Tag #138554 - Interview #78499 (Bernat Sauber)

Another person was selling rock-flint smuggled in from Czechoslovakia. It wasn't allowed to use a lighter then, because it was match monopoly. [Editor's note: Between the wars it was a characteristic of the Romanian economic policy that due to the lack of some goods (salt, kerosene, match, etc.) the state had monopoly over them.] If one was caught selling them, one was punished. One wasn't allowed even to sell tobacco. Villagers used to dry tobacco leaves and surrender them to the state, but they were careful to hide and then sell some. Cigarettes were relatively expensive, so people used to buy tobacco and cut it up. Cigarette paper was also smuggled in from Czechoslovakia, because in Romania it was no technology suitable to make it. It was just as thin as you see today, and they used to put in it the dried tobacco.