Jack Gun - August 27, 1993
Liberation
So hes a genuine altruist?
Right. And he kept us, and the wife didnt leave him. She said--its a, its a good thing she wasnt a liberated woman. She didnt leave him and she stayed on and, and a few months later we got liberated. We got liberated in March of 1944. And the first thing, I guess what happened was that we were in the, in the potato cellar there and, the wife or him came hollering and says, hey theres Russian soldiers riding on horses. And my brother came out. He says the first thing he did was kiss their feet. [pause] And uh, we left Primas, went back to our h... town which was...
You saw them on the horses, you said?
Yeah.
What did, what was your reaction? How did you react?
You know Sid I still I, I dont recall of any--I, I think, like I told you, I was like hypnotized. I had no reactions actually. I was uh, like a frozen body or, uh, I dont know, I dont know what words would be--I can use. Im not that good in vocabulary to be honest with you. I only went through high school. So uh, I dont recall--now at that point I was almost 10. March of '44 I was close to being 10. And uh,...
So you were still...
I...
Just numb?
I think so. I think I was just, like they froze me for uh, two years--didnt show any kind of emotions.
Then what?
Then we went back to our town. Our house was empty at the time, I dont know if there was German soldiers livin there. And we, we stayed there with--and a lotta more Jews that came right out of hiding, I dont know, six, eight, ten twelve also came into--we had quite a large house. And they came in and, and uh, I guess we started to, I dont know, like wake up or uh, you know, come out of the sleep. We were hoping maybe we will find somebody.
Nobody?
Nobody of the family. And uh, you know, within a couple of months they Russians wanted to take my brother into the army. He was 20 years old almost. So here he went through Hitler, you know, and survived Hitler and here hes gotta go and--you see, the front was still going on near us, as you know.
Mm-hm.
Cause the war didnt end 'til uh, May of '45. This was a year and uh, two months previous. So there was still fighting back and forth. In fact uh, I dont know, about two months, two months after we were liberated. Ill never forget that. I was sitting--we still had uh, outside bathrooms. I was sitting outside in the bathroom and my brother came running after me, come on, I says whats the matter? He says come on we gotta run. Run where? He says the Germans are back in our town. The front moved back in. And we ran across the bridge of our town. They bombed the bridge and we got on to army trucks to Kiverts. And over there we took a train to Rovno back, you see, because they were pushing back in. And we were ba... in Rovno for about, about four weeks. There were bombings, this I remember very--just think a lot of bombings while we were in Rovno. And no food, no food.
Were there a lot of Jews in Rovno at that point?
Im sure there was, we didnt look...
You didnt, you didnt...
We didnt know any, we didnt look for any, I dont know. We stayed in some kind a, I dont know, some kind a house where there was a lot of refugees. And what we did uh, we went out during the day begging for food. And we came to these, an old couple they were called Subbotniks, you know, they were uh, they believed in the Sabbath.
Yeah.
You know, gentiles. A certain sect, I dont know. Thats what they called them in Polish, I believe, Subbotniks And an old couple they had us uh, saw wood for 'em, to heat their house and they used to give us those dried--they used to call them sukharis. You know those dried pieces of bread, you know?
Mm-hm.
And thats what we ate. At then we wished we had whats his name with--uh, Yerushka, we had no Yerushka anymore either.
Mm-mm. At, at this point were you, you said this you remember vividly the...
Yeah.
??? and all that. What, what kinds of reactions did you have to that? Did you talk to Anszel about it?
Yes.
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