Voroshilov.427 I was also struck by the masses of refugees with which Białystokwas literally flooded.
There were three categories of refugees in Białystok:
(1) People with money;
(2) Speculators who smuggled in various goods and sold them at high prices to Soviet soldiers;
(3) Poor people who had fled from the German occupation.
The first two categories found lodgings [47] with no difficulty in privatehomes. People in the third category had no money for rent and were put upin prayer and study houses, synagogues, and the premises of societies andpolitical parties.
Better, decent people charged 50 roubles a month for a room. Unscrupulouspeople charged up to 200 roubles.
The speculators brought in haberdashery goods from the General Government, in particular socks and wristwatches, which the Red Army soldiers were keen to buy. Later, the speculators took advantage of the naivety of the Red Army soldiers and sold them ordinary children’s tin watches in place of the real thing.
Although the regime had nationalised private property, it nevertheless tolerated private trade and even made three sites in the city available for that purpose, known as tolchoki. There, private trading was completely unhindered.
Most of the refugees lived on their own [47a] money. The poor received support from the local Jewish self-help committee. There were also two soupkitchens which handed out thousands of meals a day. One of the soup kitchens was especially for the intelligentsia. Both were subsidised by the government.
An employment bureau had been set up in Białystok. I hung around in Białystok for two and a half weeks but didn’t get a job. So I left for Sokółka, where I found work as head bookkeeper for the state tanneries.
There had been five Jewish tanneries in Sokółka, and they had beennationalised by the Soviets. I became the head bookkeeper for all five tanneries.
After I had been in Sokółka for four and half months, the government suddenly carried out a survey of the refugees there. The survey consisted of
