With a full stomach, but with many other deficiencies,
So as a family in drawers we slept in those times.
Twelve times each the twelfth hour chimed
Twice twelve families lived.
And like young puppies wept and howled
Thirty brats crammed into a house
And when they locked us in extended areas
Father of the Jew-stricken started to work.
The Jews he granted the job and kindness;
The police he helped with his cane.
On backs, on hands and on faces bestowed
The Jewish profiteers into beefsteak were beaten and maltreated;
And then were formed departments and divisions
And, smaller and larger and great favourites.
Whoever stood on Wschodnia Street, with bagels in his basket,
[2] Became a majestic manager.
Who his cobbler’s profession sorrowfully left,
He in a hospital became the Hilfspersonnel⁵²⁸
Who bankrupted three times each year with good humour
Paid no taxes, for there was a sequestrator.
As Venus from the sea foam, from fields of favours,
Rose the ministers: Praszkier⁵²⁹ and Szczęśliwy⁵³⁰
And then all worries bypassed us
Because fat postal packages came to us
And packages, and packages, fat, full of glory
They went to the stomach, each record a story.
Though times so wonderful, so plucky,
Opinions of the ghetto dwellers were not rosy.
528 (German) auxiliary staff; here probably: nurses.
529 Borekh Praszkier (1906–1989), merchant, activist of the party of General Zionists; in the ghetto, Rumkowski’s confident associate. Co-organizer, and from May 1940 director of the Dwelling Office (Housing Department); from November 1940 co-organizer of the communal and departmental kitchens; from May 1941, member of the board of the Kitchen’s Department, responsible for the organization and technology, from June 1942 its director.
530 See footnote 493.
