Father Zynoviy: For a start, I will, as usual, give an account of my biographical data. I was born in my beloved Rohatyn Region, Village of Zhuriv, on March 9, 1929. This ancient town, which has eventually lost its importance with time and looks now like a borough it has turned out that this borough has even no village rada. Sometime in the past it was a city with a castle surrounded by walls, moats filled with water there are many remains of glorious past.
However I wanted to speak to you about something else. My parents, of course, were peasants and, to their cost, not poor ones, which occurred to be a poison for our family ever since we were liberated. But I was born at a very interesting time, on the one hand, on the other hand very tragic time: under Polish occupation in 1929. All that had gone wrong in our land was caused by the Polish occupants. Personally I do not remember it, but there were very fresh accounts about the pacification of 1930, when the Polish administration brought punitive detachments and police forces in Halychyna which tortured our villagers, destroyed our reading rooms, our cultural heritage, cooperatives, etc.
Now, let’s move on. My father was Sich Rifleman. Many people from this cohort of Sich Riflemen were still alive. The gathered, came together, saw a good deal of each other. In our khata they held open conversations without keeping anything back from the children. Today I am grateful to my father for that, because in fact nothing was hidden from us and we knew everything first hand from the old-timers. This probably influenced my education and affected my further destiny. Those events, arrests of the members of OUN, abuse by Polish administration, Brygidki[1], Bereza Kartuska[2]… those names and concepts came into my life from my early childhood, when our young people came back from those Polish places of detention. These guys were met at the time not like today people meet political prisoners: they were more revered, respected, and actually everyone looked at them as heroes, our people almost adored and loved them. It is characteristic only of contemporary times that people treat political prisoners like something… The Soviet propaganda is to blame that people do not respect and honor political prisoners, as it was way back.
I must say that my generation, the generation of the 20s and 30s, to my mind, is the most tragic in the history of Halychyna. Why? Because of all those events that took place in Halychyna and in Europe we did not received proper training and appropriate education. In support I will say as follows. We went to school in 1936 when we were. We finished three classes−in Ukrainian we pronounced not “klas” according to Soviet norms, but according to Ukrainian pre-war tradition “kliasa”− in 1939 came Bolshevik troops to liberate us. Already in a month we found out the hard way the consequences of liberation: the first arrests set in. Somewhere in the middle of winter the first transport with prisoners started for Siberia. The Poles were the first to go: the Polish settlers whom the Polish administration brought here. On the land once owned by the landlords the Polish settlers began to play the master: they built their homes here. During the first winter of occupation these settlers were taken to Siberia. Our people, our children, my generation were thunderstruck by it, honestly.
But it was not over by a long shot, because then the occupants began to exile our peasants, they began to drive away Ukrainians. They arrested all conscientious Ukrainians, not only intellectuals, but peasants as well. My father belonged among people who were destined to be potential prisoners, though my father was not arrested. Firstly, my father had secondary level education: he graduated from the upper secondary school which meant a lot at the time. He was a penny-wise proprietor, had a good farmstead, a sizable plot of arable land round the khata which was considered very good for Halychyna: sixteen morgs[3] of arable land in addition to wood, hayfield, horses, cattle there was a lot to put one’s hand to. It is clear that the Soviets immediately declared these people kurkuls[4] and in our daily life the wheels fell off.
We had finished those three classes under Polish rule, but the Soviet authorities made us to go to the third grade again, because they considered the Polish school inadequate. And then there was the fourth grade during the rule of the first Soviets, as we call that period. I would like to explain why I dwell on those years. Those years were at the bottom of our insufficient training and our inadequate education. It cannot be denied that the elementary school had no resources to educate schoolchildren. At school the teacher told us−she was a famous teacher−I now bow to the shadow of Ms. Luszczynska… Although she was a Pole, she truly managed to lay foundations of our knowledge in many disciplines. But in the evening I came home and saw how my parents were packing things or those things had been already packed, because we were waiting that in the morning we would be exiled. They usually came to exile people on the night of Sunday. And on that night of Sunday my family did not sleep. I was the youngest in the family, my elder brothers fled from home, and parents with me and my sister remained and pinned our hopes on God and kept waiting to be exiled in the morning. Such waiting hours occurred once and again to the very end of 1940 and during the first six months of 1941. You cannot imagine what impact it had on our people, especially our children! It was nothing but expectation of repression.
Now let’s proceed to the issue of the arrests. We already knew that people were arrested and they never returned. Despite the fact that the Bolshevik prisons were strictly isolated, the leak of information existed, and we know that people were executed by shooting, we knew that people were put to the rack and horribly tortured. All of it was later confirmed when the first Bolsheviks retreated in confusion and the Germans came and opened the doors of prisons, including Lviv ones. I remember when a man who miraculously survived came to us. He also had to be shot on the last day. They brought eight people tied with barbed wire from one cell and seated them against the wall in a room with dead walls, and in front of them against the second wall they put another eight people tied with barbed wire. And the latter had to watch what they were doing with the former. They Not only abused and beat prisoners, but also cut off certain organs of the body, the officers cut off everything they might. These eight half-witted prisoners watched and waited to be submitted to the same tortures. Then the terrible roar got over to their mind: apparently the bombing was underway. Those monsters that did this bolted and returned no more. The German soldiers led these panic-stricken prisoners out of the cell. In such way this man survived. We heard an awful lot of such stories. People found their way knee-deep in blood in the corridors of Lviv “Brygidki”, looking for their relatives, their parents, sisters, and brothers…
And we took good note of it. The German “liberators” came. 1941, the restoration of the independent Ukrainian state was proclaimed. I remember this because children’s memory stores such events for a long time. I was at that popular assembly when the independent Ukraine was proclaimed.
V.V.Ovsiyenko: Where did it take place?
Father Zynoviy: It took place near the monastery in the Village of Pidmykhailivtsi. I remember even some statements, some phrases: they are engraved on my memory. I remember the speech of the Mother Superior of the nunnery. For some reason, in Halychyna we named Ukrainian letter в not “ve” according to the standard but “woo” and she pronounced the abbreviation NKVD as “eNKaWooDe”[5]. It is clear that speaking about the NKVD people used many not too pleasant epithets, and the Mother Superior did the same. While singing the hymn the people raised their hands in a Hitlerite manner, which was considered trendy at the time. I remember how difficult it was to stretch one hand and till the last voice sounded I used my other hand to support this gesture. It was in 1941 and I was 12 years old then. Everything positive and negative accompanying each war has imprinted in my mind. After all, I survived a number of successive occupations−Polish, Bolshevik, German and second Bolshevik−and finally we have our independent Ukrainian state.
I have seen a great deal of blood, many torn bodies, much suffering, and many raids. At the age of fifteen years I first I took up arms, at the age of sixteen years I fired fighting against the Bolsheviks.
I’d like to add a few words into the subject. I had no chance to become a six-grader: after the fifth grade I went at once to the seventh-grade courses. And so I finished seven grades without being educated in a proper way like contemporary children who graduate, say, from the seven-year school.
After seventh grade, I entered the Lviv upper secondary school and went to the third grade. But once again I finished nothing because the Bolshevik front advanced and the school education was wound up. Then the Bolsheviks came and endless raids and endless battles started. I’ve just mentioned that at the age of fifteen years I had to take weapons in hand for the first time. There were two Polish villages Lukawiec nearby−Lukawiec Żuriwsky and Lukawiec Wiszniewski−where many former Polish army detachments concentrated. The retreating German troops and units of szlązaks as we called them