municipal institutions. Teachers in Jewish schools were replaced and municipal heders were liquidated, leaving only a handful of private heders.
When the Bolsheviks came, private trade was abolished. Jewish shops,and all such establishments in general, were seized by the state, and their former owners were left without work and had no money. They could not even withdraw their money from their own bank accounts, as banks were also seized by the government, and for attempting to withdraw money one could be accused of looting [10] state assets. Inevitably, therefore, the Jewish population and its classes experienced an economic transformation. Job opportunities varied and Jews found employment with different types of work. Favouritism played a primary role in obtaining employment. With a recommendation from a Communist Party member one was guaranteed any job. Itwas bad for those who did not have endorsements. Such people had to seek employment on their own. The simplest solution was to join a trade union, which could find jobs for its members, but unions only admitted people whowere already employed at some institution.
One young man, who did not belong to any union and did not have anyone important to vouch for him, went to see the mayor, asking him to help him secure a job. At first the mayor refused to even see the young man, then asked him about his previous profession, and then when he learned that he had been a shop assistant, he told him to ask for a job at the Food Trade. The young man approached the head of that institution, [11] who received him very coldly at first, telling him that he had no job available. He was surprised that the boy even dared to approach him, but when the latter replied that he had been sent by the mayor of the city, the man’s attitude to him changed immediately and the young man received a job in a warehouse starting the following day.
With regard to working conditions, it is generally not permissible towork more than eight hours per day, though one was also not allowed to leave the facility on one’s own. As a result, in a food store, where there was usually a lot of work to do, the staff worked up to twelve hours a day, and sometimes longer. Since eight hours was the work limit, those workers could not get paid for overtime. At the same time, they could not leave after eight hours, since someone arriving even several minutes late and leaving the workplace on hisor her own accord was a considered to be the enemy of the people and could be sentenced to long imprisonment or be exiled to Siberia.
VI L NA [ 22] 309
