Page 108 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Recruitment
before the time of the draft. Of course, he lost the claim for
exemption and was horrified at having me torn away from home into
the army.
When at last the military governor sent me greetings, I had to
appear on the date the numbers are drawn; otherwise, I would be
taken into the army with no claim to exemption. We always hope,
which is natural for man, who does not remember that he has
invented the division of time into days and months. To nature, time
is infinite; to man, just a split second. When I mentioned the army to
my mother, she always hoped that “God will help,” and gave a heavy
sigh. When I received that notice of the draft, we all felt like we were
standing on the edge of a deep abyss, with nothing to hold onto and
unable to run from it.
What a calamity! To be buried would not have been as calamitous
to my parents as having me become a soldier. And it was just before
the Russo-Japanese War, which we all knew was coming. There was
still another chance of being exempted, by drawing a high number
beyond the quota for my district: it had to provide nine hundred
soldiers, and more than one thousand young men were in the
drawing. But after excluding the exemptions and the unfit, only a few
high numbers were expected to be free of service.
My whole family, as well as some young fellows, friends and
relations who wanted to see the excitement, was at the bureau where
the drawing was conducted, although it was far from our village, in
the county seat of Vavre, in a building that was just one big room. It
was a depressing fall day, cold and drizzling, and I felt like I was the
center of the funeral, not a mourner. The place was packed with
husky peasant boys and a few Jews. Police and a few soldiers stood
around a big drum with a hole in it. An army officer called the names,
and each man, when coming up to the drum, had to take off the right
side of his coat and shirt to bare the full length of his arm. Then a
policeman turned the drum on a swivel to mix the numbers before
the young fellow put his hand in and pulled out a number in a
capsule. My hard luck was to pull out number twenty-seven. Such a
very low number meant I was a soldier, condemned in the beginning
of the act.

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