Maurice Chandler - October 3, 1993
Working as a Farmhand
...three other boys went on further. And I understand later--I found out that they went back to the ghetto--within two weeks they were back. They couldn't, they couldn't acclimate. They couldn't find any jobs. It got tight wherever they went. It just didn't work out. We, on the other hand--my brother and I--the Rothsteins found us jobs in the village. I worked for one farmer and my brother worked for another farmer and we became shepherds.
Shepherds?
Yeah, in the farm--kind of shepherd boys. And uh, my job--I made myself helpful around the house. I worked at peeling potatoes, you know, take out the manure, make uh, prepare the barn for the cows, clean the pigsties. In the morning uh, uh, take the cows out to pasture, stay with them, bring them back. Have lunch with the family. And this was to me--it was heaven. It was a tremendous job. And my brother worked for another farmer and he always had a hard time. Because he says, this woman--he worked for a woman, you know, she owned her own farm, she was a widow, whatever. He used to come at night, you know, come to my farm at night. He'd sit down and talk over, you know, talk about our parents and what's uh, what's going to be in Warsaw and he would cry to me. He say, "Moshe, it's such shmuts". She gave him the potatoes, you know, that she used to feed, feed the pigs from that uh, trough. She would feed him--give it to him. He told me--he says, "It's unbelievable." I mean, he had a hard time. So, anyway, we spent there the whole summer. In the meantime, I used to--I told you I improvised how to send parcels of potatoes to Warsaw and make uh, you know, a little burlap bag and so on. I uh, labeled and uh, with my uncle's name, which I altered to sound Polish and carry it--I had to carry it about six kilometers to the post office. They would accept it. I used to get letters from my mother. Oh, those letters of my little brother standing at the window, watching and see when the postman comes and he dances for joy when a little help is coming and so on and so on. So she--I remember, you know, she was a religious woman. She says, "What you're doing for us," she says, "there is no such thing as sin that you can commit because everything that you would ever do," she says, "would be nullified."
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