Zoltan Rubin - January 12, 1983
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After you escaped now, at the end...You ran from the, from the camp and go to Pilsen, then what? Did you go back home?
Okay, the first thing, this is another story what doesn't happen to everybody. I'm, I'm going home by train, it was pretty hard to come home. So, when we, I got to Prague...In Prague and I'm traveling by train home, still the green, my green uniform, and the uniform says KG, Kriegsgefangener, right here, K and G and the same, the same thing on back. I didn't have anything else, I didn't go for anything, I said, "I'm going home." I'm traveling in train and there is a soldier there and a Czechoslovakian officer um, foreign legion from Russia, foreign legion...There was a Czechoslovakian brigade in, in Russia uh, during the war, so he is, he started talking to me, where I was. And I says, "What's my name?" "My name is," I says, "Rubin." He says "Rubin? Do you have a brother, a Dr. Rubin?" I says, "Yes, I have, he's in Persia." He says, "No, he's not in Persia, he's right here in my, in my brigade. He's the, the...he's the doctor of this brigade." I says, "Where is he?" So, anyway, he tells me that he is in Kroměříž. And so in, in Kroměříž we passed already. So, I got off the train next station, I go back to Kroměříž and I get there and I got to the barracks and I told them who I am and the, these soldiers says, they were old army officers now, and they said, "Let's play a little trick on your brother." Because I told them I didn't see my brother since 19...uh, maybe 1936, thirty...after 1936 I didn't see him. So, so whether he'd recognize you. So, they told him that somebody's waiting on the outside and he came in. I recognized him but he didn't recognize me. But this we got, anyway, some, some uh, get-together it was. So, then we started to look together whether anybody else came back. Nobody came back. So, then he stayed in Czechoslovakia. He stayed in...He moved to Liberec. He became doctor over there and I went home and I started to gather things what pieces uh, maybe I can put together something. So, the first thing what I did is uh, the mill was taken apart by the Germans and I found the machine...all the machinery and I rebuild the mill. But after I rebuild the mill, the government took it over and then uh, the other story, everybody knows already, after the war.
This, this is the time you went back to the house that you're talking about?
I went back to the house and I found a few things and I stayed there one, one evening. I thought maybe I'll sleep there, but I didn't. I laid down and I got up and went back to the city. I didn't stay in my village. I couldn't stay in my house because I...all I seen is faces. So, I didn't sleep one night in my own room after the war. I couldn't stay there. But I lived in Prešov 'til uh, 19...'til 1948. In 1948 I transferred...I, I found some mail from...I don't know if I told you that I found some mail from this guy here from Windsor.
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