The War
For Us, the War Ends
began to feel like normal human beings again, living in a village and surrounded by neighbors. My cousin Alex, who had been fighting the Germans with the Russian partisans, returned and got a job with the Russian govern- ment fighting the remaining bands of Ukrainian nationalist terror - ists (the Banderas), whom the Russians were trying to eradicate. Meanwhile, my cousin Boris did some business distilling vodka with a man and his son in the village of Kozarnik and selling it to Russian soldiers coming into the village. The soldiers paid with food, which was in short supply, such as canned foods from the United States, received through the Lend-Lease Agreement. The cans had Russian labels printed over the English. While we were waiting to see what was going to happen in this area, Jewish survivors started to emerge from the woods. Matchulanka almost doubled in population, and housing became a real problem. Jews started renting rooms in adjacent villages. After a few months, my uncle decided that we should move into a larger city, closer to civilization, to see what the future would bring. The Russians announced that any former citizen of Poland could either remain in what was now Russia, or they could move west over the new border into what was now Poland proper. In keep- ing with the Jewish tradition of always moving west, farther away from the “czar,” we decided to repatriate to Poland. We had to wait for papers. We got a horse and wagon and, with our meager possessions, went to Koretz for a couple of days to stay with friends. From Koretz, there was a paved road to Rovno, and we were able to get into Rovno by truck. My uncle secured an apartment in Rovno at 22 Szkolna (School) Street in a Jewish area not far from the big synagogue. We lived there from February to August 1944, during which time we were notified that we would soon be repatriated to Poland. Rovno was a big city with about twenty-six thousand Jews prior to the war. After the war, very few were left, but survivors came from the surrounding areas, and there were two functioning synagogues.
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