Tag #156353 - Interview #91684 (Szulim Rozenberg )

Well, they needed an errand-boy, to fetch and carry. And I was that errand-boy. I worked there for maybe a year, or perhaps more. But later – I knew that wasn’t a trade – I decided I would look for work with a dressmaker. And I went to work for this dressmaker, it was a small manufactory, an atelier, well, let’s say 6-8 people worked there. What was my work? I had to go down into the cellar, bring coal, because the house needed heating. Then, before lunch I had to go and buy something for each of those workers. So he gave me this whole task: to buy a quarter loaf of bread for 10 groszy, sugar for 5 groszy, and the middle slice of herring for 5 groszy. Later I had to take a finished piece of work to a patron and bring another piece ready cut. I didn’t have the chance to learn anything there. And there was this terrible thing there, too, that haunted me my whole life, called the dead season. There was no work: ‘There’s no work, so go home.’ And then they didn’t pay.