Voice/Vision Holocaust Survivor Oral History Archive

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Sigmund Rubin - January 12, 1982

My cousin at the time, who is my wife--I keep, I keep repeating.

Ok.

And uh, myself and four men who were from the farm, they had farms. So we stayed there, we made a deal with this farmer that they, after they will, after the war they will give him their farms. We paid him money because he had to feed us. He was a poor man. But in order to make our place safer, they promised him the farms. And I paid for all of them at that time. And this how we could survive. One day my cousin went to a neighboring farm where her parents gave away all their belongings. They had a uh, they had a store of uh, yard goods. And they gave that stuff to that woman to keep it. After the war they'll get it back from them. When she came there and she told them that she wants some of the textile stuff, she says I got to live, I got to pay people for the expenses, that woman's son-in-law told her, asked her to stay overnight. And during the night they will dig out, he says that all her merchandise are digged in, in the ground. That he has to have time, and in the meantime if she'll stay overnight he will get out that stuff and the next day she'll be on the way. One of the boys from the farm went with her. We had a rifle at that time. He didn't go into the house, he stayed, he stayed outside. When that, this son-in-law of that woman saw him with a rifle, he got a little bit aware, you know, and uh, he asked him to come in, but he says I wouldn't go in, my, my job is to stay right here. Anyway, my wife didn't accept the invitation to stay overnight and she made arrangements with them that she will send a friend of ours who also is a Gentile, and we knew him very well, a wonderful person, we'll send him. You see, there was a division of, of the river Vistula between our area where we were hidden and that woman where my wife had her parents' stuff there. So this friend of ours, he had a little boat and he took them by boat across the river. So she told them that she will send him the next day and he'll pick up her stuff and he'll get it to us. And they agreed. When this man went the next day to pick up the stuff, that son-in-law of that woman says, listen,???, we are going to make you responsible. We are members of the A.K., which is the Armia Krajowa--this is, uh--and you have to bring all the Rubins down there in our sight and we'll take care of them. And if you won't do that, we'll kill you and your family.