community, throwing them (literally) into bags on the tables, without getting receipts. Aside from that, “honest former social activists” collected valuables from people in their homes. The majority of collected items went into the pockets of the “collectors”. Despite everything, the contribution was col-lected on time.
In spite of everything, the Jews who had been taken from their homeswere not released.
Several days later, we were ordered to wear yellow patches (on our chests and backs) in the form of the Star of David.
On 1 July, the ghetto was established. (The Jews had five days time to move to the ghetto).
The Jewish community took housing allocation into their own hands (hands were greased),135 and a standard of three square metres for one per-son was established.
At the same time, the Jews en masse volunteered for work – trying espe-cially to get a job in the so-called “food bases”.
[2] Supervisors of these “bases” – German soldiers – were selected trusted men among the employees, who then provided workers for labour.
Food stored in those “bases” had been amassed by the Soviets, and the German soldiers, left unsupervised by any higher authority, used the products themselves and paid for work with them (sometimes twenty kilograms): sugar, flour, sweets, etc. per working day.136
Understandably, the Jews did everything they could to get such work. In a huge “base” called Stein’s Base,137 there was such a trusted man called Gurewicz, who charged those who wanted to be employed there large sums of money, of course in dollars.
In other bases, there were other “Gurewiczes”.
The desire to work in these “bases” was so great that sometimes the Jews, heedless of warning shots fired by the Wache, stormed the base, imposing their services. The soldiers were almost powerless. They marvelled that the Jews, whom they knew as idlers, wanted so much to work.
