Slowdown in Jython

[tac-tics]

I have an application written in jython which has to process a number
of records. It runs fine until it gets to about 666 records (and maybe
that's a sign), and then, it's performance and responsiveness goes down
the toilet. It looks like it's running out of memory and is being
forced to use extended memory, but I do not know enough about the
language to figure out where this is happening. It will eventually
finish the task, but the window stops responding, and it ends up taking
several hours (as opposed to several minutes as it should). I really
just wish I had a tool for polling the amount of memory Jython was
using at any given moment.

Does anyone have any strategy or advice for me?