Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Death of Relatives
Shot them.
Yeah. I have a cousin in, in Israel, her name is Manya. She and her mother--her mother was Hava, my mother you know, she was...
Uh-huh.
...my Aunt Hava. And uh, my grand...so she had my grandmother Tessler, a little cousin Dorcha, Hava, Manya, Mrs. Adler, this Grandma Adler, her daughter-in-law with two little kids, okay. Then there was uh, Raizel and Beliv uh, uh, uh, a daughter of Mrs. Adler. They took them out of the house and they killed them.
All women and children?
All women and children, the little boy is...
Uh-huh.
...one little boy. My cousin Manya, while they were digging the ditch and they were killing them, she supposedly stood na...naked by, you know, waiting to--next to be killed. She got away with the help of the most unexpected angel. And she got away. She survived.
What was the...
And she lives in Israel.
Who was the angel?
This guy--there was a guy by the name of Ivan, a colorful man. His father was a little bit eccentric, okay? And every--he used to tell that if somebody's a little different or was crazy, that there's no one at home, somebody was missing at home, let's put it in English.
Yeah.
Ivan was a free soul. And uh, he wanted to know what everything what was going on in the village. And I, I think he knew.
Uh-huh.
When he saw the--I mean, I think he was not the only one that followed the wagons when they were transporting them to the forest to kill them.
So he watched them.
He followed them around. He followed them. He and his in-laws. He had--he married a family of--they were called ???--horse thieves, gamblers, thieves outright--I don't know, connivers--funny family.
He married into this family.
He married into this family. So that's okay. But Ivan was a sweet soul, I'll tell you. And he was standing there and watching all these proceedings, okay? Because the first letter I wrote to our village in 1991, you know after uh, Perestroika, I asked about him, okay?
Uh, who did you...
I wanted to know.
Who did you write to?
To, to one of my neighbors, to Olga, with whom I correspond until today.
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