Moni, or Manus, Golub was born in 1918 in Rovno, Volhynia (now Rivne, Ukraine). In the early 1920s, when this part of Volhynia became part of Poland, the family moved to Zdołbunów (from which they had originated). In his youth Moni was a member of Gordoniya, a leftist Zionist youth movement and a good sportsman (in particular, as a soccer player). In September 1939, World War II began and the area was occupied and annexed by the Soviets. Zionist activities were banned. Manus began studying at a course for locomotive-drivers, but in October 1940 he received a call-up to the Red Army.
Golub's military unit was on the border of Bessarabia when the Soviet-German war began in June 1941. The unit was transferred to a training camp in Michurinsk, central Russia. Golub's military specialty was anti-aircraft defense. In Michurinsk he defended the training camp against enemy bombing raids, standing on a watchtower with a Maxim machine gun. At the end of the summer of 1941, the front moved close to Michurinsk, and the training base was transferred to the Urals.
In the middle of the following winter, like other "Poles", i.e. men who were born in the formerly Polish territories recently annexed to the Soviet Union, Golub was dismissed from the army, included into a labor battalion and, in January 1942, transferred to the area of the southern Urals. Most of the period between 1942 and 1944, Golub spent in Cheliabinsk. At the beginning of 1943 he learned that his mother and sister Malia were alive, having succeeded in escaping from Volhynia, and were then living in Central Asia. His father died during the flight eastward. Golub succeeded in moving his mother and sister to Cheliabinsk, where they were later joined by his two brothers.
In 1944 Manus was drafted for the second time. After long training, in the winter of 1945 machine-gunner Private Manus Isaakovich Golub was assigned to the 1018th Rifle Regiment of the 209th Division, with which he found himself in Poland, 35 kilometers from the German border. The first skirmishes with the Germans made him rejoice: "We were happy that we had the upper hand, because, finally, we, the Jews, were striking blows against the Germans and taking revenge on them"1(there were several Polish Jews in his machine gun company). In Germany they engaged not in skirmishes but in real battles, in March and April 1945 the Germans defended their homeland ferociously. Second Sergeant Golub learned that first of all, even more than his life, he had to protect his Maxim machine gun. He recalled that his platoon took over (temporarily) a German town and, characteristically, he succeeded in sparing his men while, at the same time, a mounted Cossack company which, without sending scouts ahead and without notifying their platoon commander, broke into the town and was decimated by German machine-gunners.2
Manus Golub ended the war south of Berlin in May 1945. He was awarded several medals.
At the end of 1945 he was released from military service and moved to Cheliabinsk. In 1946 the members of his family repatriated to Poland. There their ways parted: his sister Malia and her husband went to Uruguay, while the rest of the family, including Moni, immigrated to Israel in 1949.
