There, the entire distribution is carried out according to plan. In other places, on the other hand, warehouses are opened and people simply grab whatever they can get their hands on. It looks like looting.
The Gdański Railway Station—the goods yard.568 It is also here that, for the past three days, the people of Żoliborz and its barracks, Marymont, and the adjacent Jewish district have been getting coal. Hundreds of people come here and take as much as they can, depending on their means of transport (from dignitaries with their lorries to a hunched Jewish woman with a small basket from nearby Pokorna or Niska Street). Nonetheless, large piles of coal are still lying about. The sergeant guarding the place gives encouragement and urges people to clear out the yard.
Among those who take the coal, there are dignitaries of the state, the military, their wives (elegant until recently), civil servants, teachers, workers, peasant women and men, and a handful of Jews.
Everyone is focused on one thing only: how to get as much of the black diamond as possible to their new homes.
There are two stout women standing to the side, with bloated faces and broad chests, talking to each other incessantly and at the same time, greedily loading coal into a sack. They look like residents of the Żoliborz barracks. Next to them is a thin, haggard Jewish woman about their age, packing coal into a small hand-held straw basket.
For some mysterious reason, the women suddenly shout out, virtually in unison: “And what is she doing here again! To Palestine with you!”
I look up. The face of one of them is burning with rage. She stands with her legs spread, holding a large chunk of coal, [2] aimed directly at the Jewish woman. The other woman encourages her companion to act with strong words.
The Jewess, frightened, shrunken, with fear in her eyes, tries to explain in her poor Polish that it was not on purpose etc. . . . From what she is saying, it seems that she accidentally touched the leg of one of these women.
People around there persuade the Jewish woman to back away quickly, while admonishing the aggressive woman to control herself in the face of the grave circumstances.
