B.V.Rebryk: I am Bohdan Rebryk. My father’s name is Vasyl. My mother’s name is Iryna. I was born in the Village of Pavlivka on July 30, 1938. It is not far from here: seven kilometers from Ivano-Frankivsk. My father was twice married. I am the son of his second wife. Somehow, my father had no luck with his wives. With the first one, he lived only 10 years and she died. She left three kids. He married a second time, this time it was my mother, and there were two of us. During the war, my mother died. We were just little kids at the time.
My father is of village ancestry, grain grower’s family. He loved his land and cultivated it. In the village, he was the richest man. When the Bolsheviks came, they ruined his farm, dismantled everything and imprisoned my dad. Based on my father’s farmstead, khata, barn and stables they organized Pavlivske collective farm.
On my mother’s side, my ancestors belonged to local nationalist rural intelligentsia. My mother had four brothers and one elder sister. My mother was a middle child, because there also was a younger brother. The Poles killed all boys, that is my mother’s brothers. Her eldest brother, Olexa, was a sotnyk in the Ukrainian Halychyna Army. He was in Kyiv in 1918. Then, when the Halychyna Army retreated to the West, the Poles captured him. The Poles knew him, because his whole family was nationalist, and they bent two birches, tied his legs to these trees and tore him apart. He was the eldest mother’s brother. The Bolsheviks for taking part in UNO arrested the second one. He served 25 years in prison. He returned. They did not permit him to enter Halychyna and he lived in Donetsk Oblast. There he died soon after his imprisonment. The Poles tortured to death the youngest brother, whose name was Zachary (he was interred in my village, there is his grave). In 1939, he gave a talk on Shevchenko’s birthday in Ivano-Frankivsk where the Prosvita is situated now… At the time, he had to register his text in the police to get a permit and give a talk on Shevchenko’s birthday. He registered one paper and actually used a different text. He had a kind of bullet points on the paper. When he was coming down from the stage, the agent under disguise came up running and grabbed his notes. The following day he was apprehended and given two-year term in Bereza Kartuska prison. He did eight months there. The pols kept him in water. The flesh came off the bones, and, actually, people carried him home. He had only 23 years of age and died.
Moreover, my mother, as I have said already, died during the war. Her sister lived here in the Village of Pavlivtsi and died when I came back from prison in 1989. Thus far my matrilineal relatives. My patrilineal relatives were simple people, grain growers living in the village they were not political activists but supported the OUN, for which my dad was arrested and convicted.
Well, I grew up. Then came a time when my dad was taken to Siberia. I stayed here with the elder sister from my father’s first wife. I went to school. I graduated from the seven-grade school. At the time, only the seven-year school was free of charge and one had to pay for the upper school. And we had no money for my sister’s husband was also in prison, I had no father, no mother, we had nothing to pay with. Upon my sister’s advice, I decided to enter the Stanislav Music School after the seven-grade school. I failed my exams. I did not pass the “musical abilities test”. Everything was Ok with the rest of the subjects: I had good, pass marks, but I got three for the musical abilities test and was screened out. I got a three mark for singing Oh guilder-rose in the meadow” I had no idea it was a forbidden song. I think the guilder-rose was to blame. Although I’m the world’s worst musician! I went to that music school because there they granted scholarship for good results and the education was free. I had never seen a piano in my life and saw it there for the first time during the musical abilities test”. They did not put me on the list because I failed my entry exams. My sister said, Go to the upper school then. We will manage somehow and pay for it not to lose a year.”
I went to the eighth grade, but in October of the same year, which was in 1952, a new medical school opened as the medical institute extension here in Stanislav. I decided to try to enter the school. I went there. I finished the first year and moved to the second year. We had to study for three years. And suddenly there was announced a recruitment of children to Magnitogorsk, Urals. They began recruiting because then the struggle of the UIA was underway, the armed units were acting around, there were security officials and I remember very well men in white overalls. The children where recruited to undergo Russification: the Donbas sent requests. The very word Donbas sounded for us very terrible. The roundups in Halychyna provided people for Donbas. The then Donbas was identified with Russia. Then, in the case of the Urals, the colored posters hung throughout the city: men were needed to make steel, assembly workers, turners… Three-month training. They promised earnings to the tune of 2 - 2.5 thousand.
I left that school and went with them. I was a lonely unconnected person... Therefore, I found myself in Russia, as far as in Magnitogorsk. I arrived there and found no steel makers. There were simple construction colleges at the time, they were called factory schools. I could not return back, because I ran away. I studied there. I graduated from the factory school and worked as a carpenter at the construction site until I grew up. It was the time of development of Magnitogorsk. I reached the conscription age. The officials gathered us there to attend classes at military commissariat. Maybe they found more able children... I think this looking back. They sent us to another school training radiomen-gunners for heavy military aircraft.
It was my time to join the army and the military registration and enlistment office sent me from Magnitogorsk as far as to Spassk-Dalniy, Primorsky Krai. There I graduated from college. I flew then. At the time there appeared first Soviet aircraft Tu-4, Tu-16