Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Martin Koby - April 20, 1999

Right. It sounds like um, there was a lot of luck involved in, in your survival.

Luck? I don't know. I don't think it was luck, because take a look. Twenty-eight or twenty-seven of us Jews, out of forty-eight, survived in the same area. You know, listening to, to, to the Yedlins, listening to the Koran--the Koran was the one a little farther away, his sister, the Yedlins, the Korans and--or the Kobylanskis, we were all from each other no more than five kilometers, that is, within a radius of three miles.

But some people who--were turning people in, right, ???

Well, we--the one--in our area, there was only one, Mr. Zummer presumably was uh, you know, I uh, was the only one that turned the Jews in, okay, that we know of, okay?

And even he saved people.

And he you know, he...

He saved you.

...he put up with us.

Yeah.

So it wasn't luck. It has to be more than luck.

What? What, how would you...

What we discussed before. It's consideration for human beings.

Hm.

You listen to other Jews. You know, I was listening to one guy over there at the McDonald's you know, my sunshine boys and he says, "You were saved by Christians, by such kind people? You mean to tell me there were kind people in your area where you lived, there were people--non-Jews--Christians, who were that kind to you?" He didn't ask me once, he asked me several times. He can't understand it. He said, "What did you do to them?" I said, "we didn't do anything to them."

Do you understand it?

No.

It's just--it's a puzzle.

I don't--I have made my plans in my head. I wrote to Anichka--Anna Szczasny...

Uh-huh.

...about our village, we correspond, asking questions, you know. And she wrote me back. She said that there you know, that there are about forty-five people my age, my contemporaries from this--from this area, like from this little villages, from Czech people I'm talking, only Czechs. She said there are about forty-five people still alive. There was one lady there, a Mrs. Massupust, she said--she told--I don't remember what she said, she's eight-five or eighty-eight. And she still works in the gardens, helps out in the garden. Very special lady. I used to go to her house to get food, to their house, her, her husband and, and we were--a couple weeks we were with them, too, h...hidden.