the side. “I wanna live! I wanna eat! I’m cold! Bread! Bread!” Every
pedestrian constantly hears these words. They impose themselves on even
the most indifferent passer-by. They get into your brain and heart. They
reach the bottom of your consciousness, never to be forgotten. They
will forever remain in your ears and heart. A simple song—fruit of the
miserable, perverted life in the ghetto—has become a symbol of hunger,
poverty, injury, and basic needs. Sprouted from the gutter and altered
by children, its lyrics have become the property of begging children.
Shocking in its simplicity, pushiness, linguistic incorrectness, and
offensive to good taste, it does prove what most absorbs the masses.
“I don’t want to give my coupon away.”67
“I want a piece of bread.”
***
Aside
from various exotic phenomena, another curious image strikes the
observer of street life in the ghetto. Some gates have been locked since
morning, closed prison gates. This analogy intensifies as crowds of
people swarm by the gates and policemen stand inside, making sure that
nobody goes in or gets out. One gate was closed to force the sluggish
residents to pay a fee to the House Committee.68
I conducted a survey on two streets during the first hour [and I found
out that] two gates were closed due to an unpaid garbage disposal fee
and that 3 other gates were closed due to a parówka.69
4 other gates (on Leszno Street 62 and on Nowolipie Street) leading to
the market were also closed to customers. Trade was halted in order to
extort payment of a Judenrat fee or a tax. The lives of thousands of
families stop for a whole day. People are detained at home unless they
bribe the policemen, janitors, or kolumniarze with a few zlotys.
