pointed to the perpetrator. As a punishment, he had to carry dung with hisbare hands, and each time he was beaten with a fire log. I do not blame him because I know from his later stories how hungry he was.
For five days I went to work with the hope that I would receive some bread, but unfortunately I received it only on the fifth day, and it was only 1/4 kilogram, because they [the Germans] had no bread themselves. In return, we were given a pass, which allowed us to shop in the city ourselves. Upon seeing Jews, Christian women immediately wanted to do transactions.
That German was very kind to me. Once, when I was standing in the kitchen, he came in and asked why I looked so sickly. He left and returned a few minutes later, bringing me two apples.
It was a Sunday. The weather was beautiful. We were standing with a friend, a student of the music conservatory, watching throngs of elegant women going to the church. Our German, who was standing with us, turned to me [31] and said, “And you? Why are you not going to church?” I replied, “Me, a Jew, to the church?” And then I added, “And actually, what makes us so different from them?” He became upset, “I do not know”, he said, “I do notknow”. And then, more and more fiercely, “I do not know! I do not know”. He grew more and more excited, and finally he said that actually we were beneath him, but he was also beneath them. Last year, he had fallen and broken his spine, but nobody cares, do they not.
After a while, I found a job as a cleaner in the Haus der Wehrmacht.56 Working with me were Lola, a former music teacher and some other womanwho used to be a clerk. About 250 people worked on that construction site,almost all of them Jews. I forgot to add that it was a construction com-pany for Haus der Wehrmacht. We had a collective pass. Instead of money,we would receive one kilogram of bread, marmalade or honey, sometimesa piece of cheese. Later, when they ran out of food products, workers would pay 50 groszes and communal soup was cooked. Wages were based on ratesset in advance, the same as for the Germans and Poles. Jews actually receivedonly 50 per cent, and the rest was to be retained by the Jewish community. The workers were divided into professionals, non-professionals, juveniles,and women, who in turn were divided into adults and juveniles. Women
