KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
Little by little, people found friends and relatives. Life was not too bad. My uncle got a government job with a Russian insurance company, and we all did everything possible to earn money. I sold cigarettes on the street. Every Monday, there was a farmer’s mar- ket, and all the farmers came into the big city to sell their produce. Aunt Chava used to cook her wonderful Jewish soups and sell them from a pail, with rolls, to the farmers. I brought food by bicycle to the market and helped out in whatever way I could. The Russians did not approve of private enterprise, but small-scale initiatives, such as selling soup, were not challenged. There were no schools at that time for me to attend. We waited while my uncle was making arrangements for us to go farther west. When we were in Rovno, my uncle and aunt purchased a used bed frame, made out of metal tubes, which could be dismantled. Whatever valuables we had, such as jewelry and American dollars, were put into cylindrical cloth bags, like links of frankfurters, and slipped into the pipes. This bed stayed with us for a long time. When we arrived somewhere, we would take the bed apart, turn the metal tubes upside down, and the bags would slide out. No one ever suspected what was hidden in the bed, and we used to joke about the bed being a border crosser. After I left my uncle and his family much later on, they were still able to cross borders, even when they were carefully searched, without their valuables in the bed being discovered and confiscated. Even the heels of their shoes might be removed during a search, but no one ever checked the bed frame. Near our apartment in Rovno, there was a passageway to the Russian soldiers’ barracks. One day, I saw some soldiers walking with a boy about my age who was dressed in a Russian uniform. I was curious so I spoke to him and he turned out to be Jewish. His name was Leon, or Eliezer, Rubinstein, and he was from Koretz. We had a short conversation, and I invited him to my aunt’s house. She was a very kind woman. Every time someone came who had no place to stay, we made room for them; we only had two rooms, so we used to take a door off its hinges and put it between two
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