Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Sigmund Rubin - January 12, 1982

All we could take is as much as, you know, we, we were not prepared to leave to, to, something like this and we took as much as we could of our private belongings. When we got in to the square of the little town, they formed the people in columns and they started to select young people in another to maintain some work. Among the people they have selected, I was lucky and also two of my brothers, one older brother and younger brother. A couple hours later they marched away all the people in the direction of ???. We never saw my parents. I had parents, I had two more sisters, a brother-in-law and a nephew, who at that time was about two years old. I never saw my parents, neither of my family. We were assigned to clean up all the belongings of the Jews. So they brought in trucks and we had to load all the, all the Jews, the belongings of the Jews on the trucks. They took them away to a arsenal someplace.

Took who away?

Yes.

The belongings?

Yes. And they assigned us to a quarter in a small area. I believe there was about sixty young people of us left. One morning two trucks came up from Kielce and they took us, they said they are taking us to a factory. I didn't, because everything was so suddenly, I didn't even realize when I got into the truck that I wasn't with my brothers. I didn't see my brothers. Apparently--I, I figured that they fled and they got hidden. So on the way to Kielce I jumped the truck with another friend and we got back to our little town. When we got back we were caught by the Germans.

Do you remember what the name of this town was?

Nowy Korczyn.

Nowy Korczyn.

Yeah. When they took us to the headquarters he asked us why we jumped. I says, I wanted to be with my brothers, I didn't want to part with my brothers and this is a, is a reason I jumped. One thing he told me--and now I understand why he said this--he says, you'll regret that you came back. Because a lot of people survived in that factory. They're still alive. Being there another two, three weeks, they didn't need us anymore and they unloaded us on a truck again--with my brothers, of course--and took us to Sandomierz. There was a little ghetto. They, they uh, took people from all over the area into that ghetto and they closed off the ghetto. You couldn't get out.