Tag #109027 - Interview #77965 (Jankiel Kulawiec)

First of all I got a job through the Bund. They had their own cobblers' workshop. Then I met this one guy from Losice, he was called Lewin. He was more or less my age, perhaps a little older. It was he who told me that the Mokobocki brothers were alive, because during the war he'd been with them in the Urals. He was a cobbler too, so when I met him I sat right down with him to work. He lived and worked on Hutnikow Street. It was thanks to him too that I moved to a better apartment. He told me that his friend Felcman lived nearby and had three rooms and a kitchen, with just him and his wife. He arranged for me to move in with that guy Felcman.

After that I got a bit more independent, found myself a job with this master cobbler on Chojnowska Street, he was called Krems. He was very rich, and lived in an area where almost only Russians lived. [Editor's note: after the war the staff corps of the northern group of the Red Army forces was stationed in Legnica and so until the 1990s part of the town was inhabited by soldiers and their families]. He was a little bit scared to live on his own [Russian inhabitants, being invaders in Poland, were somehow independent from Polish judgment], so he suggested that I move in with him and bring along my family. He had three rooms too. He lived in one, I took another, and we made the third into a store for our goods, our shoes.