offices of Mr Urwicz et consortes,491 2) passes were distributed between minor wholesalers and even rag pickers, who could travel freely in the countryside just like before the war and collect rags.
[3] However, life turned out to be more powerful than the plans of a powerful concern and various “Rohstoffzentralen”492 in Warsaw. First of all, the highest caste of rag traders, major wholesalers, quickly learned to take advantage of their position, using their direct access to the Germans to “influence” them. All lower-level rag traders are completely at the mercy of this handful of people, who simply started selling passes for their own benefit.
At the same time, German headquarters introduced official prices for the rags they were buying. They did not correspond in any way with actual retail prices in the city. Before long, the retail rag trade in Warsaw, which had never been a particularly good source of goods, was not profitable at all.
Rag pickers who were unable to get adequate prices from subsequent buyers gave up the rag trade altogether and moved to the more profitable junk trade. The green band,493 which until then had been the subject of longing of rag collectors, lost its appeal entirely.
Minor wholesalers who received a pass to travel in the countryside (within the Warsaw district) could make a living only because they sold some goods (such as scraps of fabric suitable for tailors or cap makers, etc.) on the open market, thus compensating (with an adequate surplus) for the losses resulting from differences between the price they paid and what they received at the headquarters. However, in the end, this also becomes uneconomical, and some minor wholesalers are taking up physical work as labourers in rag-collection houses.
This issue was exacerbated even further with the sealing of the ghetto, when the Aryan district, where rag pickers used to obtain rags, was walled off, and trips to the countryside became quite difficult due to the limited number of passes available.
Thus, the pre-arranged organisational structure of rag collection, which was subsequently expanded with a disinfection plant on Grzybowska Street, did not yield the same results as the rag-processing company could, given
