This photo of me, my brother Menasze and our two friends was taken on the day when the war ended.
At the end of 1942 we finished our work in Komi ASSR and went to Gorki oblast [the Gorki district]. Menasze stayed, because he had a good job. At the end of 1943 I went to Moscow for the first time on business. When I was coming back I brought various things - needles, pins. So the wives of the engineers working there took them from me, round the villages and brought back a pile of money. So I left my job, because I knew that if anything happened with my brother I would be left all alone. So I decided that I will go to my brother in Krasnodar. I had a girl, a Russian girl, her name was Lena. And we went to Ukraine together, where she lived, and she stayed there. I said: 'When I get myself fixed up you will come.' I didn't go back to her. And I went to my brother. When I got there, on the street I met a guy I knew from Komi ASSR. And he knew that I worked in transport there, as head of snabzhenie [supplies], so he says: 'I got a good job for you.' And he took me to the NKVD construction authority . In that district was one of the 10 most devastated cities, so there was building going on. I was head of purchasing. It was a good salary. Every morning when I come to work, the boss asks me: 'You have money?' So I say 'Yes.' 'Dania! Bring the car!' That was to the driver. And we went to the market, where they sold vodka in 100g shots, and he would have a drink: 'Sashenka [Szulim] will pay.' That was how my working day started. And I had to travel - for instance for glass almost to Chechnya. Once I brought lamps, for kerosene lamps for myself, and I sold them and earned a pile of money, and there was money to live on.
I didn't work till the end, because I got sick, and I went back to Krasnodar, about 120 km, and hailed a doctor, and the doctor gave me sick leave. And they fined me for not being in work. So I gone to the prosecutor and got a job in this big pharmacy store. And there they would always leave me a little of the dressing stuff, it was in meters, and I sold it and made as much as I could have earned in a month. I was in Krasnodar until 1946, and from there I went to Poland.
