Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Giuszwica
Giuszwica.
That's the Polish name, with a "G" whereas in Ukrainian, it's Harushwica. I think the Ukrainian language missing "G"s.
Can you spell it for me?
Which way, in the Polish?
Either way, yes.
In the Polish, it was G-i-u-s-z-w-i-c-a. And the Ukrainian, if you use the Ukrainian letters "H"...
Yeah.
"R"you know, the Cyrillic letters, R-u-esh-sha-v-i-tze with an "a" on the end. This is the Ukrainian letters--the Hruszwica. Means something to do with a pear, a pear.
A piece of fruit.
A piece of fruit, a pear.
Okay. It was--how, how large was...
On the--my--when--in my lifetime when I lived there, well, let me tell you, there were twenty-eight Jewish--there were eight Jewish families with uh, twenty-eight people. Twenty-eight Jews. Okay?
Okay.
And they were scattered through the village, not too far apart. The rest of the village, if you can imagine a number eight, you know the figure eight?
Yeah.
But it's a little squished up a little bit you know, some kid took and squished it around. So you have--part of the village was one circle and the other part of the village was another circle. In the middle of this circle was a big meadow with a river. Oh, I thought it was a big river when I was a kid.
What was the river?
But when I was in Israel and I saw the Jordan, I said, oh, they have my river from my--that's how big it was.
Okay. Let's see if we can find it on the map.
Is it on there?
No, keep going.
And, uh...
Here.
Oh, you got the red circle.
Yes.
You see where Rovno is?
Yeah, I have, I have--there are two maps.
Oh, two maps.
And a...
Go ahead take it. You see where they have the red circles is Rovno?
Yeah, yeah.
You see where there's Dubno?
Yeah.
That--between those two cities, there's Giuszwica.
Okay. So it's not on the map, but it's...
No, no..
It's too small to put on.
No, no, it was nothing. We had a Catholic church and we had a Greek Orthodox--you know, Russian Orthodox church. Yeah, we had--because--don't forget, this was territory that was being colonized by the P...Pole, by the Poles...
Yeah.
...by the Polish Government, you know. They had a Catholic church. There were Czechs living in surrounding area, some were Cath...Catholics and some were Russian Orthodox or Protestants so they used to go--I don't know where they used to go. And the Jews have you know, a little Shul, a little pray house shtiebl...
No, not a shtiebl...
...no, no, it was at one of the man's--one of the family's house.
So a shtiebl?
A shtiebl. So used to Saturday that we used to go to his house, Friday night--Saturday and the holidays. All the services were there, the Torah was there and the, and the prayer books. And if you had your prayer books, you brought it with you. But we always had a minyan, come to think of it.
© Board of Regents University of Michigan-Dearborn