In total, 21 cards as a monthly tribute. The vast majority of dead vouchers come from the times when it was possible not to remove the deceased from the registry and when many people left the ghetto for the countryside. Even now, however, it is possible to obtain such cards. Funeral offices, for a fixed fee of 3.50 zlotys, do not remove the names of the deceased from the registry. It is an accepted practice that the funeral home approaches the registration clerk regarding this fee. The largest amount of the dead vouchers are the cards of people who left Warsaw but were never removed from the registry. [Cards registered to] completely fictitious people are rare, and no new [fictitious] names can be currently registered. There were cases when clerks, in collaboration with the head of the registration office, kept a double registry, especially for Supply Offices. The present system of control [7] makes it impossible.
Dead vouchers are generally registered in several different shops, so as not to draw undue attention to the extra amounts.537 However, the shops are usually also paid to keep this secret with a certain number of vouchers. In one case a clerk named Szlamowicz, who kept registrations for several buildings on Pawia Street, registered dozens of vouchers in a single grocery shop owned by a man named Zylberberg (in the marketplace at Leszno Street 42). The shopkeeper demanded 4,000 zlotys for silence and, after long negotiations, he finally settled for three thousand.
Another issue concerned coupons for free ration vouchers.538 If a clerk reports vouchers after the assigned date, he pays a penalty of 50 groszes apiece, which he charges for tenants who have not paid on time. However, if instead of cash, coupons are used for payment, no penalty is charged for delay. Clerks exploit the situation by charging tenants for delays and then purchasing coupons at a price equal to a coupon fee, which they then submit instead of money, keeping the penalty for delay for themselves. Such a procedure brings the Naj family 400–500 zlotys per month. Currently, the coupon trade is paralysed because house stamps are now required on each coupon.
[8] The Naj family is not the most typical family of clerks. They have had their positions since before the war, and therefore have quite a lot of buildings; therefore, they can afford to keep a relatively small number of dead vouchers
