Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
News from Rovno
Yeah. Was it...
...with...
...three kilometers?
No, fourteen kilometers.
Fourteen kilometers. Um...
But we--the, the people but the people from the village, the Ukrainians used to go to the city.
And they didn't tell you anything?
Well, sure they told us. We understand everything. They...
Did you hear--did they ever--did anybody ever talk about Janówska?
Yeah--no.
Which was a...
In Rovno?
Uh, in--Lvov.
No, not Lvov, we did not we didn't have no--no. We...
Okay. And, and you got news from Rovno. What kind of news...
We used to get news from Rovno. They--you know, they used to go out there They, they used to tell us that the Jews--that uh, they didn't have enough to eat. The Germans were chasing them away f...
In the ghetto?
No, not yet. The ghetto was not organized yet in--at that time. I think the ghetto was started sometimes a little--about uh, maybe--it was already autumn. In autumn.
1941.
What month, I don't...
Yeah, that's it.
In '40--in...
You're right.
In uh, '41. Autumn of '41.
November, November was...
Because I remember there was uh, leaves were falling.
Okay.
You know, because of...
Okay. But meanwhile, back in, in uh, in your village, what's, what's going on there? So they started to take the food...
The guys used to get off the highway.
Yeah.
And they come. And uh, the natives already you know, they wanted the chickens, they wanted food. They wanted uh, came in, in the house, you know. And they were like, like they owned the place. They took whatever they wanted.
So they weren't polite anymore.
Well, being banditos, at least they didn't shoot you.
Didn't shoot you...
So you know, there's a...
There's a certain etiquette in that, I guess.
Huh? You have to, you have to make a distinction. Because a bandito, you see someplace in the movies you know, banditos they rob you and they shoot you. But these guys did not do that.
And these, these men--they're still...
The Germans.
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