KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
German side, so they fled to our side, the Russian part of Poland. The people of our town became very concerned. The Russians occupied our area in September 1939. We children stood in the streets to watch their arrival. We understood Russian. We were not afraid. There were rumors that they would rob and hurt us; my father remembered the chaos in the aftermath of the Russian Revolution, in about 1922, so he hid our valuable posses- sions, including our sterling silver. Still, we stood in the street to watch, and we did not perceive any danger to our lives. The Russians had great military might, although nothing com- pared to the Germans. I remember being disappointed upon seeing the Red Army march into town. I was used to the elegant, if inef- fective, Polish army. Polish soldiers wore beautiful uniforms with shiny buttons, and carried beautiful leather knapsacks. Their horses were sleek and well-fed; they fed their horses better than they fed their soldiers. But the Russian soldiers came into Ludvipol like a bunch of poor slobs. Their bayonets were very long in comparison to the bayonets used by the Polish soldiers, which made the march- ing Russian soldiers look small in comparison. And they were so poorly dressed — they truly looked like slobs. We said, “My God, who are these shleppers?” (haulers, workmen). The cannons they pulled were so big that it was difficult for them to navigate corners. We stood there and watched their attempts. One Russian officer jumped off a jeep and came over to us. He opened up his knapsack, which looked like a shmatta (rag) in com- parison with the Polish army’s knapsacks. He pulled out a blue rock. With his bayonet, he broke off a few pieces and offered them to us, but we were afraid to take them because we did not know what it was: Russian sugar. We did not recognize it because we were accustomed to Polish beet sugar in pristine white cubes wrapped in beautiful packages; it was one of Poland’s export items. All he wanted was to give us children some of his precious sugar. We hurt his feelings by turning down his gift. The Russian soldiers could not get over how a small town like ours had so much wealth. They could not comprehend how rich
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