KADDISHEL
A Life Reborn
participate in the games at school. We felt that everybody looked at us cross-eyed. It was embarrassing. We had to move yet again because the government needed the apartment for an official. This time we moved to a nice little house with a garden on the edge of town, which was actually more com- fortable than the first one they had put us in, but because it had the straw roof of a peasant’s dwelling, we felt degraded. This was a real slap in the face, to wind up living in a small farm house out- side of town. Nice as it was, I am sure my father was depressed and humiliated. Meanwhile, we were working behind the scenes to bribe some- one to get the number eleven taken off our identification cards. My Uncle Usher was always a doer, a tough guy, and at one point he succeeded in making contact with the Russian commissar in charge of the town. I do not know the details because he and my father were very secretive, but one day my uncle came and an- nounced, “Your troubles are over. You will be getting a new ID in one week and the number eleven will not be on it. You are being taken off the undesirable list.” Sure enough, we got a new ID, and no longer feared deportation. Then my father was summoned to the main government office and they said, “Why is a capable man like you hanging around and doing nothing? The state needs people with brains — managers and business people who can run things,” and they gave him an important job in charge of procuring lum- ber for the Russian state and managing a large lumberyard for the Russians. As the economy was nationalized, Jews were integrated into the Soviet system, with its expanded public services and bureaucracy, and some Jewish professionals were employed. At first, the eco - nomic situation seemed to improve. Even though the shops were closed down, cooperatives for different trades and crafts were es - tablished. Agriculture was the only area that was not collectivized right away. They tried to establish communal farms for the farmers, called kolhoz, but the farmers were very reluctant to join.
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