Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Reflections on Experience
Was this the first time you remember reflecting on what you were experiencing f...sort of being very self-conscious about your feelings and thinking about...
At that time?
Yeah.
I think so, because you know when you sit in a--why do they put people in solitary confinement. They become--I mean, now I know. I think I understand. In solitary confinement you have no contact with anybody.
Uh-huh.
You have no light, you get a minimum of food. That's what we experienced, a minimum of food. Uh, you have no one to talk to. You can't exchange ideas. You, you--whatever you have in your head, you just keep you know, chewing it over. You got to eat, what is it, chewing the cud, like a cow?
Yeah.
It's the same thing. You have no exchange. So how can you--when you sit over there and I think by whatever it is the teenagers or children, their parents you know, kind of become, well, naturally uh, loose communications. They don't discuss too many things. Besides, we couldn't discuss them. You had to sit there and be quiet, if you're in a hiding place, because somebody might hear. So what happens, you become numb.
So you're...
So this time you come out and you see you know, movement and...
Yeah.
...noise and, and different kind of, you know, different kind of people coming through you know, trucks and, and uh, uh, military uh, you know, trucks going and just--trucks that carry whatever they were carrying. I'm sure it was ammunition mostly or food. And you see soldiers walking you know, in uniforms or camouflaged in white--this was winter--naturally you get, you get to feel differently.
And did you think about beyond the liberation? I mean, be...before...
No.
What, what you had, what you had gone through in the previous two years?
No. I, I didn't--it did not...
That...
You see, now the...
...just the experience of the moment?
This...
Yeah.
Well, that's what was happening. Besides I had coll...I had no courses in psychology, you know, to or, or experience of you know, like writing down or making sure you remember this, right? You say to yourself, well, I--you're just soaking up.
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