Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

Martin Koby - April 20, 1999

Martynovka

A Czech village?

A Czech village. The whole village was only Czechs. They had nice sections, they had nice pieces of land. They had nice estates.

You had moved to Czechoslovakia...

No, no, no. This was not a Czech...

But you said these were Czechs.

This is just four kilometers from Giuszwica.

Okay.

Because there were lots of colonies, little d...villages around in--of Czech in the Volhynia you know, the--our region.

Yeah. Okay.

They came there somewheres in the 1840s. I verified that lately with Anichka, that lives in Czechoslovakia. I wrote to her and she wrote back. Her daughter-in-law actually wrote me, that the Czech came into the Volhynia in the 1840s. The Czar--the Russian Czars brought them in to teach the peasants improved farming. And we went this haystack and the man's dog--Mr. Dvorjak was his name. He had something wrong with his hand, I don't know what, but he always wore a sock, not a glove.

Mm-hm.

So I assumed that he had no fingers or it was a misformed hand, his left hand, so he wore a sock and covered up.


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