Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Martin Koby - April 20, 1999

Russian Liberation

Uh-huh.

The Russians came in today, tomorrow morning, we left for the city. Because whoever my parents consulted, they told us not to stay in the village or we're going to get killed

So...

...by the...

...you--they came into the village and you left for Rovno?

Who, the Russians?

Yeah.

Yeah. We left. We were told--whatever the--see, I didn't question my parents. I'm sorry I didn't find out more of the details. This is interesting stuff. Who did they go to c...con...consultation? I'm sure they didn't consult another Jew, because there weren't any Jews visible yet. Our relatives didn't come, come in yet. But uh, we went to Rovno. And in the summer--late summer of '44, guess who came to our house? The two couples.

They came back.

They came back from Siberia or wherever they were in Russia. They came to Rovno to see if we survived. Can you imagine that reunion? Horrendous, very horrendous.

And did they tell you what, what they had been through?

Who?

This couple--these two couples.

I don't know. They were talking to the parents. They were--you know, there was--I don't know, my father worked--had a job and my mother had turned--because the job that my father had, he had only coupons you know, to eat in the, in the kitchen over there with starvation diet.

So you...

And I was going and I was going to school--well, now, I was not in school yet in '40--summer--the beginning of the summer of '44, or what I--maybe I was in school already.


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