Page 111 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Recruitment
priest the Polish boys. My father walked around in the yard broken-
hearted, speaking words of encouragement with suppressed tears in
his eyes. The Polacks, who never liked the Russians, sang and made
loud noises. The police officer in the yard told them to be quiet, but
they ignored him: he could not arrest them before they took the oath,
and they were already under military authority. They were riotous,
and called the policeman “Russian monkey” and other vile names. I
became indignant, too, and felt disgusted with myself for submitting
to militarism. They talked of escaping and other schemes to free
themselves of servitude
It was then that the idea of escaping was born in my mind. When
my father came close to the barn I told him through a crack in the
boards of my intentions. That made him downhearted, and he
begged me not to do it; he knew that after serving three years a
soldier comes back home, but from America nobody returns and no
parent likes to lose his child. I was kept in the barn with the rest of
the Polacks until about five in the evening, when the priest and the
rabbi came. I just mumbled the oath with the rabbi, so the police
officer poked me with his scabbard and told me to say the oath
louder. The rabbi had the scrolls under his arm, and I didn’t mind
kissing them, but I hated to take an oath—I was religious and knew
an oath is binding, so I just said some words instead.

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