Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Feelings about Partisans (continued)
Do you know how many guns they had in the Warsaw ghetto?
Yeah, you told me chai-kok.
They wouldn't give it to them.
Sure, they--the Polish people give you something? The Jews in the ghetto? Come on!
But the, the partisans wouldn't give it to them.
And who were the partisans? Polish people!
Of course.
They know what the...
...that was my--now we come back to my question, who was going to give a hundred Jews guns?
Jews could have just--where did the Ukrainians--the resistan...they, they bolted from the Germans. Where did they get guns? You could have bought--we were not prepared--so you offered--why didn't you Jews in our village go at night over there in the battlefield and pick up the guns? But they didn't think. They were not prepared, they mentally were not--nothing.
Right. And you think if there had been some strong leadership there would have been--well, what's to...
Some kind of leadership.
The partisans around Vilna were...
Well, you--yeah.
...they were successful, the Jewish partisans.
But why? Because Vilna was a progressive place. They knew what was going on and they knew what has to be done or--at least they prepared themselves to some.
Uh-huh.
I don't know much--but it--I'm taking your word for it.
Uh, the partisan--there's a movie about them, the partisan leader um, was a poet, actually. He led the partisan group.
You know, I read and I read all kinds of little things and I'm getting to the point where I don't read anymore--sometimes I don't read anymore. You know why? Because there's nothing inspiring. There's nothing--all this history is nothing but defeat, one after another is--you know, people being led like sheep. Come on, you can only take--as far as I, I consider, I can only take so much.
You really think they were that much...
It's a sad--that's a sad experience.
It's a, it's a terrible expression.
What?
Being led like sheep.
Yeah.
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