it at the ticket office. After standing for a dozen hours in a queue one could discover that they had run out of tickets. (Komandirs and people travelling using komandirovkas – travel orders issued by companies – were given priority at the ticket office.) Consequently, one bought one’s ticket at Orbis,705 [27] paying a few roubles more, or from illicit sellers near the station. Once one had the ticket, one had to come to the railway station three or four hours before the train departed. The queue to enter the platform would already be forming there. An hour before the train’s departure it would be announced through megaphones that the passengers of a given train could now walk onto the platform. That was immediately put into practice, but there was extremely strict ticket control (aside from the normal data, each ticket also specified the carriage number). A queue would form on the platform outside every carriage. Posadka, that is, placement of passengers in carriages, would not start until half an hour before departure, after an announcement through the megaphones. During all that time the people waited in the queues, the railway gendarmerie (Zhelezno-Dorozhna NKVD) would bustle nearby, searching all larger bundles. Every Pullman carriage has 96 seats (nobody was allowed [28] to stand) minus 2 coupes, that is, 16 seats for the service, guide, and cleaning lady, with passengers forbidden to enter those two compartments. As the number of tickets sold was always larger than the allocated number of tickets (80), those who were standing further in the queue had to remain on the platform. Making matters worse, the tickets were not always valid for the next train.
Having reached one’s destination, one had to walk between two rows of the railway gendarmerie, who stopped and searched every suspected person. Despite all those difficulties trade was blossoming, and the traders (mostly Jews) not only earned a living, but were also becoming rich.
It was only the deportation period that limited the trade to a certain extent, as everybody rushed to look for jobs, which guaranteed relative safety.
But several months later those who had not managed to find a job [29] took up trading again.
Interestingly enough, all Russian Jews know and use the Jewish language. Many of them were even shocked and outraged that I could not speak Yiddish.
