Martin Koby - April 20, 1999
Russian Liberation (continued)
Uh-huh. Let's come back to February 2nd. Were you--where were you? Were you...
All night, we were at Szczasny's place, in the...
You were...
...pigsty, on the ground there. And he used to come--the night before you know, February 1st, February uh, January 31st, we could hear the guns going full blast all over the place. And he used to come every couple hours and he used to talk to my father. He stood outside by the pigsty you know, and we were inside. We couldn't--you couldn't see. And he stood outside and smoked a cigarette, because--well, what does a farmer do?
Hm.
Um, he stood there in snow, it's winter. And you could hear all this traffic on the highways, mmm, going and the guns, artillery booming somewheres, you know. And he came and he says uh, you know, "They're already in Lu...Lutsk."
Uh-huh.
That's behind us, west...
Yeah.
Lutsk .
West, yeah.
Or they took Klewan already and Lutsk and I thought to myself, how come they don't here?
It's there...
See?
Both...
Yeah.
Klewan and Lutsk got...
Lutsk got...
Yeah.
...sort of west of, of uh, Rovno, right?
Right--northwest.
Huh?
Northwest.
North--yeah, northwest, but it's...
Mainly west.
But--mainly west, west of our--now, this is Rovno. This is...
But here's...
This is east, okay?
But here's Lutsk.
Lutsk. So they're already over here.
Yeah.
Why don't they come down this road to Du...down to Dubno, okay?
Yeah.
??? who knows? I really didn't know exactly, but I knew where ??? is, though. ???, there's a little Jewish town, ??? on the way to Lutsk. But I know that's--I knew where my, my--I knew my orientation at that time. And he came and told us, he points at me, one day--I think the night before, the night before they came, he says, "The Germans are putting up artillery on the hill." You know where Timoszc lived? Timoszc--our village was here and there was a hill over here and right on the other side--and the freeway was here. There was a gap over here too you know, you could see the freeway. And Timoszc lived right by the, by the, by the high...freeway, by the highway. And it was on a hill--on, on the other side of the hill.
Hm.
So the Jewish--Mr. Szczasny told me that the Germans are putting up artillery on this hill near Timoszc's house, so they will be able to shoot west, because you know--it figures that if they're in Lutsk, they got to come here too...
Uh-huh.
...in order to get--you--you know, take hold of the--of the--of the free--of the highway.
Uh-huh.
So we talk--asked him--so he was telling this to my father and uh, uh, I started--I thought, why would the Germans put up artillery on the hill? Were they--you know, when they retreating. They have to keep the highway open because they're going to come from over there from, from uh, from the west, from Lutsk, to you know, put the...
Yeah.
A little common sense. So my father got down, he said, "Did you hear, this is what Mr. Szczasny was telling us." I said, "Oh, boy," I said, "they're probably going to start shooting tonight." "What do you mean?" I said, "Well," I told my father my theory. "How do you know?" "You know, I don't know, this is what I think." And guess what? Around ten--eleven o'clock, that artillery start firing. And all the shells flew overhead from where we were.
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