Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Martin Koby - April 20, 1999

You went to Rovno.

Rovno.

And then from Rovno where, where did you go?

We stayed in Rovno until 19--of--October of '46--no, '44, '45, October of '45.

Under the Russians?

Yeah.

So the war was over.

Yeah, the war...

The war was...

Yeah, May to--what's today? Some celebration already. Today is the 10th.

It was over...

The 9th, yesterday.

Yesterday, right.

We heard Stalin--they had the public--you know, most of the information we got was from public announcements on the--they had all this pub...you know, radio speakers all, all over town.

Uh-huh.

Especially on the main drag, oh, a lot--many of them. Every block there was a loudspeaker and, uh...

The day the war was over, you mean?

Yeah.

Yeah.

Stalin you know, had an announcement, something. It sounded to me crazy you know, he was--he didn't speak Russian, he spoke with a Russian accent...

He spoke...

I mean with an accent.

He spoke Georgian.

Whatever--no, he spoke in Russian, but it was an accent.

Georgian acc...

You know, how can he be a Russian with an accent? Who knows? They take it. And the Pravda and Izvestia piles all over the place you know, announcing victory, oh! The problem is this, those uh, party, papers, you know. They were all over the place.

So it sounds like your family decided early on to try to get out from, from the Soviet Union.

I don't think so. But--first the problem was, you got to avoid the draft, not to get drafted to go on the front line. No, you get killed.

While the war is still on?

Yeah, the war was still on, for the west. And there was a problem you know, with housing and food. You know, you have no money, where you going to go?

And your house?

Huh.