head of the otdel truda made many exceptions for refugees with well-placed connections and even gave them jobs out of turn. Even bureau employees and good acquaintances of the officials got themselves jobs. Although I was disgusted by the system of patronage, I grasped at the slightest opportunity, but since I didn’t know anyone there, I had no access to the otdel truda. The only way out left to me was to move to the Russian interior, but something held me back and it was hard for me to make a decision. We went to the railway station where people wanting to go to the Russian interior were being registered. There was a long queue at the [21] window. Some ofthe people were registered and the remainder were told that registration had been suspended for a while. The refugees went away embittered because going deep into Russia was their only hope. It transpired that the Soviet authorities had been disappointed in the first transports of bezhentsy taken into the Russian interior, among whom had been thieves and other harmful elements. We did not […]238 from this tendency to stop transports to the Russian interior altogether, but the mere fact of stopping the registration met with an outcry.
My wife had some job prospects. She had a recommendation from Warsaw to a certain B., who had a small house in Brześć. His sons had fled from Warsaw and set up a furriery workshop in the house, and my wife got some part-time work there. A furriers’ cooperative was being organised, and B. was one of the organisers. My wife was promised that she would be allowed into the cooperative as a wykończarka;239 in the meantime, she worked on clothes. My sister, who was a bookkeeper, had the same job prospects as I did, but she had a place to sleep and could afford to wait for … a miracle. I had nowork and no place to sleep.
On the third day of my stay in Brześć, I got word that a friend of mine from Włocławek,240 Moyshe B., had gone to Baranowicze and got a positionas the manager of a cooperative. He could have got such a position only byknowing the right people. Given my situation in Brześć, I decided to go to
