Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Martin Koby - April 20, 1999

I mean, where--where in particular were you? Do you remember whose, whose, whose farm you were on or what, what, what the circumstances were?

I don't remember whether I was with my father already or was I on my own. I could have been on my own yet. I was told you know, when we--that night when we dressed up and took our clothing with us and everything...

Yeah.

...if you have no place where to hide and no one will keep you, right? You come to this man...

To Ivan.

...is it recording?

Yeah.

...okay--the family called Klimchuk. It was...

K-l-i-m-c-h-u-k?

K-l-i-m--Klim--c-h-u-k.

Okay.

Yeah. And he'll know where we are. He'll tell you. But when you get there, you cannot get--you should be there between one and four o'clock at night. You don't come to him, the worst the weather, that's the best time to come. But you don't go before you hear a rooster crow. You hear a rooster crow sometime during the night, you can go, clock works. Uh, and he'll tell you where we are, but you go to the western wall--I mean, he-- his--the--his house was oriented south and north.

Also a farmer?

Yeah, he had a--no, he was not a farmer, he was a struggler. He had a piece of land which was not enough to support a family, but he was outside of the village, you know...

Okay.

...the future suburbs, okay. Because there were big fields, not far from the highway. I never thought of buying land there. And uh, but I figured out why he was picked. He was a Communist sympathizer. And I came there and I knocked on the window three times. And he opened up the window and he said, "Who's there?" And I said, "Moshka." And he says, "Your father is in Vasil Danyaluke's barn." Because I knew who owned the barn. "You go there and you'll find him." And it was uh, the barn from the house was like from here--the--one block away.

So you had spent a year at least already alone from place to place to place?

No, no. I spent about three weeks alone.

So the rest of the time you were with your father and with your family?

We were with the family, we--you know, we were a family.

You were together.

This was after he were told, you got to go and hide or you're going to be liquidated. He didn't tell us what to do.

Uh-huh.

He only told us that our plans are for--that you guys are going to be liquidated, okay. So I was about three weeks you know, on my own. Then I ran out of places where to go.