Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Selling Pigs
What are you going to do? But my parents, the minute they saw the truck over there coming down the street. They ran and hid behind the barn so--the neighbor's barns. We had one barn only.
You had a barn.
We had a little barn where we kept the cow and the horse. And sometimes they used to--my parents used to raise pigs to sell to the...
Uh-huh.
...to the neighbor. You know, you got to find a way of earning a living.
You raised pigs and then you would take them to be slaughtered?
No, no. They sold the pigs, they didn't slaughter them.
They sold them live, I see.
Sold them live.
Okay.
To the, to the, the--one of, one of the neighbors always...
Yeah.
Most of the time it used to be the priest from the Russian church used to buy it.
Hm. So...
Because he got it on credit and uh, they were on good terms. And he also used to get meat before, before the Germans came. Used to buy--under the Russians you know uh, there was a big--you know, everybody wanted meat. So--and they didn't want to give the ca...cattle to the kolkhoz.
Yeah.
Right. Was an outright defiance of the kolkhoz, because you didn't--you know...
Even before the war?
Well, yeah. The--before the war. You know, when the Russians came in '39 you know, they stayed until '41, 'til the Germans came. So they started--they organized the kolkhoz and they took your horses and took your cows. They left you one cow. And if there was a calf born, guess what? Two, three weeks later, they slaughtered it. I'm not going to give it to the kolkhoz. They ate it up. My father participated too. The funny part is, we used to go to Varkoviche, because that was the closest Jewish community where you could uh, there was a shochet...
Uh-huh.
...you know, a kosher shochet. So you killed the calf there. You brought it home. And what do you--you could--the Jews did not eat the hind part, right?
So you sold it.
So what, you got to sell it to somebody.
Yeah.
The best candidate was the Catholic priest and the Russian Orthodox priest.
Yeah.
They used to buy it from my father.
Hm. In this--at this time uh, did you--did you get any news from Lvov?
No, we had--no, no.
Or Rovno? Nothing?
No.
You didn't...
Well, Rovno, yes. We, we heard at this time, because you could walk to Rovno. Remember I told you I went with a group...
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