painfully unpleasant memory imprinted itself on Mrs Kr.’s memory. The war forced her to make many a difficult compromise. In the past she had closely obeyed all ritual traditions. She would have rather died than eat “tref” food. Today she does not ask what fat is in the soup. She just wants to have some soup, the foundation of her and the children’s existence. But the war did not manage to corrupt her soul or ethic, as decency and honour are her main principles. She neither begged on the street nor stole, not even during the most difficult moments, not even in the face of the death of her family. She did not send her children onto the street either (her lady neighbour confirmed that). Doing the laundry and cleaning exhausted her. In the spring of 1942 she stopped working at that, as she simply could not perform such strenuous work.
She started trading vegetables again. She obtained the money for trade in a peculiar way. Every morning one of her lady neighbours lends her a certain sum of money, which Mrs Kr. needs to return the same day in the evening. She usually receives the money at 9 or 10 a.m. and then rushes to K. Street to buy vegetables. She buys them second-hand, that is, from a trader/smuggler. Obviously, she pays [162] more than those who buy directly from Christian smugglers, and this is why she sells her merchandise with a meager profit. But she prefers this to the risk of waiting by the wall on a meta, particularly because virtually every day there are new victims killed by young German soldiers or German gendarmes.
During her morning absence her 13-year-old daughter stands in for her at the stall outside the gate. Her 10-year-old son goes with her to buy the merchandise. He accompanies her on their way back home to make sure that nobody grabs anything from the basket that she carries on her back, even though it weighs about a dozen kg.
Mrs Kr.’s average daily earnings are 5−6 zlotys. How could she support the three of them considering the exorbitant price of 11−12 zlotys for a loaf of coupon bread?
Consequently, there are weeks when Mrs Kr. and her children can only dream about bread. They do not even eat their own coupon bread. Mrs Kr. sells her and her children’s rations, sugar, washing powder, and soap—anything just to be able to buy some wood and groats of the worst quality (9 zl per kg), which she sometimes adds to the soup that she cooks with potato peels that she gets from her neighbours for peeling potatoes. This potato-peel soup, “so
