Miracles Do Happen by Fela Rosenbloom

Author:Fela Rosenbloom
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: BIO026000, BIO006000, HIS043000, HIS022000
Publisher: Scribe Publications
Published: 2017-07-31T04:00:00+00:00

Chapter Nine

ANOTHER CHAPTER of my life began. I needed new documents that would allow me to stay in Barnaul. In the Soviet Union during wartime, it was obligatory for each adult to have an ID card and a booklet showing his military status. Before we left Biysk, a fellow I knew gave me an address of a friend in Barnaul. I went there with Lyova, and we were told that, yes, they could help us. His daughter knew somebody in the police ID card office who would issue the documents to us, for 10,000 roubles each. He asked us to come back next day with photographs, whatever personal data we wanted to use, and half of the money. The balance was to be paid on delivery of the documents.

Everything went well, and a few days later we got our documents. After some consideration, I decided not to change my name or other personal data, except that I put in Kizel not Biysk as my previous place of residence. I figured that the police communications were not that efficient to warrant changing my name. There was one problem, though, with the military booklet. In Biysk, I had an exemption from being required to enlist in the Polish army; in Barnaul, I could be targetted for enlistment at any time. Lyova thought that it would be safer for us to split up. He made up his mind to join his wife in Alma-Ata. We wished each other good luck for the future, and off he went. I was alone again. Having spent the major part of my savings on the documents, I had to earn a living. Yet I was not comfortable staying in the city, only a few hundred kilometres from Biysk. Unexpectedly, a solution to the problem came along. In the Polish Community Centre, I met up again with my first friend in Biysk, Mrs Marczak, who was in charge of welfare. Within a few minutes she told me not to worry; she would help me. The centre had to prepare firewood for the winter for all the Polish welfare institutions. They had been given an allotment in a forest, fifty kilometres away. A group of twenty-five people was being organised for the job, which would last six weeks, at least. We would be well fed, accommodated in cabins, and paid at the end, with two overseas parcels of products and clothing. I thanked her, and signed up on the spot.

This was just what I needed. As far as I was concerned, it was a godsend. I was away from the city, had a well-paid job, and my companions were terrific. As it turned out, quite a few of the other workers were in a similar situation to me, wanting to lay low for a while. We lived as if in a commune: we worked together, ate together, and entertained ourselves in the evenings. It lasted until the end of September. After we received and sold the contents of our parcels, eight young men, including me, decided to join the Polish army in Lublin.

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