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19. A New Work Brigade As I came through the gate I could see Uncle Abraham waiting for me. He was so happy to see me, so impatient, that he couldn't wait until we got home to start asking me questions. "Hershke, why did you come back to the ghetto so soon? What happened? Did the Lithuanian throw you out?" I explained my reasons to him and he told me that I had picked a good day to come back. Since they had deported so many people the day before, the ghetto leadership didn't know who was taken and who was left, so they wouldn't ask me any questions. I would be able to get a different working card because everyone had to get a new card. The next morning I went to the ghetto fence. I saw two Jewish police running around lookingfor people to go to work. They ran up and grabbed me by the arm. I didn't know where they were pulling me, but they took me to a small brigade with four men and one woman and told me to stay there. I didn't even have time to ask where we were going before I heard the order to move. As we went through the fence, one man, who saw that I was startled, told me not to worry. He told me that this was a good brigade; I would get plenty to eat and would not have to work too hard. It was called the police order brigade and the leader was named Rabinovich. When we came to the place where we would work, we went into a basement where there was a stove. The woman's job was to cook for us. Our leader went upstairs with the German officers who were living there in order to find out what kind ofwork they had for us that day. He came down and 116 The Shadow of Death told us that we would have to move some furniture. Another man and I started carrying chairs and the other two moved tables from one room to another. At noon we went to the basement to eat the soup and bread the woman had ready for us. We could eat as much as we wanted and take the rest home with us. The other workers knew about it so they had big cans to carry soup in. I had nothing, so I ate everything I could. After we ate we went back to work until five o'clock. At five we were taken back to the ghetto, and each went home in a different direction. When I got home and told my uncle about the brigade I had gotten that day, he asked me several times if I was kidding. He couldn't believe I had had so much luck on my first day back in the ghetto. I made sure I had a big container for soup the next morning. Our work the second day was to move the tables and chairs back to the place they had been the day before. We thought they justwanted to make us miserable. Someone asked them why we were working like this and got the answer that they needed us for their reports. Germans who could show they had Jews working for them wouldn't be sent to the Russian front. Each week they sent in reports that the Jews were producing and they were needed to supervise. In reality nothing was accomplished; they just wanted to save their own skins. At the same time, as long as the Germans were keeping people from the ghetto working, the ghetto was being kept alive and not liquidated. So it went. One day the work was a little harder; the next, a little easier. We could have lasted until the war was over ifthey had let us sit there. One evening, when I came home from work, Uncle Abraham said, "Did you hear the latest news? People are saying they are going to bring German Jews into our ghetto." ''This is pretty good news," I said. "Better that they put people in instead oftaking people out." Nobody would believe it. Why would they bring GermanJews to our ghetto? Why would they take Jews out ofour ghetto and then bring in others from some other place? With the Germans, anything was possible; they wanted to keep us in suspense so we wouldn't know if we were...

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