Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Sigmund Rubin - January 12, 1982

So he says, "Look, why should I drag them down here, I got people on my side and my people will take good care of them, don't worry." And they agreed on that. The next day we had a rendezvous with this friend of ours who went to get that stuff, you know. We came into his stable, we met in the stable, we couldn't go into the house. He closed the doors and he said, "Listen kids"--there were six of us at that time--he says, "my job is to kill you all, and he told us the story. But I promised them that I'll take care of you. Now I want one thing from you. We have to go down to the river across the, uh, other side where they live. We'll throw in rocks and you have to make noise that I am killing you. But you have to promise me one thing, that you are not going, that I'm not going to see you until the end of the war, because if they'll find out that you are alive, my life is in the jeo...is in jeopardy." Of course we agreed, you know. We went down, we threw rocks, we made noise and, don't ask. And we went to that single farmer. In that area there was another couple, another group of people hiding and they had a man who had the asthma. He used to come once a month to visit, you know. When he walked sometimes he had an attack and he had to cough. And, you know, there were always somebody on the, in the, in the village walking around and they followed him. When they followed him, they saw where he goes in. The next day, somebody came up, lit up a flashlight and saw us and left. When he saw us, we got dressed, left everything behind us and we went to the field. That was in 19...that was in 1944 in June because the, the corn was up, you know. We got in the field, we stayed there two days and those kids found another place for us. We went into a place and the farmer says, "Look, I'm going to take you in for so much and so much and I want you to stay here." We told him, he knew, you know, we were very close with him. And you have to promise me not to get out of here. You see what we did, we changed dollars into złotys once a month. So this friend of ours, that man who took us across the river, we used to go to him once a month, give him dollars and he went to Krakow, changed for złotys and bring, brought back the money to us and we had money to pay and to manage. Every time when we went to him we met another man who was hiding there by himself. He had no money, he didn't pay anything to the farmer, the farmer kept him--I don't know what his affiliation was with the farmer--but we always gave him something because he needed for cigarettes, for candles and stuff like this. When we got into that last place and we didn't move, we stayed there all the time, this guy started to look for us.