To America and Back
Page 37
In the week that Humik started his training in the Negev – on the dunes and along wadis, Nathan Freulich began building his new business in Israel. He was assisted by his cousine Effy, and first they invested some amount of money in hiring a store in southern Tel Aviv. Then they made a research in what products they would be trading. Naitty had known from his old grocery store’s commerce, that people wanted to be fed by products they had been familiar with; especially in what they were used to eat in their mothers’ homes. He understood that the horizon is not so fine; it is barred by beaurocrates who would refuse to supply you foreign exchange for buying abroad everything you want. The state of Israel’s economy was then very poor, based mainly on agriculture, small stores, light industry, and hiring people by the Government: getting them have a desk or letting them dig and cover pits – for the sake of registrating them as employed. Yes, there was also more productive employment: Some were handed shovels, for planting woods on hills and on mountains, but no one was expecting a fruitfull harvest for years to come… .However, as Naitty understood the situation from reading the newspapers, the smart leader Ben Gurion had become aware that help should come from Germany. Its leaders had a sense of guilt about the Holocaust, and wanted to appear to other nations as repentants of what the Nazi Regime had done to the Jews. So it happened, that the Germans agreed to help the ‘embryo’ State of Israel. They provided it funds – for investment in industrial plants and in modern machinery, including transportation equipment.
As an outcome of that, Naitty was soon smelling ‘a well made transaction’. As he was moving, by bus or taxi- from one food industrial plant to another, he saw a Transporter parking near Noodles Macaroni factory. He asked the driver where’s his boss.
“I will hand him,” added Naitty, “ten thousand Dollars, that are much more than the exchangeble amount of Deutch Marks needed to buy that German DKP Transporter. Would he make a deal with me?”
“I think so. Go to him. He is called Isaac Isatzky.”
That was Naitty’s first well done deal. As he wanted to buy a Transporter, his seller Isaac had organized official papers that said: ‘XYZ Food Factory is in a need of a second Transporter for its own use’. The Israeli Government beaurocrates had stamped it, and so the original importer was XYZ, not Naitty. But Naitty immediately purchasd the vehicle, including its original papres, without a problem. All that – because no one except factory owners and ‘friends’ was allowed to get foreign currency.
The stated above method of making business was not rare at that time; but as soon as Naitty became aware of another big business problem in the country, he was decisive to solve it in his own peculiar way:
A month of travelling with the new Transporter, and supplying by it regular products, (buying them in Food factories or from Importers), had shown Naitty that he could have only a small profit as a result. So, when one day he felt a great desire to taste cattle sausage, (generally- only hens’ meat was sold in the market) he began to search for such a product. Somebody told him that the army was using a ground cattle meat, mixed with bread. It was called ‘Loof’; only that ‘kind of sausage’ was available. Naitty wondered:
“I want an irregular spiced sausage, made from a Kosher butcherd ox!” he said, ”I’d like to eat various kinds of sausages, hell !” He shouted at an acquaintant, a supplier of dried beans and lentils, who had known what meat a man could obtain. “Sausage is a rare product here, scarcely produced. There is now a food factory, that has brought new machinery: It’s from the German compensations money, to grind the meat. But that Firm has gotten a monopoly for that. So they mix the meat with bread, by that making a lot of money. Whatever, the people in this small State would hardly eat sausage, so the beaurocrates claim.”
“Well”, said Naitty, and went to those clerks. He heard that the Monopoly contract ‘could not be canclled’.
“If so,” said Naitty to Effy, “I will ask my friend in NY to offer me a price for a unit of shmock geshmak(tasty) sausage. It should cost a little bit less than ten Dollars, that is a sausage price here- when you divide the present sausage price in Israel by the official exchange rate. I’m sure, that the price in NY is much less than here; so I’ll import sausage. I know that no one will allow me to have foreign currency and a special Import License for that… And I can’t bribe anyone here, as a person who doesn’t know you long years – will be afraid… So, I will just hide my sausages, that I’ll buy in America– within Sacred books,! These are allowed to be freely imported, even not paid, as many are given as gifts to some synagogues in Israel by the orthodox Society of Kosher food in NY. So, my additioinal profit out of that – is just at hand, and great…”
“This time we should be much more cautious – than you had been in the New York Grocery,” said Effy to Naitty.
“Yes, Effy. First of all, we won’t manage a grocery store here. We will use the wonderful DKW Transporter for buying a necessary stock of products. As we have that storehouse, hired in Levinsky street, we’ll put the stock there… Am I right, Effy?”
“Of course,” said Effy, “everything that you say, I bless Amen.”
“Well. Now hear my further plan. I hear that some Ashkenazy Jews here are getting already personal compensation for the horrible crimes of the Nazies. These men dwellings are mainly in the towns’ centers, or in very new suburbs, aving high building Standard. I shall travel there to groceries, and offer also a real Kosher calb meat, not pig, God forbid…. I shall import that also from U.S., but that will take place only next year… after we will have seen what advance we’ve made with our existing supplies.”
“Take into account,” said Effy, “that we should also offer a Morrocan Kuskus to some people in the Negev. The Jews from Morroco like this yellow grind, as you like Ashkenazy Chulent.”
“O’key, I suspect thatr you take care of the Negev, after having gone there to a learn Israeli original dances, isn’t it so?”
“Yes,” said Effy, “but next Tuesday I’ll be more sure about that.”
“I wish you all the best. Don’t invlove me, I’ve two left legs.”
“I’ll remember that,” smiled Effy.
“I think we’ll have a pink future here, with God’s help. For the time being we are doing well. Only that God would give His stamp for two weddings. It’s very important, raising a family here. And it’s burning there, between our legs. Right?”
“I’m younger than you,” said Effy, “But for you it’s pressuring”. “There is a fire in there – for everyone of us,” said Naitty, “We are relatives, in flesh and blood and spirit. We are best cousins and best friends, so having a wonderfult partnership.”
CHAPTER 37