldier. He did not have part of his skull. When we entered the plant we had to show a pass. That document had a number. The guard put that document in a definite cell. My worker said to a guard, "B Zlatorev". Zlatorev was his name. He forgot the second part of the number, "B 43". I helped him to remember his code.
Once we helped the boss (woman) of the spirit station. After some work in this station she gave us a big can of poor quality spirits (98 proof.) Each one from my group drank from one can. We did not have water or any food to eat after drinking the spirits. I did not have experience drinking poor spirits. After drinking I opened my mouth and couldn't breathe air. It was funny. My workers thought me later," You have to exhale air from the breast; then you have to drink sprits. Then it will be good".

Another case, the chief gave me a helper. That person had been released from prison. He was arrested before in our plant and came back after being released from prison to our plant. I think he had a job in a storage facility for consumer products where he was a thief. Together we often left the plant to go to lunch in the mess hall. Once when we were there somebody near us pointed to another person who was wearing his boots. That person shouted, "That is my boots!" Recently his house had been burglarized. That other person suddenly ran off. Very soon my helper and I were called to the police to identify the burglar. When we went to the meeting, the helper gave me advice, "We have to say that we do not remember." I agreed with him. The policeman led us to the basement in a big building in Chelyabinsk. The guard asked the policeman,"Are they new prisoners?" The policeman answered,"No, they are only witnesses." They showed us maybe ten healthy men. We did not recognize them. Very soon the assistant left.

Finally in 1943 at the plant there opened an evening school. Before WWII I had finished 9 grades. I entered the 9th grade again. (I understand now that it was not necessary.) I had a big problem with Russian writing. I had studied before WWII in a Belarusian school. The languages were very similar. In Russian writing I made a lot of mistakes, because I wrote some words as in the Belarusian language.

Once in the school after class I saw that teenagers mocked the school caretaker. I interceded in her defense. The teenagers sprayed me with ink. Than they began persecute me. When I went to work they assailed me. They cried Jew. Once when they assaulted me, I stabbed slightly one of the gang with knife. Then I wrote a report to the personnel department about that case. After that the gang left me alone.

I graduated from the last (tenth) grade. On final exams I had difficulty with Russian composition. I especially wrote a composition of only one page (my teacher checked me secretly}, and I received only a grade of 3 (on a 5 point system.) On other subjects I had excellent marks.

In the last year our division was joined with the financial division and named the financial-market division. A Jew named Kontorovich, a very intellectual person, the leader of the old financial division, became the leader of the new division. He had been evacuated from Kharkov and dreamed of returning. He tried to influence his superiors to persuade them to promise our division a plot of land. A tractor dug up this field. Each of our workmen received a plot of land and potato plants. He planted his own and harvested his own. Then he delivered those potatoes to a common storage area and received a receipt for the quantity delivered. That happened in the year 1945 when the war with Germany ended.

The day of victory of WWII was a big holiday. They gave us a ticket for a half liter of vodka and packets of food (basic American).

I entered the Chelyabinsk Mechanics-Metallurgist Institute.

Those potatoes were to become a great help to me in the institute in the coming years of greater hunger.*
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*After World War II the "cold war" began and the USA discontinued the "Lend Lease" program and other kinds of assistance to the Soviet Union.
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All persons had to continue the job in the plant. (Right now I understand they were preparing for war with Japan.) The plant also began to produce peace-time production. From defective shipments of empty grenades they made inkwells and also metal one-liter cans of lacquer sprits. They sold these in our shop. Workmen had to fight to buy lacquer spirits. (Government prices in the shops were cheap.) When I visited my plant I saw an adaptation on the furnace with some primitive apparatus for distilling lacquer spirits to make the potable 98 proof liquor (sprits).

All workers of the plants were presented a reward, a medal "for Labor in the Great Domestic WAR 1941-1945".

My Loving Odyssey

I met one girl from the hostel. When I was ill she came to visit me in my hostel. I expressed an interest in her but she was not interested in me. I was very direct with her but I did not have success.

Another case: The boss of the spirit station delivered a message through my workers that she wanted me to go with her to make brooms. (Near the spirit station were located the bushes which were the source for making brooms. I did not answer her request.

I was also acquainted with the engineer of the workshop. She was older than I. I very often received a parcel of hunting weapons. (I think it was for the elite.) I involved a complicated procedure. I spent about 3-4 hours at it. I had to leave the area of the plant and go to the plant offices in order to apply for the documents. In the last step of the procedure I went to the engineer to receive the hunting weapons. They were located in a special cellar. She could have sent other workmen for the weapons but she went herself with me there. We were alone. I was very confused. I thought she had the same feeling.

Later she married a big fat manager of the supply division of the plant. His last name was Durnov translated in English as fool. I think that was the best decision for her.

4. Vignette

During my time in the military I did not see serious epidemics. I think that the reason was the many public baths. They were very cheap and each person was given a small piece of soap. You had to place your clothes in a special oven. After your bath you received your own clothes with dead lice.
* *
I remember using matches and lighters very rarely at that time. A spark began to smolder from a previously burned cotton cord. (The spark was produced by two pieces of flint.) From the smoldering cord you can make smoke. If you wanted to make a real fire, you had to take a small piece of newspaper and blow on it. That piece then caught fire. I did not see cigarettes. All smokers smoked "samosad" (home-grown tobacco.) It was measured in glass jars in the flea market. Very often some people bartered a piece of bread for "samosad". Smokers made cigarettes with a piece of newspaper and "samosad".

* *
Near our plant there were built some new plants (metal production, and others.) I think they were built by prisoners and construction battalions.

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When I lived in the dugouts, near us (about 2 kilometers) there was located a dugout settlement of Polish Jews. I did not go there. Later that settlement was moved to another place.

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Sometimes leaders got into hot water, when they tried to steal spirits. Once, a manager of a workshop was caught near the exit with a ten liter bottle of spirits in his car. The higher officials overlooked that case.

Russian people were very ingenious in stealing spirits. For example: a full truck-tank filled with spirits came into the plant. The spirits was piped into the spirits station. When an empty tank left the plant, the guard opened the lid of the tank and looked inside. If the tank was empty, he let it leave the territory of the plant. Maybe the driver or another person had attached a bucket in the upper corner inside the tank. When the cistern was filled, the bucket automatically filled also. When the tank was emptied from a bottom tap, the bucket stayed filled. Then the tank would be allowed out of the territory of the plant. Somebody took the bucket and put it in another can. The bucket was placed again inside the tank. (I think somebody told the guard about that procedure.)

* *
In 1943 a volunteer army division was formed in the Urals. One person from our plant, the chief of the storehouse, went as a volunteer. Another person said that if the chief had not gone into the army he could have been sent to prison, because that storehouse was a big failure. (This storehouse was outside the territory of the plant. There was no guard. Some things there were needed by the people, for example: overalls, smocks, fabrics, paint, etc.) I think the other department heads helped him steal the things from the storehouse. At that time there was a proverb: "War will cover up all defects."

* *
In the hostel there lived a Moldavian Jew together with us. (He was "set free" from the Soviet Army. He was 'realized' the Soviet army in 1940 yeas. There was forbidden serve in army.) He could not read and write in Russian. That was very strange for us. (Maybe he had been educated in other languages.) He worked as a stoker in a boiler house. For us that was not a prestigious profession. In the summer he grew potatoes. There was a lot of free land. In the fall he harvested them. He dug a vault under his bed. (In the hostel there lived maybe 100 people.) He put a lock on the vault. He became a wealthy person. For a potato he could buy everything. He wore the best suit. He married a nice girl. Other people thought that the war would end very soon. The Soviet people always believed that the government would give them everything.

* *
We were very happy when we received the American cans of stewed pig meat, and we were not happy when they changed that to American frozen salmon that did not satisfy our hunger.

* *
I lived with one man in the hostel. All the time he sat on his bed at night. In our hostel a chairman of a kolkhoz arrived. (He had been transferred to our plant.) He brought his son, 12 years old, with him. His family from the village helped him with food and money.

This man in the hostel very often played cards as a partner with the chairman. Sometimes the chairman lost all his money and food ration cards. One night I felt a small movement under my pillow. I kept my pens with my bread card under the pillow. I saw that my card was missing. (The bread card had only the 31st day left.) I saw that man from my hostel and I told him to put my card back in its place. He threatened me, but he put the card back. The next day another one of my fellow tenants asked me about the incident of the previous the night. I answered him, "nothing happens." Very soon that man left our hostel. I saw him later in flea market. He looked humiliated.

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I heard about one case: A Jewish boy, who worked as a mechanic, threw a hammer at another man who had been insulting him with anti Jewish epithets.

* *
When I lived in a dugout, my neighbor disappeared very often at night. Later I learned that he played the cord game 21 in one of the other dugouts. I knew also another player, who, with a horse drawn wagon, delivered food from the storage facility to the mess hall and shops. He was lucky at cards. (People said that he ate butter with a spoon.) After a short time he lost everything. He was laid off also from his very good job. Maybe he lost his food cards in the game also. He deteriorated gradually. He reached his lowest point when he began to lick plates in the mess hall. (Other people named those persons "Parachutists.")

* *
About money: We received wages of about some hundred rubles per month. In the shop with a ration card we paid 20-30 kopeks for kilogram bread. If you sold a kilogram of bread in the flea market you could receive around one hundred rubles. One half liter of vodka cost about 150 rubles in the flea market. Other things in the flea market cost the same inflated price.

(If we had had an American copy machine we could have copied bread cards very easily. That way we could solve for the Russian people the problem of food during the war.)

* *
Once, Tito, the leader of Yugoslavia fighting against fascists, came to Chelyabinsk. We, young persons, were placed on an open wagon and we went to Chelyabinsk. On the way I saw another wagon with young people from other plants driving in the same direction. I did not remember meeting Tito, but I remembered the overcrowded wagon with girls and boys.

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About flea markets. In Russian language this term is "Borocholka" which translated in English language means trash market. The flea market was open only on Sunday. The perimeter of the flea market was occupied by small vendors. Their merchandise was located on the ground. The vendors sold home-grown tobacco (samosad), old clothes, mechanical devices, frozen milk in winter, etc.

Both the vendors and customers walked around within the perimeter. The vendors carried around their goods on their arms. They sold bread, vodka or maybe only a coupon for vodka, potato rolls, government savings bonds, clothes, handmade children's clothes, etc. It was a congested place.

There was a lot of crime. For example: The one hundred ruble bond was sold for ten rubles. I saw two partners, who cooperated in crime. The first person bought the bond from the seller. The second person stood behind that seller. The first person slowly examined the bond. The second person checked quickly the number on that bond from a small notebook to determine if it was current or not. They tried to buy only winning bonds. Then they went to the bank (sberkassa) and received about 100 or more rubles for a bond for which they had paid only 10 rubles.

People played a game with three cards, and thimbles, and string and other games. The players from the base were wounded soldiers. Once an old woman sold a nanny goat, and lost her money in the game of three cards. I was also deceived. When I sold something the buyer folded the ends of the banknotes and counted them at double their value. He gave me only one half the prices.

Very often the militia organized round ups. They checked documents of people.

I visited a flea market after War II in Leningrad. It functioned until about the 1960s and then it was closed. We could buy transistors, hammers, pliers, footwear, clothes, etc. The vendors stole things from the plants. (All plants were government owned.) The customers could not buy those things in the shops.

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