Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Waiting for Documents
So you were waiting--that's what you were waiting for was for ???.
The documents, yeah.
So your, your parents must have registered for an American...
Yes, oh, sure. I know this, because they refused to go to split up the family. One of my cousins, Pinhaus's brother, Yitzhak, my cousin...
Yitzhak.
...he came. He came to visit us in that camp. I don't know how he knew where we were. I didn't know--one day he shows up.
Is he older than you?
No, he's younger. He's my brother's age. He's four years younger. This little kid comes over you know, he's got this uh, navy outfit you know, p...blue outfit, you know. He looks like a--I don't know, he looks like a soldier. "Yitzhak, what are you doing?" He says, "I'm uh, I'm a shaliach, I'm a messenger." "What do you mean?" He says, "I take people across the border." "What do you mean?" "Well, I take them from the, from the French zone and we go to Italy. And we go uh, from the Americans, I go to Italy," he says, "I the guide." I'm nothing! He's younger than me, he's got his--he's got this big responsibility.
And yet they were--I thought they were in a kibbutz somewhere?
That was later.
???
That's part of--that was the part of the work of the kibbutz. This--I got just recently some uh, literature from somebody where they described these kids used to do...
Did this come...
...underground...
...from the Holocaust Museum, is that what...
No, no--I don't--maybe from the Holocaust...
The one in Washington?
Maybe from there. Somebody uh, but these kids you know, these young kids--young teenagers used to be messengers you know, border crossing guys.
Yes.
Illegal b...b...bor...border crossing.
Hm.
So they started on these documents. The uh, the whole thing, the Crommerses, Tante Chyka and her family and my father and my Uncle Jack. And uh, they used to go to Munich every other day--every other week. They went to Munich. They were gonna...
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