Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Jack Gun - August 12, 1999

Your father and brother worked for...

They worked on a base. Uh, it was called a baza. What that was, it was that the--all the farmers and, used to bring in a certain amount, like a tax to the German government. And the tax consisted of whatever they raised. If they raised uh, cows, they would have to bring a calf or whatever so often. Whoever raised corn had to bring so many bushels of corn and so on and so forth. And they had the Jewish people uh, working there, cleaning up and storing the stuff and putting it away. So that's where they worked. My mother, I'm not positive. I, I, I think she worked in a laundry where they used to wash clothes for the German soldiers. And my sister got out quite--wasn't very long in the ghetto with us when Yerushka took her. But unfortunately, a couple months before the liquidation of the ghetto, she got very homesick and she told Mr. Yerushka, you know, she says, "I really miss my parents and my brothers and I'd like to go back." And uh, what were, he didn't want to force her. So he brought her back.

And she did not survive.

And she did not survive.

When do, do you recall that they were taking Jews away in trains?

No.

Away from Rozhishche?

No, in Rozhishche I understand they were taken out. You see, what they used to, to do, I told you about the Jewish police. The Jewish police used to come and harass, harass everybody. Uh, every so often the German government would put out a note that they need so much gold. So they would tell the--I uh, the Jewish police, we want you to go into every house in the ghetto and get so much and so much gold, or else we're going to take out fifty people and kill them.

So, it was like, you, the whole community was a hostage.

Right, so some people had and they gave. Some people did not have. Or they--like, probably my parents, I told you, gave it away. And some never you know, some might have left it in their houses. Uh, so what they used to do is take out so many people and, or they killed them or they took them to a labor camp. They had in Lutsk, I understand, they had a labor camp. So this is what was going on during that year in the ghetto.

This went on for a full-year.

Full-year.