H. V. Myhailenko: I am Hanna Vasylivna Mykhailenko, née Smoliy. I was born in the village of Mykhnevets, Turka Powiat, Lviv Voivodship on April 30, 1929. According to the new administrative division it is Strilkivskyy Region[1], Lviv Oblast. Poland established control over my village in 1950: Stalin exchange these territories due to the fact that there was an armed resistance movement, and the Poles exchanged oil fields for coal mines in Rava Ruska.
I was born into a large family. There were seven children. My father was Vasyl Hryhorovych Smoliy, my mother was Hanna Fedorivna Smoliy, née Lamanets. My father died very early, in 1936. In that year I became a first-grader. My father knew three Rs, like his brother Mykola Smoliy, self-taught. In the Austrian army my father was promoted to the rank of sergeant major. He fought on the Italian front and was later redeployed to the Austro-Russian front and fought against Cavalry General Brusilov. They were sieged in the Przemyśl stronghold, cut off water and food supply and by hunger were forced to surrender. So my father fell into Russian captivity and found himself in the Central Asia. He was released due to the revolution. It’s about my parents.
We were left without a father in 1936. Most children were little kids and my mother led a wretched life with us. We worked hard on land: we had 12 hectares of land and it was difficult for us to till the earth. We had a worn-out horse, two cows, a pig, but we had to work hard. My oldest sister, Mariya, sisters Kateryna, Olga, Paraska, Nastasiya, and brother Yosyp. My brother Mykhailo died at an early age and I do not remember him. My sisters Kateryna, Mariya and Olga are no more, and only sister Paraska still lives in the Village of Ahafiyivka, Liubashivka Region, and Odesa Oblast.
We were brought up in the not very wealthy family, though nationally conscious. Our father was engaged in social activities reading books to people who came to us. Even before the WWI my father ran a little tavern, where people could come, drink a glass of liquor, have a talk, because all three Jews-innkeepers in the village made drunkards of local people, put their property on the block and people were forced to emigrate. The village council resolved that my father should open a tavern, where nobody would cheat people and where the proprietor would let the debtor to repay debt when the latter would have enough money. Such was the concept. During the WWI everything went to rack and ruin. It couldn’t be made up for. My father did not live up to see the Soviet era otherwise he would definitely have died in prison somewhere.
Uncle Mykola Smoliy was a volunteer of Ukrainian Halychyna Army. He was among four volunteers from our village who joined the UHA and he fought on the fronts. My uncle was interned in Czechoslovakia in 1921. He returned, endure the punishment in the German concentration camps, he also did a term in the Soviet concentration camps. He had incurable cancer and died in the Village of Ahafiyivka.
My family always participated in the resistance movement. We opposed both Polish occupation and Jewish exploitation. In the village we had a great chorus, well known through the neighborhood, we had a “Prosvita” reading room and a large library. The builders of the “Prosvita” House worked on the on a cost-free basis, I still remember it. They produced plays there, gave concerts, delivered papers often there were dancing parties, there were good musicians, violinists and drummers. There were no drunks, no thieves in the village, before the WWII no one in the village stole or drank heavily. There was a church and the priest maintained discipline and public morality, and it was good.
Our troubles began with the advent of the Soviet regime. I remember very well: in 1939 they came and all at once the goods disappeared from the shops. One couldn’t buy cloth or sweets: the shelves of the shops were bare. The incoming frontiersmen made us happy for the time being: they brought printed cotton and corn grits. People were happy to buy even this because they were running out of stock.
The arrests began. In 1940 my brother Yosyp was arrested. He was born in 1919, and now he lives in the town of Dolyna, Ivano-Frankivsk Oblast, 1 Kotliarevsky Street. My brother with a group of other armed young people tried to cross the Soviet-German border. Unfortunately, a provocateur betrayed them and the border guards met them there. Pavlo Smoliy blasted himself with a grenade not to fall into the hands of oppressors, while others were arrested. My brother got 6 or 8-year-term: I do not remember exactly now. After imprisonment, when the so-called Great Patriotic War broke out, he was released from prison as a Polish citizen according to the agreement with Poland. He was mobilized to work in the pits in Kazakhstan he worked in the Karaganda basin. In 1946, he returned home. When he came back, we had one search after another search. They wanted to catch my sister Kateryna for her participation in the UIA guerrilla movement these pursuers were after me as well. Somebody squealed that during the war, I collected a lot of weapons and buried it. They dug over the entire kitchen garden, searched the house and turned everything upside-down. They found no weapons, failed to find it, though there were weapons. There is still a carbine buried in the boundary path, and buried ammunition. But they are probably worthless now because they are buried in Poland.
When brother Yosyp came, we did not have even bread. He came late in the evening, it was cold, after the search the things were broken down and scattered, and he took a loaf of brown bread out of his bag. We ate it instantly, because we were very hungry.
I managed to escape. I fled to another region and went to Nyzhnioustrytsia high school. I managed to leave this school in 1950.
V.O.: And in what year did you go to school?
H.M.: I went to this school in 1947. There were times when I famished for three days running. It was in 1946-47, terrible famine, terrible food, food rationing, there was nobody to help me from time to time I went home, grind some grain with the help of millstones, bake bread, and carry it on my shoulders there was nothing but bread, except for a couple of eggs. Thus, I lived from hand to mouth and studied and there were times when I famished for three days running.
When I went to school the KGB officers began to haunt me. What was the reason? For a long time our grade opposed joining the Young Communist League. They explained it as a result of my agitation. The KGB officers began dragging me to their office and they were about to arrest me. Once they did arrest me and escorted me to Drohobych. There I spent three days under investigation. They did not give me anything to eat, I was very hungry. I didn’t own up to anything and the investigator released me. It was around 1949. I was initially kept in the Nyzhnioustrytska prison in bullpen. For a short time. They arrested me, say, in the evening and took away around late at night. It was the Brygidki prison[2]. There are two doors that open. There are very long lines with parcels. So on the one side and on the other side there is a narrow passage, and when I was passing them, the people asked, “Wherefrom? Wherefrom?” The KGB officers shouted “Silence!”, but I said that from Ustryk and all everybody heard.
They led me to the investigation department, where I was kept and interrogated. They released me after three days without documents. They did not hand me documents. It was impossible to reach the destination because the stamp in my passport read: “borderline zone -2”. Nobody wanted to give me a lift and at the CP all cars were checked by border guards. I couldn’t board a train without a ticket and couldn’t get on without a passport with the zone stamp. I hardly managed to pass round the CP, the truck waited for me there (our people) and took me to Sambir. There was a train Sambir