Len's cousin

A Communist official recognizes the power of prayer

Joe: After about a year and a half in Siberia, they liberated us, because it was an agreement between the Russian government and the Polish government that all Polish citizens would be liberated, would be freed. So they freed us to go, well actually they took us to the Asian part of Russia, Kazakhstan. They took us to Kazakhstan. And we spent there the rest of the war years until 1945, when we came back to Poland.

Len: What did you do in Kazakhistan?

Joe: In Kazakhstan, that of course is farmlands. They produce wheat and cotton.

Louie: They spread us to the farms. Every farm took 2-3 families, and they put us up. The gave us housing and mostly some worked, some didn’t work, on the farms. They spent, oh, a few years on the farms. Then it was time to go back.

Joe: Well, the government there, is loosely knit. OK, at that time at least, there was little Russian control over them. The Kazakhs, they are Muslims. They are religious Muslims. They pray five times a day, and so on. And when we got there, I’m going to tell you an interesting thing that happened.

My father decided one day that he’s not working on the Sabbath anymore. Of course, there you have to work 7 days a week. So, we came, and they came [?] and “How comes the Berliner? Why aren’t you at work?”

Well, he said, “Well, today is my Sabbath, and I’m not allowed to work on the Sabbath.”

They said, “Oh, wonderful.” They sent over a few guys, and they took all the stuff that we had in the little hut there, and they threw it out in the street. If you don’t work, you don’t have a place to sleep, you know. So, my father picked himself up, and went into the next town, where there were some government officials. And he said to them, he told them the story.

So, the government official said, “Look, you know we are in war, and we must work 7 days a week. We must produce clothes and wheat and cotton so that we can send it to our soldiers.”

So, my father said, “Look, because there’s a war, I have to pray on the seventh day to God that our soldiers should win the war, because without prayer, they are not going to win the war.”

So, this official, he liked that, you know, that we are praying that the Russian soldiers should win the war. So, he sent back a message to the town that, you know, Berliner is OK. You should let him off. They misunderstood the message. They thought the message meant that Berliner doesn’t have to work altogether. So, from then on we became, like, private contractors. We were building these farms, but we weren’t working anymore. You remember that, Louie. What did we do after that? I think were like on private, we were building these farms and really getting paid for it.

Louie: Well, we used to, like, make bricks, bricks out of lime. Out of lime, yes, like a midget [phonetic]. And we used to build these huts. Father used to go, he used to go to the city, he used to bring things, and we used to go to the market. He used to bring tea, and lamps, and he used to do some hondling (Yiddish, merchandising). And they had a very poor commerce system, because everybody works for the government. No incentive to do things right.

Joe: Not only that, during the war they didn’t even pay you. So, my father said to them, “Look, I got 6 children, and they got to eat. You are not paying us. How will they eat?”

They said, “Do what everybody else does.”

So, he said, “What does everybody else do?”

“When you finish in the farm, at night, you will tie up your pants, and you fill up with wheat, and you take it home. They only thing is, remember one thing, don’t let us catch you, because if we catch you, you go to jail.”

And that was the Russian system. Everybody steals in order to live. Instead of giving it to you, they let you steal it.

Louie: Well, the village is not owned by somebody. It’s owned supposedly by all the people. All the people who live in the village own the village, so officailly you work for yourself, you see, so you are not supposed to get paid.

Joe: That’s the system.