Page 117 - The Legacy of Abraham Rothstein - text

Escape to New York
As instructed I bought railroad tickets at the Vienna Station in
Warsaw. From there tracks branched out to the German and
Austrian borders, and during the season of the draft it was full of
recruits being distributed to all parts of the Russian empire. With
every squad of recruits were a platoon of soldiers, and many
policemen were on watch, mingling with the public. That made my
heart flutter and my blood chill. But the hair growth on my face
showed very little and, being thin and meek, I did not look like a
prospective soldier. I got by in the crowd of other men and women
who pushed and elbowed each other into the railroad cars.
Nine escapees were being sent out by the smugglers for whom I
worked, and we all met on the train, recognizing each other by a
certain mark in the lapels. We were five Jews and four Russians; most
were recruits escaping from military service, and the others were
political prisoners condemned for life to work in the Siberian mines
for political offenses. My boss Mr. Wolff entrusted me with the
railroad fare for all nine men, some of whom did not go to America,
but were scattering over different countries in Europe. Paris and
London were the principal places the real Russian revolutionaries
assembled.
We left Warsaw at twelve at night and arrived at noon in
Sosnovitz on the German border, not over a mile from Poznan on
the German side. Each country had spies on the other’s border,
watching for smugglers and criminals at the source, so when we
arrived at Sosnovitz we were met by secret agents of the smugglers,
taken in small groups to a rendezvous on the outskirts of town and
kept there until nightfall. It was in the fall of the year, and the
weather was cold and drizzling, with an early frost warning of the
coming winter. In the twilight we were led by two husky Poles,
tramping across slippery ground to an isolated railroad embankment
right on the border. We had to lie down on our stomachs on wet
grass for several hours until the guard changed. The border runners
never spoke to us, only made signs with their fingers; they kept their
eyes on the distant shadows of men on horseback trotting to and fro
near the rails.
When those Cossacks finally turned and rode away from the
border toward the Polish side, one of the smugglers gave us a sign

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