After long days and nights of wandering among the legions of homeless and wounded soldiers, who were to be found in all the great train stations of Minsk-Orsha-Smolensk-Moscow, I finally arrived in der great Russian city of Yarolsavl, which lay on the very banks of the Volga. Here I hoped to find for myself at least a temporary "city of refuge".

If not for my great misfortune....that my baggage had been stolen, with my Sabbath and my winter clothing, with my mother’s pillow, among whose white feathers was hidden my greatest treasure...my writings, which had first seen the light of day in my quiet, beloved village of Rakov....if not for that great misfortune, I would have now lifted my hands towards heaven, and given thanks to the Lord of the Universe, that he had not withheld his grace from me, and thereby brought me safely to my destination.

But on account of my great misery over the loss of beloved manuscripts, I was unable to feel the least bit of joy at my safe arrival to my place of rest. I convinced myself that I would have been better off, if I had fallen into the hands of the Russian police, gendarmes, and secret agents, who had followed me everywhere I went, rather than to have lost my writings in such an unjust manner.

I felt now like someone whose house had burned down in the middle of the night, and who was standing outside in his shirt....that was how I now felt as I stepped out for the first time into this new, strange city...

Still devastated by my painful loss, I showed up, not dead and not alive, at the home of my cousin Fanya and her husband Samuel (Shmul) Voltchok, both of them former Hebrew-Russian teachers, who had, up until the war, been occupied with the spreading of learning among the Jewish children of Lithuania.

My cousins stared at me in shock, as though they were seeing a corpse who had just risen from the grave. Such was the dreadful impression I must have made on them...in addition, it is quite possible that they did not relish the prospect of having one more mouth to feed...

And so the very next morning, when it was still dark outside, my cousin, Samuel Voltchok, hauled me out of bed, to take me with him to the "samo-oboronneh".

This so-called "samo-oboronneh" had nothing to do with the earlier self-defence organizations, that had been established by heroic Jewish youth in the Pale of Settlement during the days of the pogroms, in order to protect Jewish lives and property from the wild, frenzied Russian hooligans and pogromists.. The present-day "samo-oboronneh", to which my cousin had brought me in search of a job, was of an altogether different nature. It was one of the biggest leather factories, which on account of the war had been evacuated all the way here from some village in the Province of Vitebsk, along with its dozens of Jewish workers and tradesmen. It belonged to a rich Jew by the name of Harkavey. In this great leather factory, which was housed in a former military barrack, there now worked hundreds of Jewish homeless from Lithuania and White Russia, as well as local Russian workers and landless peasants. Here, raw hides were converted into finished boots for the army, and wetsuits for the navy.

This was where my cousin worked...here, this son of a Rabbi and a former Hebrew-Russian teacher had been transformed into a worker, a bootmaker. And in recognition of his status as an essential worker, a "blue ticket" and a father of children, he was excused from having to go off to war to be killed or crippled. Mind you, he never seemed to be without bandages on his fingers....by this was by no means the fault of the factory, which everyone wanted to work for...rather, the needle from his sewing-machine was to blame, which, on account of his short-sighted eyes, used to sometimes land on his thin, white fingers instead of the hard black leather.

When the foreman, with his ample Jewish nose, led me into his department in the great Harkavey leather-factory, he called out with a joyful voice to all his workers, as though he had come to bring them some wonderful news:

"Hey, guys! I’ve brough you a fresh "nerd"! Another "geek"! Taytsh, Daytsh ("German"), whatever you want to call him!"

"Hu-rah! Hu-rah!" the whole crowd erupted in an enthusiastic chorus of mockery, which resounded throughout the large, half-dark department, where they smoothed and flattened the raw leather.

Leaving their work-stations behind, my new co-workers gathered around me, with roled-up sleeves, and with black, swarthy faces, with hands covered in glue, pitch, and tar....they gathered round for a closer look...and then, they all took their turn making a joke at my expense):

"Welcome, Mr. German"!"

"Congratulations, we have a new "rabbit"...."

Suddenly I was being bombarded by missiles of wet, crumpled-up pieces of leather. My hat was knocked off my head, and soon lay on the ground a trampled by dozens of feet. And to protect myself from the unexpected wet bobms, which rained down on me incessantly from all sidess, I instinctivly buried my head between my shoulders and covered my face with my elbows. But it helped very little.

Seeing how I cowered in helplessness, the crowd grew all the more raucous. Voices, shouts, laughter in Yiddish and Russian surrounded me:

"Get him!"

"Rub his chin!"

"We don’t need no Germans here!"

"Give it to him!"

"We have enough "intellectuals! Nerds and geeks!"

I stood there baffled and confused. Such a black, hostile reception was altogether unexpected, especially coming from Jewish workers, from my own brothers. I couldn’t figure out what had happened to me. It seemed to me that I had fallen into a dark purgatory, among evil angels, wild creatures, devils who would soon finish me off altogether....

Finally the supervisor ordered them back to work. He spoke to them half in Russian and half in Yiddish, in mock anger:

"Enough, children, back to work!"

I felt that I wanted nothing more than to run away from there as quickly as possible...but where to run, as nowhere would I find an escape, other than to give myself up into Gentile hands? I remained where I stood, cowed and frightened, my head to the ground, as though I were still protecting myself from the dirty, wet projectiles. My cheeks burned with shame and disgrace. And in my mind, I was tormented by the dreadful question:

"Among this wild bunch of workes, who ridicule and lord over a lonely helpless person with such wild abandon, how long will I be able to endure?"

My whole body shuddered.

I was awoken from my dark musings by a shout from the same supervisor: "Hey, nerd, what are you doing standing there like a clay Golem? Loosen your tie and get to work!"

He threw me a large, heavy leather apron, and shoved into my hands a kind of implement, which my fellow-workers referred to by the strange name "doggie". They stood me by a long table, facing the wall. On both sides of me there stood other such "nerds" as myself, older and younger, busily softening the raw leather with their little black "doggies".

I was, however, so dis-heartened from the fine reception that I had just received, that I didn't even notice what they were doing, or what I was supposed to do with the little black "doggie". And in any case, my hands were shaking so badly from agitation, like the hands of an epileptic.

Fortunately, at this point I was rescued by my neighbor, a homeless Lithuanian Jew who stood just to my right.. He was a man in his forties, tall and broad-shouldered, with a pair of thick glasses in gold rims on his hooked nose. His face was dirty and soaked in sweat. But depite that, you could recognize in him the signs of an intelligent man.

In a fatherly way, he explained to me the meaning of the so-called "greeting", which those wild creatures had conducted in my honor. He assured me, that I shouldn’t take it personally. He himself, not too long ago, had been honored with a similar reception.

"They do this", he explained to me, "to each one of us, who comes here to work. Buut in fact they are a good bunch of fellows."

And as I soon observed with those who came after me, that it was actually a well-established custom to greet, in such a fiery manner, each new-comer, who showed up here with the idea of becoming a "worker", so as to avoid having to go to the front. In this way did the common working man extract his revenge from the intellectual, who now, in his time of need, comes to them, seeking protection behind his broad shoulders.

And if God were so kind as to send them a new "sacrifice", a fresh "intellectual" over whom one can lord over and have a little fun, and help them to forget for a little while about their own gray, bleak lives....well, who were they to argue? Especially when the new arrival happened to bear such a comical name, "Taytsh/Daytsh"....it was no less than a duty to have some fun at my expense.

My new Lithuanian neighbor also gave me my first lession in the use of that little tool, the "doggie", which consisted of a round black piece of wood, about the size of the handle of a butcher's knife, in which there was mounted a sharp piece of steel. But instead of the way it was done in all other knives, with the blade lengthwise, in this case it was installed crosswise. So the blade looked like a bird's wings outstretched in flight. And as for why they called it a "doggie", the simple explanation was: the way it bites into the leather as it makes it wider and longer....

Once my neighbor had thus befriended me, he began to tell me his life story....how he was driven her from some village in the Province of Souvalki, along with the Jews who had been driven from Lithuania. He was a wealthy Jew, who carried on a thriving trade in forest products, up until the outbreak of the war, and its subsequent expulsions. His business was destroyed, and on top of all his other troubles, he was required to report for service to the Czar, because he was a "red ticket". With a little bribery, he was able to secure a place in the factory, so as not to have to go to war. Three months already he had been working there. By now, he assured me with a certain amount of pride, he was virtually a real tradesman...he alreaky knew how to make a pair of boots from start to finish...

I paid scant attention to my neighbor’s autobiography. I was still altogether pre-occupied with my own thoughts.

I looked around me at the high, grey walls of the factory building, which were covered with dirt, grease, and spiderwebs. The doors and windows were covered with iron bars, with a great iron gate at the entrance. When you entered there was a tall Gentile, a guard with a club in his hand, who searched each one who came and went from head to foot. The whole thing filled me with dread.

On the ground, on the cement floor, there lay huge piles of raw, wet leather, which were continuously being replenished by men with wheelbarrows. Everywhere the floor was littered with trash, scraps of leather. Long trenches, running right through the middle of the cement floor, carried foul streams of filthy water, mixed with black dye and other chemicals.

High overhead there were long, glowing-hot lead pipes. Between the pipes were long wires, on which they had hung out to dry finished boots and leggings...which gave me the uncomfortable feeling, that you were standing under the cut-off legs of hundreds of soldiers.

From everywhere there came a dreadful stench of cooking tallow, mixed with the pungent odors of turpentine, hotoil and pitch, which penetrated your nose, your throat...on a bad day, the stench would hit you right in the intestines. My whole being cried out against the horribly disgusting physical and spiritual filth, where I was destined to spend my days from this point on.

My whole life began to spin before my eyes like a carousel, with all my wanderings, all my youthful hopes and dreams: home, parents, Brisk yeshiva, Slobodka yeshiva, Molodetchno, Rakov...in Rakov, there had been so much joy and light in my life! There in Rakov I had truly felt in my own element....everything was so homey, being among friends....and now? Now it all seemed like no more than a distant dream. I was overcome by a longing for my former life, and a feeling of sorrow over my present, sad fate.

I soon reminded myself of my great tragedy...the loss of my writings, which had given me such comfort and solace, when I still had them with me...and now, having lost them, I was was alone and devastated. And as a final humiliation, I now find myself in this filthy, stinking purgatory, where I have to endure so much shame and degradation.

And so to try and drive away those dark thoughts of mine, I threw myself into my work. My doggie worked away feverishly at the thick, wet, leather...but the leather was stubborn, and refused to give in. So instead, the doggie bit into my own hands, with great appetite, and they were soon covered with blisters, little ballons which looked like bladders full of water. And the whole time I was sweating over the un-yielding leather, I imagined that I could hear the thief with the crutches, tearing pages from my manuscript and rolling cigarettes with them. Hot, bitter tears flowed from my eyes, rolling down my cheeks and falling on the raw, wet leather where they mixed with the pitch and oil.

Late at night, after my first day of work in the leather factory, I barely made it home, exhausted, to my cousin’s place. I fell straight down on the bed that they had prepared for me in a corner of their cramped quarters, and sank into a deep, heavy sleep.