Abraham Asner - October 10, 1982
End of the War
Tell me about your activity towards the end of the war with the partisans. You're moving up towards 1945.
The... To the end of the war?
Mm-hm.
Finally, yes, one time they start to prepare food. We used to listen radio uh, radio. They listening the... This area's taken over by the Russians, and this area's taken over by the Russians. And this area. Then come close to us and we hear already shooting from uh, cannons, uh, from artillery. And we start to prepare in case we couldn't come out from the woods to get... We brought in some flour and cattle, light cattle. And we keep them uh, around us. And then, all of a sudden, one morning, I think, I, I think I, I told you, no? One morning they said to go in the Khasene... No? No? You can see and was all around shooting. What kind of shooting, we don't know. Finally we went to find out where... Who's shooting? What is going on? And that, we used to call them the Khasene.
A groom?
No, Khasene. A, a Jewish boy who used to call, talk so funny, no? When he, when he used to say, what was a, a Khasene, they came out, a Khasene mean a wedding.
Yes, a hatan is a...
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
...groom, right, yeah.
Yes, this uh, like a, like a wedding. We used to call it the Khasene, nickname. And uh, he said uh, he comes, he come in and he sat down a group leader to that uh, the widow. He said to him, this and this, he saw the Red Army patrol, he spoke with them. From the Red Army pa... the first patrol. Finally, when first patrol and then we start to prepare to, to meet the patrol. Finally, they... We, we met that patrol. We were talking... the Red Army's over here, the Red Army's over here already. And my wife was cooking soup. And uh, she said, "I don't believe it." ??? And most of the partisans used to go Russian uniforms used to look exactly like the Russian soldiers, some. We don't know. She don't know everybody. Mostly I know everybody, but she don't know everybody. When she say, even them Russian soldiers from the patrol to eat. And she don't know. She said ??? "Who you give to eat before? Is this Russian soldiers?" I thought, who that was? Finally we start to go out. We start to pack everything. That was a interesting moment, you know, to leave everything, all little part or something, and this. To leave all the fires uh, it's, it's, it's very interesting to... We left everything, we're going... We are free. The, the word free, something... We don't believe it ourselves. Then we, we went in, in a village. We were standing in a village and we was catching that time after the Germans. The Germans just run away, we used to chase 'em and bring 'em. Some guys take a bunch of them, used to catch the Germans. Take them away. We used to tell 'em, taken 'em down there and there. I... We come back, they start to run away. Run away, shoot 'em , that's it.
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