Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Jack Gun - August 27, 1993

An audio-taped interview with Jack Gun. Jack Gun was born in Rozhishche, Poland, where he lived with his father, mother and older brother and sister. Rozhishche was later annexed into the Ukraine by the Soviets at the outbreak of the war in September 1939. With the German invasion of the Soviet Union in June 1941, the Gun family was forced to move into a make-shift ghetto in the city where they were used as forced laborers. In August of 1942, the ghetto was liquidated by the Germans and Jack's father, mother and sister were killed. Jack and his brother managed to flee and received help from their father's non-Jewish friend. Upon this man's urging, Jack and his brother hid first in the woods and then in a bunker they dug in a field. After several near-misses with the occupation authorities, the two were hidden in a non-Jewish Ukrainian household where they remained until the Russians liberated the Ukraine in 1944.

1. Introduction
2. Family Life before the War
3. Education and Religion
4. War Begins
5. Ghetto Life
6. Liquidation of the Ghetto
7. Living in the Fields
8. Encounter with a Ukrainian Policeman
9. Living in a Bunker
10. Living with a Farmer and his Family
11. Held Hostage
12. Liberation
13. Brother Drafted into Russian Army
14. Contracting Typhus after the War
15. Lived in Poland after the War
16. Going to the United States
17. Settling in Detroit
18. Impact of the War
19. Family Life after the War
20. Trip to Poland in 1992
21. Family Pictures