or Saturday we organised pomoc81 for the unemployed, i.e. social evenings which helped them get by for months on end. That’s how it was in Warsaw, Łódź, and other places. Comrade “Stotir”82 explains to me that, in Soviet trade unions, workers are given no such aid, and that it isn’t aid anyway, because on Friday and Saturday [14] every barber shop has more work and needs more people to help out. I leave in a bitter mood, because by not giving me work they want to force me to register for departure to the Russian interior. And I, for the time being, have no wish to go. So I begin my trek around the barber shops, but with no result. I don’t get any work. W. intervened on my behalf and I receive a short letter of patronage from the commissar of the militia to Chmielnik, the commissar of the birzha truda, asking him to give me a job. But the militia men at the entrance to the birzhe, 19 Pierackiego Street, don’t let anyone in, saying that Comrade Chmielnik isn’t there and that they don’tgive jobs to refugees. I go into a barber shop (by chance), where they point out to me Comrade Chmielnik, the labour commissar, sitting there. I look at him and I’m sure it’s the same man who sits in the birzhe office. Meanwhile, people are standing all day waiting for Comrade Chmielnik and are not let inon the pretext that the commissar isn’t there. But I have a recommendation from the commissar of the militia, so I push past the militia man and enterthe office. The official shouts at me, but I tell him I have to see the commis-sar, Comrade Chmielnik. They reply that he isn’t there, and for my hooligan-ism they will immediately check my political background. I don’t get flusteredbut say that Comrade Chmielnik is sitting there at the table and I have a let-ter from him, and does it make any sense [15] that the commissar is there and people wait for days and are told that he isn’t there? It seems that my let-ter had some effect, because otherwise it would surely have ended badly forme. Chmielnk heard me out and put my name on the list, but for the time being no work has come of it. They send me to Piaski,83 on the outskirts of the city, to 30 Mazowiecka Street, where the owner tells me he doesn’t havemuch work and can manage without me for now.
