Page 113 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Escape to New York
uniformed soldier tore her away from her child, giving the new
recruit a push back into the ranks that barely left him standing. The
Russian drill sergeant not only used abusive language when training a
man, but also slapped him right and left and kicked him hard in the
rear when the fellow did not march in the right step or keep his feet
close together.
The date for me to report to the commandant of the district was
the sixteenth of October, 1903. I was still working for the smugglers
and made the daily trips to town. I used to report every morning for
work at the house of Mr. Wolff, the senior partner. I confided in him
my desire to get away. He was a sporting fellow and very generous
towards his help—especially to me, who worked for three rubles a
week and risked losing my freedom for three years if caught by the
customs police. Two days before the time I was to report, two of the
bosses who lived near the German border at Sosnovitz and Poznan
came on a flying visit to Warsaw and stopped at Wolff’s house in
Warsaw. When he told them that he was going to lose me, on
account of my going into the army for three years, they grabbed me
by the arms and began dragging me like they would pull me away to
some place immediately. “No,” they said, “you are not going to serve
those ganifs. You are going with us tonight to Sosnovitz, to the
border, and then to America.”
My patrons were much perturbed. They needed me, a person they
could trust in Warsaw, where gangsters, denouncers, and crooked
fellows will do anything for money—blackmail, sell one out for a few
rubles. My brother Benjamin was about fifteen years old then. He did
not have the head to learn a trade; he just lay around with others like
himself. So I took him with me and turned over the job to him.
Although young, he had the knack for that kind of work, where it is
necessary to use wit and cunning to escape the eye of the police and
save one’s skin.
They told me to come back at eight o’clock in the evening and
leave with them. I was in no condition to do anything for myself: I
had been in an unconscious state since being sworn into the army.
Like a doomed man going to the gallows, who lives in a trance and is
disinterested in himself, so did I live the few weeks since the drawing
of lots. But I went and brought my father back to Wolff’s house.

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