SYCHKO, PETRO VASYLYOVYCH

Petro SYCHKO

Stalin’s TETAs*

*In the chapter “A Month of Memories of Ukraine” and elsewhere, the author explains this acronym: TETA stands for tyurmy, etapy, tabory, amnistiya (prisons, prisoner transports, camps, amnesty). The author states that he wrote these memoirs over many years, but the chapter “The Camp in Shodrovo” indicates when this section, at least, was written: “although 32 years have passed since that time.” 1947+32=1979.

The author says that he wrote about 800 cards (sheets) of memoirs, but, unfortunately, only 100 sheets of the manuscript have survived. The rest, hidden in a cache, were gnawed to pieces by mice while he was in captivity.

P. Sychko titled some of the chapters, while those marked with an asterisk* were selected and titled by the editor, with the author’s consent. —Ed.

Contents

Last Night in the Dormitory. February 11, 1947

Last Day at the University. February 12, 1947

First Day in Prison. February 12, 1947

The Main Investigative Body of the NKVD for the Precarpathian District

The First Interrogation—February 13, 1947

First Night in Prison. February 14, 1947

The Solitary Confinement Cell

The First Interrogation in Prison

The First Confrontation

The Second Confrontation

The Third Confrontation

A Conversation “at the Highest Level”

The Parcel

Easter

In the General Cell

The Trial. June 23–26, 1947

The Transit Cell

“The Barrel”

“The Mute One”

Zolochiv Prison

The Transit Point

The Visit

The “Brother’s” Farewell to the “Sister”

The Prisoner Transport

The Prisoner Transport of Stefaniia Petrash

Fedir Fedoliak

Chelyabinsk. The Endless Road

A Memory from My Wife

A Month of Memories of Ukraine

Abagur. A Father and Son’s Reunion

The Foot March to Toza

The Camp in Shodrovo

The Ration

Last Night in the Dormitory. February 11, 1947

After lunch, the superintendent paid a visit to our basement room in the dormitory, where I lived with Volodymyr from the mathematics department (of Chernivtsi University. —Ed.), and delighted us with the news that a room had opened up on the first floor where we could move. We were thrilled, as we were truly tired of the damp and foul-smelling basement, and without wasting any time, we moved our belongings into the cozy, bright room.

By chance, Bohdan from Hanovets, Volodymyr’s friend, arrived for our housewarming and shared in our joy; he was a welcome guest in our new home.

After supper, Volodymyr was solving some problems from mathematical analysis, Bohdan was reading the new newspapers, and I was reading a novel. Before we knew it, the clock struck midnight. Our friends went to bed, but I kept on reading.

For some reason, I couldn’t sleep that night; insomnia tormented me. And though I eventually lay down as well, my eyes would not close. Various thoughts came to mind as I tossed and turned, pondering and wondering. But eventually, exhaustion took its toll, and at around four o’clock in the morning, I finally fell asleep. And I had a dream—a terrible, strange dream that has remained in my memory for my entire life.

I dreamt that I was in my home village, across the river that flows by our house. Suddenly, clouds, thunder, and lightning appeared out of nowhere—a flood began. The small mountain river, called Putna, became a great river. With a loud roar and rumble, it rolled its muddy waves downward. Just then, three men in embroidered shirts appeared from somewhere. They tried to catch me, but I threw myself into the waves, struggling, trying to swim to the other bank, the one where our house stood. But those three men constantly pursued me, swimming after me, grabbing me by the hair and plunging me underwater. I fought with them in the water, from time to time breaking free to the surface, gasping for air, only to disappear into the waves again. The struggle in the water lasted a very long time. Yet somehow, I managed to escape their grasp, swim to the bank, and run home. I opened the gate to the yard—and at that moment, I awoke. I was drenched, sweat pouring from my face, and I was trembling uncontrollably, a chill running through me. I was in such a state, it was as if I had truly experienced everything I saw in the dream. And so I lay awake; the dream I had just had tormented and disturbed me. I tried to chase away the dark thoughts by telling myself that I had, after all, made it across the river. And though I didn’t want to believe in the dream, for some reason I did. I felt in my gut that it was some kind of prophetic dream, it had been so vivid and specific. “Just before dawn,” I thought. “It will come true soon.”

I waited impatiently for morning, desperately wanting my friends to wake up so I could share my dream with them. The national anthem played on the radio, and the dormitory came to life. Footsteps and students’ voices could be heard in the hallway, and the clatter of cars drifted in from the street outside. My friends got up, boasting about how well they had slept in the new place. I, too, shared my nightly experience and told them my dream.

We got dressed, had breakfast, and went our separate ways: Bohdan went to the station to go home, Volodymyr to his lectures in the physics and mathematics building, and I to the “Metropolia,” the building that housed our philology department.

Last Day at the University. February 12, 1947

The first class was Western European Literature. The lecturer was Dr. Hul, a Doctor of Philological Sciences. He was a very intelligent, talented man. We always listened to his talks with rapt attention. That day, however, I found it hard to listen; a kind of inner anxiety enveloped me completely. I was anxious but did not understand why at the time.

A bell rang in the hallway. The first class was over. The students, cheerful and chatty, poured out of the classrooms like bees from a hive. I was about to go out into the hallway myself when our department secretary entered the classroom and announced:

“The rector of the university wants to see you. He asks you to come to him immediately; he’s waiting for you.”

Her words struck me like a knife. I gathered my notes, got dressed, bid farewell to my classmates, and headed for the exit, as the rector’s office was on a different street from the “Metropolia” (the name of the building where we studied). It was a 7- to 10-minute walk.

First Day in Prison. February 12, 1947

As soon as I stepped out from behind the gate of the “Metropolia” and onto the street, three men in embroidered shirts approached me. One of them asked me:

“What is your surname?”

To this, I replied:

“What’s my surname to you? What right do you have to ask me like that? I won’t tell you. If you want to know my surname, go find out at the dean’s office.”

“No, you must tell us!” the stranger repeated.

I repeated my answer. Then one of them took a little red book from his top pocket and insolently thrust it in my face, hissing through his teeth:

“We are from the NKVD. You are under arrest. Come with us.” And they warned me that if I dared to run away as we walked, they would shoot me. Each of them boasted a Nagant revolver, pulling it from the pocket on the side he was walking next to me. So, escorted by two of them (the third walked behind us, at a distance of 3 to 5 meters), I walked with them through the city. No one would have ever dreamed that these young men in embroidered shirts were escorting an arrested man. As we walked, they tried to make conversation with me. One of them glanced pointedly at my feet and asked:

“And whose boots are those?”

I was wearing military felt boots. A friend had given them to me to wear a few days earlier in Lviv, as I was traveling home, because it was freezing cold outside and I had only been wearing shoes. They asked me many such prickly questions as they led me along the road.

Various guesses crept into my head, and doubts gave me no peace. It was difficult for me to immediately determine the reason for my arrest; I didn’t know what was coming or from where.

They brought me to the guard post of the Chernivtsi Oblast NKVD Administration and ordered me to strip naked. There were “their own guys” there, but no longer in embroidered shirts, but in green uniforms with red epaulets. They pounced on my clothes and rummaged through all the pockets, every seam, while others cut off the buttons and leafed through my notes, snarling at me like dogs, but they didn't beat me. On the opposite side, there was a peephole in the wall through which someone was constantly watching. For some reason, it seemed to me that he recognized me.

They drew up a report for the confiscated items (a watch, a fountain pen, and other trifles) and my notes, gave it to me to sign, after which they led me to a solitary confinement cell and locked me in.

An hour later, the door opened. The guard on duty came inside and asked if I wanted to eat. I said no. For some reason, I had no desire to eat at all. Internally, I was preparing for something terrible, unbelievable, unexpected. Although I had never been in prison before (I was in my twenty-first year), I knew about it from the stories of people—eyewitnesses of German and Soviet prisons. Hundreds of different thoughts constantly pierced my brain. I paced my cell incessantly, from wall to wall. The minutes and hours passed slowly. They seemed endless.

Just as evening fell, the door to my cell opened. The guard appeared in it and shouted in a menacing voice, “Get out!” He led me to the exit, where my “acquaintances” were already waiting, but they were no longer dressed in embroidered shirts and civilian clothes, but in the NKVD military uniforms of a lieutenant colonel, a captain, and a lieutenant.

They opened the door. A passenger car was parked right next to it, also with its doors open. The lieutenant colonel sat down first, then they ordered me to sit next to him, and the captain squeezed in on my left. The lieutenant settled into the back seat.

At first, I didn’t know where they were taking me, but soon I realized that we were heading toward the train station. Driving through Chernivtsi, I noticed Volodymyr, the student I shared a room with, crossing the street. The car stopped at the station. The lieutenant colonel (whose name I don’t remember) warned me:

“Don’t you dare try to escape here, it’s useless. They’ll shoot you on the spot. See this corridor of civilian men leading to one of the train cars? Those are our men, they’ll be watching us board. Everything is guarded!”

The captain opened the door. As if we were friends or acquaintances, we headed for our assigned train car, where a detail of soldiers—about 20 men—was already waiting for us, and there was no one else in it. It was a compartment car. They pushed me into one of the private compartments. All three officers followed me in. They immediately ordered me to undress to my underwear and climb onto one of the upper bunks, turn my face to the wall, and not turn back without their permission.

The train moved in the direction of Kolomyia. And I was constantly struggling with the thought: where are they taking me? Where will our stop be?

I needed to use the toilet and received permission. Two soldiers entered the compartment and led me there; one stood with his back to the window, and the other in the open doorway, while guards also patrolled the corridor. After that, they led me back to my place.

Sleep fled from me that night. I couldn’t fall asleep for a single moment. My thoughts intertwined with the clatter of the train wheels, the whistle of the locomotive’s horns, with my relatives and friends. I had to think through so many different things that memorable night. It seemed endless to me.

I found out which stop we were at from the words of random passengers passing by the train car. We passed the cities of Kolomyia, Stanislav, Bolekhiv, Stryi, Mykolaiv… I realized they were taking me to Lviv.

And so the night passed. It was already morning outside—eight o’clock—when the train stopped at the central station of the city of Lviv. However, they did not let me off the car right away. They waited for all the passengers to get off, and only then did they allow me to get dressed and led me to the exit.

A new detail of NKVD soldiers and one officer, whose rank I don't remember, was already waiting for us by the car. One of the officers who had escorted me to Lviv handed the arriving officer some kind of package. Obviously, it was my books and notes, which they had confiscated from me during the arrest.

I found myself under new guard. They led me along the platform to the exit. Here, I addressed the new escort commander, asking for permission to buy something to smoke at the kiosk (the stand, the stall, which, by the way, stood on the platform). He allowed it. I had a few karbovanets—enough for two packs of one hundred makhorka cigarettes each. At that moment, the seller in the kiosk turned out to be a kind-hearted man, for although I gave him money for only two packs, he handed me five, along with several boxes of matches. Though I told him I didn’t have enough money, he just waved his hands and said anxiously, “Take them, you’ll need them.” He saw that I was surrounded by guards and understood perfectly well where they were taking me, so he gifted them to me at his own expense.

A flatbed truck was waiting near the station. They commanded me to climb into the truck bed, where they climbed in themselves, and then ordered me to lie face down, after which they covered me with a canvas tarpaulin and sat on me.

The truck sped through Lviv in a direction unknown to me. After a few minutes, it stopped, and when they threw the tarpaulin off me, I saw a sign on one of the buildings with the inscription “Pelchynska Street.”

The Main Investigative Body of the NKVD for the Precarpathian District

The escorts led me into the main administrative building of the investigative body of the NKVD for the Precarpathian District. As I climbed the stairs to the third floor, I heard the screech of opening doors and human voices in the corridor. Investigators of various sexes and ages came out of all the offices. As they led me down the corridor, a whisper followed me, full of surprise: “Oh, what a young deputy for Stepan Bandera!” Why they had such an idea about me remains unknown to me to this day.

They took me to the first office on the right, where guards stood by two windows. The officer who brought me there ordered me to sit on a chair that was against the wall, and passing another guard at the door, he commanded: “Nobody is to talk to him!” And he left the office himself.

I tried to start a conversation, but the guards immediately snarled at me, forcing me to be silent. I asked to use the toilet. This time, only one soldier came out with me, and he didn’t come inside with me but remained to guard me outside the door. The thought of escape never left me. But the window was barred, which drove the thought away. However, I took advantage of the opportunity that no one was watching me at that moment and threw half of a torn karbovanets, which they hadn't confiscated during the search back in Chernivtsi, into the toilet. This was one of my conditional call signs, used by me and my superior when sending a special courier to one another. We used a so-called “triple” call sign: the first was verbal (a prearranged word), the second was written (a prearranged written word), and the third consisted of a karbovanets torn in two—that is, the half I had and the half my superior had. The tear line and the serial number of the bill had to match exactly.

I hadn’t even finished my business when the door opened and the guard's angry reprimand rang out: “Get out! Enough of you lounging around in there.” He led me back to my previous chair.

After that, about 10–15 minutes later (which felt like an eternity to me), a pretty young girl, dressed in traditional Ukrainian clothing, entered the office and politely asked me if I wanted to eat. Remembering that it had been two days since I last had breakfast, I agreed that I wanted to eat.

A few minutes later, the girl brought a cup of hot coffee with milk and two small, buttered rolls on a tray. She placed this breakfast on the table and politely asked me in Ukrainian to sit down, and then she left.

When I sat at the table, I saw my photograph under the glass, and below it, my pseudonym “Zhovten” (October) was written in large letters, and even lower—OBZVU (Organization of Fighters for a Free Ukraine). In that instant, it became clear to me: I’ve been exposed!... I was in the hands of the occupiers who, under the guise of liberation, had come to destroy us, to break us down, to “re-educate” us.

The First Interrogation. February 13, 1947

A slender, tall, dark-haired junior lieutenant in military uniform entered the office and said, “Follow me.” He led me down the entire corridor to the opposite wing of the building on the right, opened a door, and we passed through a small room into a spacious office, where three civilians were already waiting for me. A tremor ran through my whole body. One of those present invited me to sit in a chair that was in the corner against the wall. They all looked me over piercingly, and after a minute of silence, questions poured down on me—who was I? what was I?

I was silent. Something constricted my throat; I was ready to accept torture. At that moment, I only regretted that I didn’t have the sewn-in poison capsule in my jacket. I wanted to die, so I wouldn’t have to talk to them.

At that moment, they set the telephones in motion; bells rang, conversations were heard, investigators asking how the recently arrested were feeling, naming my friends’ surnames...

“There, as you can hear, all your people have been arrested. They’ve sincerely confessed to everything.” And they began to persuade me to repent, to confess everything, to tell them the sincere truth. That it would lessen my guilt, and maybe they would even release me.

I remained silent. This enraged them. They slammed their fists on the table and threatened me with violence, with execution. After that, they led me to a large table, opened it, and showed me what was inside. There lay the unfolded OBZVU archive: the charter, instructions, a series of political articles written in my own hand...

“And now are you convinced that everything is in our hands? Speak, enough of this silence. It says here specifically that you are the deputy head of the OBZVU, its political referent, its ideologist.”

“Yes, I am the deputy head of the OBZVU,” I answered them. “I am its ideologist.”

After that, a series of questions rained down on me; they were interested in my point of view regarding them—the Soviet Union. I replied that everything that interested them was in my articles. My soul, my views, the goals and aims of our organization are laid out there. Its very name says what we, its members, are fighting for. We hate the occupiers, who under the guise of “liberators” are destroying our people, our culture, everything that is dear to our hearts. We want to be free, to have our own state—a United Ukraine.

They didn't ask me about the members of the Organization, only spoke on ideological topics. They didn’t believe that this was my personal view, that this was my opinion; they demanded I reveal my connections with foreign countries and the leadership of the OUN, which I categorically denied. They insisted I agree to cooperate with them, to brand my past and our fighters with shame, to write articles of repentance, to speak in the press and on the radio, and in return, they promised to give me “freedom” and the opportunity to finish my studies at the university. I was disgusted by their proposals and categorically declared to them that I was ready to accept death rather than be a traitor to my people.

Other investigators entered the office, each trying to ask me a question, demanding explanations, answers.

They kept me in this office like this, without a break, for that entire day, night, and the following day. I was collapsing from exhaustion, falling asleep in the chair, and they would periodically wake me and, half-asleep, attack me with new and new questions. But I had nothing more to talk to them about. I constantly repeated what I had said at the beginning of the investigation: “You already know who I am, you’ve read my writings, and I have nothing more to tell you than what is written there.” And I would fall silent, which made them very angry. Those two days and night spent in that office cost me a great deal of willpower, health, and courage. It seemed to me that in that short time, I had lived a long life—an eternity...

First Night in Prison. February 14, 1947

It grew dark outside. Evening had come. They led me to a car that was waiting for us at the exit of the building. In it, besides the driver, an officer in NKVD uniform was already sitting. They ordered me to sit next to them. To my left, a paunchy, medium-sized lieutenant colonel with a hooked nose squeezed in beside me. The car, tearing away from the spot, took us through the familiar streets of Lviv, where people were walking. The city pulsed with its daily life, and who cared who was riding in some car, or where they were being taken.

Suddenly the car stopped on Lonskoho Street, at the entrance to the prison gate. The door opened, and the guard at the entrance let all three of us in without a word, as if we were old acquaintances. Apparently, my escorts were employees of this prison, or the prison staff had known of our arrival in advance. They shut the iron-clad prison door behind me. I was met by a gray corridor, dirty walls, iron bars, dim light, and a guard with a ring of keys in his hands. The unwelcoming faces of the guards oppressed me so much that it seemed I wouldn't be able to bear it...

Having brought me to the guard station, this hook-nosed lieutenant colonel let out a malicious laugh, spewing saliva as he squeezed out the words: “Right here, Sychko, will be your USLC. Here, they’ll teach you how to love the Soviet regime.” I felt scalded as if by boiling water from the vile words of this Jew; I wanted to spit in his face, but I didn’t have the strength... I was half-dead, chills ran through me, my whole body trembled... A thin, tall, grim-looking guard who resembled a gangster entered the guard station. He ordered me to put my hands behind my back and walk forward without looking around. He led me to some kind of basement. My spirits sank even lower, my legs gave way, and I could barely move them.

He took me into a basement where a furnace was roaring and ordered me to undress. I took off my coat and hat and stopped undressing. He hissed maliciously through his teeth: “Take off all your clothes, we’re going to roast you here!” Even greater fear gripped me after such words. For a moment, it seemed to me that they would really burn me here, and praying in my soul, I said goodbye to the world. Before my eyes, he threw all my clothes into the furnace, which alarmed me even more, as proof that they would burn my clothes, and then maybe me... But that was a fleeting alarm, but it was there... It soon disappeared when I realized he was a bath attendant, as he ordered me to get under the shower, which, by the way, I had just noticed myself. He turned the taps, adjusted the water, and told me to wash.

It was time to get dressed. The bath attendant pulled my clothes out of the furnace-roaster with an iron hook and threw them on the floor at my feet, ordering me to get dressed. The warm shower and the hot, roasted clothes warmed me, and I was no longer trembling. Only a little ache tugged at my heart when I had to put on the coat, which until now had been adorned with a black karakul collar. Now, after the roasting, it had lost its appeal: the karakul collar was singed and cracked. The same thing happened to my karakul hat—it had shrunk into a ball, looking more like a mitten than a hat. Just before my arrest, my father had bought me these two beautiful items, which I used to show off. And here, in an instant, they were so charred from the roasting. But this regret soon vanished; I had no time for clothes. The matter of my life, of my friends’ lives, was being decided...

From the bathhouse, they led me upstairs. They opened metal bars in front of me; the guard immediately closed them, and the one in the corridor put a lock on them, then they slid open another set and locked them, led me further, and we stopped behind a third set. This counting and sliding of iron bars behind me had the effect of chaining me in iron, from which I could never break free.

The Solitary Confinement Cell

The guard on duty in this corridor (the bath attendant had remained behind the prison bars) led me to the door of a cell located in the middle of the corridor and warned in a low voice: “No noise. If you need to go to the toilet, knock on the door, but quietly.” He opened the door, and I entered my cell, which was 2.5 meters long and 1.5 meters wide. The door closed behind me, a key turned in the lock, and I heard the footsteps of the guard as he walked down the corridor.

The cell I found myself in had no window, only a small, dirty lightbulb, encased in a wire cage, glowing dimly from the middle of the wall, just below the ceiling.

I fell to my knees. Tears streamed from my eyes. I prayed for a long time, asking the Almighty to help me on my Golgotha...

When I had strengthened my soul with prayer, I wiped the tears from my eyes, got up, and began to walk around the cell, examining the walls, which were black from old whitewash and all scratched up by the fingernails of the prisoners who had been here before. Each had written something on the wall—if not their surname, then they had drawn one tally mark after another, from which one could guess that they were marking their final calendar of life. Each such mark, carved on the wall with a fingernail, probably signified a day and a night lived, so as not to lose count of their last days, because here it was impossible to distinguish night from day, and day from night—they were all the same, gray… In several such calendars, I counted 30 to 40 marks, after which was written: “Tomorrow, they will probably take me to be shot.” And there the marks ended. Or in some such calendars, after such a record, three or four more marks were carved, which probably meant that after such a premonition of death appeared in the prisoner, he lived on in this cell for those extra days he marked on the calendar...

I understood, I felt in my soul, how much every person wants to leave behind at least a small sign, a memory, a trace that he lived before his death. A person does not want to disappear without a trace. And the thought crossed my mind, should I not also start such a calendar, so as not to lose count of the days? I felt in my soul that here, even before I arrived, friends had been punished who were just like me, and who also wanted to live, but the merciless executioner cut their lives short...

There was a peephole in the door, through which the guard would occasionally peek to make sure I was behaving. This also had a rather unpleasant effect on me.

After studying all the wall inscriptions, I began to examine the door frame and stopped at one recently made entry: “Ivan Stoliar, 13.II.1947.” That means he, my friend, was in this cell just yesterday, and today I have taken his place. And various thoughts tormented me: where had he gone, what had they done to him? I could find no answers.

Suddenly, a knock from one of the cells reached my ear: someone was asking to go to the toilet. I recognized the voice of my accomplice, Brunarskyi, Petro. That means my friends are in these cells, I thought.

At 10 o’clock in the evening, the key turned in my door, the door opened a crack, and the guard commanded: “Go to sleep, feet to the door!” And he closed the door.

It was here that the coat my father had bought came in handy. The floor in the cell was concrete, so I spread it out under me, used my hat as a pillow, placed my boots by the three-section radiator so they would dry a little, took off my jacket and covered myself with it. Although I was incredibly exhausted, for some reason, I couldn't fall asleep for a long time—I tossed and turned, listening to the footsteps of the guard, who would occasionally approach the peephole of some cell and give someone a warning: “Uncover your head, move away from the radiator.”

Just before dawn, exhaustion won out, and I fell asleep. Before I knew it, the guard entered the cell and shouted, “Get up, time to eat!” From a foul-smelling bucket, he threw a handful of foul-smelling, half-rotten *tyulka* sprats onto the ledge under the radiator with a two-pronged fork. A little later, he brought me a 350-gram piece of black bread—that was my first prison ration.

Getting up, I stretched my bones, as my sides ached a little, having slept on concrete for the first time. I prayed to God and began to eat. For some reason, I had never eaten such sprats before when I was free, though I had seen them in stores many times. I had last eaten breakfast back on Pelchynska Street (two days had passed since then), so I started on the fish with an appetite. I cleaned it a little, initially discarding some, then unnoticeably ate it all, and the ration of bread to the last crumb.

At that time, one could hear in the corridor how someone was dragging something across the floor in spurts, stopping at each cell. A minute later, they would drag it again, and with each such jerk, something was brought closer and closer to my cell. When they opened the door, I understood that they were distributing soup. They gave me a wooden, semi-circular spoon and an aluminum bowl. “Hold this,” said the guard and poured a half-liter ladle of soup, which, as I later learned, the prisoners call *balanda*, into the bowl. The soup was quite thick; potatoes in their skins and barley groats floated in it here and there, along with fish scales. I slurped up the soup with pleasure, as I wanted to eat something liquid. My first breakfast in prison was over. And in the corridor, the shuffling of the bucket and the clatter of bowls fell silent.

I walked around the cell again, thinking, listening to what was happening around me. I could sense it was morning; prisoners were constantly knocking on their doors, being led to the toilet. From time to time, I heard the grumbling and dissatisfaction of the new guard, someone walking back and forth in the corridor, cell doors opening, someone being called out: “Get out with your things!” Or simply: “Get out!” And to others: “Go in!”

The door of my cell opened too. The guard said, “Get out, hands behind your back, don't look around.” And he led me down the corridor, first to the right, then to the left, down, up, so that my head started spinning, and I couldn’t figure out where they were taking me. Another guard was walking toward us, also leading a prisoner, and as if on command, they both shouted: “Turn to the wall! Head down! What are you looking at!” The guards understood each other, and mine said: “Let's go! Just keep your head to the right.” Because on the left, pressed against the wall, shielded by his guard’s shoulders, stood a pale, still quite young prisoner with his head bowed, hair already shorn, hands behind his back, whose face involuntarily caught my eye. “Hurry! Hurry up!” my guard shouted nervously, wanting me to pass without getting a good look at the prisoner standing behind the other guard’s back.

All these constant orders from the guards humiliated one's human dignity, making you feel at every step that you were a slave, a completely rightless person, that they would do whatever they wanted with you.

We entered what looked like an administrative office, with tables, chairs, and shelves with folders, but the two windows were also barred and looked out onto the prison yard. Here I saw daylight and, through the windows, wooden visors on every prison window, from behind which the tops of iron bars peeked out.

Two people in NKVD uniforms were sitting in the office. They told me to sit down. “Another interrogation,” I thought, because they asked, “Your name, patronymic, surname, year of birth”—and everything else. I answered, and they wrote it all down. Afterward, they led me to a table, smeared all my fingers with some black paste, and took each finger separately in their hands, pressing it onto the paper and rolling it from right to left, leaving their imprints on the paper. After finishing this procedure, the guard returned me to my previous spot.

About an hour or an hour and a half later, the door opened again, and another guard entered in the presence of the corridor guard and said: “Get your things and get out!” But I had no things; I hadn't had time to acquire any in my short time in prison. I put on my coat, pulled on my hat, and went out. True, upon leaving, they once again recited the familiar “prayer” to me: “Hands behind your back, don’t turn around!”

They took me to a new cell, more spacious, much cozier, and brighter. Here, there was a large window, covered with crisscrossed bars designed so that no one could squeeze through them. And on the outside, beyond the bars, hung a visor that sparingly let daylight into the cell. But it still let some in, because you could tell when day had broken and when it was night.

My acquaintance with the new place, the new “apartment” (if one could call it that), began. Here, there was a toilet (I later learned its name—*parasha*). In the very corner, there was a concrete platform about 15–20 cm high with an oval hole, which was covered by a square wooden lid about 40 cm in size. The walls, in their whiteness, were no different from the previous cell, perhaps a little brighter. But they were also scratched by fingernails, or maybe something else. There were no longer such sad cries as in the previous cell, but significantly different ones, from which it was clear that no one here was thinking about death, but believed in life, that one day they would be free...

The clatter of streetcar wheels faintly carried from the street, testifying that somewhere out there, beyond the thick walls, a slightly different life was bustling...

In the corridor, I could hear the guard pacing, occasionally peeking through the “peephole,” reprimanding someone, forbidding them to make noise or lie down (because, according to prison instructions, sleeping during the day is prohibited). Time passed slowly, seeming endless, my head throbbed from the tension, my legs grew weary from walking, but I continued to walk because it made me feel a little more vigorous.

From the familiar clatter, I determined it was lunchtime: they were dragging the bucket to the door, opening the *kormushka* (a small window in the middle of the door through which food is passed to the prisoners). The guard handed me a bowl of *balanda* in which lay a round, decorated wooden spoon, closed the *kormushka*, and dragged the bucket to the next door.

During lunch, when the *kormushka* was opened, you could catch some words spoken by a prisoner to the guard. I listened to these words, thinking that maybe I would recognize someone I knew by their voice, but the voices were unfamiliar.

Sitting alone in the cell was very depressing. Especially in the first days of confinement, when my heart ached so unbelievably, my soul yearned for someone’s advice, for even a crumb of hope… I longed to hear the human voice of someone downtrodden, like myself, who would understand me, who would be a friend in our shared fate of imprisonment…

The afternoon passed just as slowly as the morning. The monotony seemed like an endless eternity. But nothing is eternal—so that first day in prison passed, evening came, and my soul, in comparison to the day, felt even more dreadful...

They served supper, *balanda* again. I thought my day would end with this, so I spread myself out on the floor, sat down, leaning against the wall (because I knew I wasn't allowed to sleep yet), and dozed off. And just then, the guard peeked through the peephole and shouted, “Get up, this isn't a resort for you to go to sleep after supper!”

I walked around the cell again, trying to fight off sleep and thinking. Oh, the things a prisoner thinks about on their first day of life in prison! It seems that if someone could have fully recorded their thoughts at that time, it would make for a rather interesting book. The mind works incredibly fast then, rethinking one's entire life, from early childhood to that very moment.

The First Interrogation in Prison

It seemed to me that the command “Go to sleep!” was just about to come, when the door creaked and opened. Sticking his head through the door, a guard I didn't know yet asked quietly, in a whisper, as if afraid a stranger might hear what he was asking me: “Who here starts with the letter ‘S’?” I answered him, after which came the second question: “Your surname?” I told him my surname and he struck me like a knife with the word: “Get out!” I stepped out of the cell into the corridor, paused for a moment, and a thought drilled into my brain: where are they taking me? What do they want to do with me?…

The resolution came quickly. The guard barked angrily, “Hands behind your back, don't turn around, forward!” And he led me down the corridor, first straight, and at the end of the corridor, we turned right and went up the stairs to the second floor, where I heard hellish screams, cries, and groans of tortured people, even the cry of a nursing infant (perhaps a mother was being interrogated with her baby in her arms), and the roar of engines that were switched on at that time tried to drown out those cries.

People were screaming with inhuman voices, bellowing like cattle, crying, praying. It was a real hell on earth, a Sodom and Gomorrah. It is hard to describe the horror of that time in words. Years have passed, yet my heart still weeps when I remember that first night: I had never heard anything like it before. I trembled all over like an aspen leaf, I was chilled to the bone as I walked down the corridor, for I knew I was not going to a banquet, but to a slaughterhouse.

And the people of Lviv, worn out by the worries of the day, slept soundly, what did they care what was happening here, in the prison, behind bars and thick stone walls...

They led me into an office where a red-haired captain with curly hair combed upwards, slender, dressed in a military *gymnastiorka*, girded with a wide belt, in riding breeches and boots, was sitting at a large rectangular table. He was writing something at that moment. And when they brought me in, he smiled and said politely, in a calm voice: “Have a seat.” Although he received me so cordially, I was trembling for some reason… The clatter of my boots on the floor was audible, and my hands, which I held on my knees, were constantly shaking.

The investigator was silent, reading something and from time to time intercepting my gaze with a piercing, thorny look. A revolver lay on the table in front of him, along with several written sheets and a stack of clean paper. An electric heater was glowing, which he used to light his extinguished “Belomor” cigarette. He even offered me a smoke, which I refused.

This silence lasted for about 10 minutes. After that, the captain stretched out at the table, yawned, got up from his chair and walked ponderously around the office a few times, sat down at the table again and began to speak:

“Let's get acquainted. My name is Gorbunov, my first name and patronymic (I've forgotten), senior investigator of the NKVD, rank of captain. You will call me Citizen Chief; the word ‘comrade’ does not exist for you now. And now, tell me your surname.”

I answered, he looked at his watch and began to write carefully, as if he did not yet know, had not heard such a surname. He asked for my biographical data, repeating the same thing several times, and said:

“And now we will speak conscientiously,” and he showered me with various questions. I listened to him attentively, silent. But my silence did not please the captain. He hunched over like a snake and hissed at me: “As I see it, it will be impossible to talk to you nicely, answer!”

I told him what I had told them at the first interrogation in the main investigative body of the Precarpathian District on Pelchynska Street, where they had brought me:

“You have the organization's archive, articles written in my own hand, and in them are expressed my views, the goals and aims of our underground.”

But my answer did not satisfy him; he demanded from me information about foreign connections, as well as connections with the OUN:

“No one will believe you that you created such an organization yourself. You must name its real ideologist,” after which he measured me with his gaze from head to toe for a long time, as if he had just seen me.

The phone rang. The captain picked up the receiver, spoke with someone for a long time, obviously about me, because when he hung up, he started writing, scribbling something, tearing up a sheet, and then continued writing. Putting his pen aside, he re-read what he had written and gave it to me to read. The first interrogation protocol was written exactly as I had answered.

“Sign that you have read the interrogation protocol,” said the investigator.

I signed. After that, the investigator picked up the phone, called, obviously, the guard on duty, because a minute later the door opened, the guard on duty appeared and said: “At your service, Comrade Captain!”—To which he received the reply: “Take the prisoner away.”—And I was led back to my cell.

It was already just before dawn. Silence reigned in the corridors, there were no more screams from the offices, the roar of the diesel engines had quieted, the prison seemed to be asleep, only somewhere in a corner, a knock on a door could be heard from some cell, someone was asking for something.

They let me into my cell. “Go to sleep!” said the guard and locked the door. I undressed in an instant, spread my coat on the floor, lay down on it, curled into a ball so that I even managed to cover part of myself with it, and tucked my feet into my hat. Through my sleep, I heard a few more times as the guard, opening the peephole, looked in to see if I had fallen asleep yet.

I woke up several times during the night: my whole body had gone numb, and I had to stretch. But at my slightest rustle, although it seemed to me I wasn’t making any, the peephole would open and the guard would whisper an order to sleep, because in prison there is a rule that just as they don’t allow a prisoner to sleep during the day, so at night, during the designated hours, they force him to sleep.

The night passed—morning came… The monotonous days flowed one after another. I lost count of them, forgot the names of the days. Every day I studied the walls, looked at the bars, paced the floor, sat on the floor, stood up again, worried, thought, sought solace within myself. In these difficult moments, I wanted not to break in my faith in myself, and if I had to part with this world—then to do so honestly…

Minutes became hours, days became years. I had to talk to myself, with my own thoughts, because besides the guards and the investigator at night, I saw no one else. So I listened to the walls, hoping to hear from behind them the true human voice of a friend in misfortune—a prisoner. And I was lucky: one day, while examining the cell, I noticed what seemed to be a hole in the wall, right by the floor—it was plugged with bread, which was then covered with lime plaster. I immediately guessed that a former prisoner, an inhabitant of this cell, had camouflaged it from the guard with lime so that the dark spot of bread would not catch his eye.

At first, I listened carefully by the door, and when I heard the guard’s steps move toward the opposite end of the corridor, I pressed myself to the wall, pulled the bread plug out of it, and saw the daylight of the neighboring cell behind the wall. My God, how I rejoiced when I heard a girl’s voice in it. I pressed my lips to the crack and whispered, “Little girl, come here, let’s talk.” To which she very happily agreed, because she too was sitting alone, grieving. She pressed her lips to the crack and began to chatter...

For some reason, never before in freedom had a girl’s voice seemed so sweet and tender to me as this one in prison—the voice of a girl I didn’t know. We cherished the crack we had found, so we talked very quietly and cautiously so as not to betray ourselves. We calculated how many minutes it would take for the guard to return from the other end of the corridor and look into our cells. The only thing that annoyed us was that the crack was so small that we couldn't see each other through it, only one of each other’s eyes. And there was nothing to widen it with. But in such cases, a girl is more resourceful; my neighbor suggested: “Friend, I will lie down by that wall, and you will look through the crack—then, perhaps, you will be able to see me. And later you will lie down by your other wall—I will look through the crack and see you.”

And indeed, that’s how our first “visit” took place. It was a great pleasure and joy for us... The loneliness vanished at once, and my thoughts worked on how not to betray ourselves, not to give away such a precious crack of solace.

But our good fortune did not last long. With each time, we grew bolder, forgot about conspiracy, and we whispered to such an extent that even the guard noticed we were talking. They immediately moved me to another cell, and the girl—I don’t know where. I long regretted the loss of my previous comfort, examined the walls dozens of times to see if there was anything similar here, but found nothing, reproaching myself for my carelessness.

Every day spent in prison made me sterner, more silent. I was becoming a real prisoner… And when one day a young female guard “visited” my cell, or whoever she was—I don't know, for she was dressed in ordinary civilian clothes, not a guard’s uniform, and started a “friendly conversation” with me, she said: “Countryman, you are so young and handsome. Do you really want to perish here? Repent, tell the whole truth, they will forgive you, give you the opportunity to finish university, give you freedom…” I said: “It is better to perish in prison than to be a traitor to my nation. Your lectures make me sick.” She sensed my revulsion towards her, and left the cell in confusion... I remained alone in my cell again with my thoughts...

True, during the day a prisoner's soul is a little more cheered, even if he sits alone, it is still day: if someone doesn't knock behind the wall, you hear the voice of the guard, or one of the prisoners, especially when food is being distributed to the cells, the *kormushkas* are opened, and human voices and complaints burst out from them…

But night is night, the soul grows more somber, especially since you know: any moment now they will call you for interrogation. Although according to Article 143 of the Criminal Procedure Code of the Ukrainian SSR, conducting interrogations at night is prohibited, except in exceptional cases, all interrogations were nevertheless conducted only at night, after “lights out,” and with the use of violence, threats, psychological blackmail, and promises of release from custody—by these means they extracted a confession of guilt from the prisoner, although this contradicts Part 3 of Article 22 of the Criminal Procedure Code.

Every evening, just at different times, they called me for interrogation. The same procedure would begin: the cell door would open, and as if he had stolen something, the guard would whisper, “Who here starts with the letter ‘S’?” And, having received an answer, he would lead me to the investigator for interrogation, an investigator who had long since lost his human conscience, who lived with a demonic one, for whom sadism was his pleasure.

And with every such summons, my soul shuddered, my nerves frayed, my body trembled. The incessant screams of tortured prisoners, the roar of engines, the arguments of investigators—all this merged into a single horror-hell. Although, admittedly, I gradually got used to this as well. The screams no longer seemed as terrifying as in the first few days, but somehow calmer, and there were also quiet nights, where only someone would groan here and there.

If in the first few days, or rather nights, the investigator spoke to me so gently that he seemed humane enough to heal a wound, now, on the contrary, each time he revealed himself to be ever more ferocious. One time he grabbed me by the hair with his hand, I thought he would rip it out with the scalp, and threw me to the floor. A Muscovite boot stomped on my body, and I screamed with the same voice I had heard on the first night when they were taking me to the investigation. And I was sad for my hair, which I had so admired before; I regretted that they didn’t cut it, so they wouldn’t have anything to pull me by, to drag me by, and I had no way to cut it myself.

But I didn't have to worry about my hair for long: they took me to the bathhouse and, thank God, they cut it. I had become a real prisoner, no different from the others. And although my appearance changed a lot without it, I was glad I no longer had it. When they took me for questioning, I triumphed inwardly, knowing that the investigator would no longer have anything to pull me by, that it would be easier to defend myself. Because when there was no hair, there was nothing to pull, so he tried to hit me on the head with some object, but somehow always so successfully that I managed to cover my head with my hands, tucking it in as if into myself, bowing it down, and often the blow would land on my shoulders or neck instead of my head.

They demand a confession of the impossible, you can’t stand the torture and you tell the investigator: “Write whatever you want about me, even call me a murderer, I’ll sign it.” And often, without even reading what he wrote there, you sign it, you're indifferent to everything, you prepare for death, you only care about one thing, God forbid, not to cast a stain from your own lips on your people, on your sacred convictions, not to tell them that you have already been re-educated, that you love them, and so on. You pour out your hatred on them, just as it seethes in your soul.

Often such sighs would burst from the depths of my soul: “God! If I die here, may these walls one day be able to speak, to tell someone how they torture people here. I am honest, pure…”

My spirit never left me for a moment, in this I have not the slightest reproach of conscience...

The First Confrontation

The investigator accused me of knowing Ivan Stoliar, whose real name was Ostap, surname Vytvytskyi, that I had legalized him from the OUN underground and given him documents under the name Stoliar, found him an apartment in Lviv, and helped him enroll in the medical institute. I categorically denied this.

They asked about Yevhen Vytvytskyi, what I could say about him. I said I knew him as a fellow villager, a school friend, we went to school together, later to the gymnasium, only not in the same class, but in different ones, because he was three years younger than me. Recently he had been studying at the Lviv Polytechnic Institute, and I at Chernivtsi University; we would come to our native village for holidays, meet as students, but not as members of the Organization.

“So you don’t know that Ostap is Yevhen's brother?”

“No, I don’t know, I absolutely don’t know,” I denied.

Then the investigator arranged a confrontation for me, an identification procedure with Ivan Stoliar (Ostap Vytvytskyi) and Yevhen Vytvytskyi.

They brought me into the investigator's office, where Yevhen Vytvytskyi was already sitting. They warned us about criminal liability under Articles 178 and 179 of the Criminal Code for giving knowingly false testimony. They asked if we knew each other and what our relationship was. We said we knew each other as fellow villagers.

After that, they asked Yevhen if he knew his brother, Ostap Vytvytskyi, who lived under the name Ivan Stoliar. He said he knew, and confessed everything about his brother.

Then they asked me if I knew that Ivan Stoliar was, in fact, Ostap Vytvytskyi, Yevhen’s brother. I said that we had an Ostap Vytvytskyi in our family, my father’s sister’s son, but he had died in the Polish-German war, and as for Yevhen’s brother, I didn’t know him...

An extremely pale young man, about 24 years old, was brought into the office. From his face, it was clear that he was in solitary, probably in the basement; he exuded a sense of the dungeon, and when he spoke, his voice was somehow calm, quiet, as if from the grave...

The first question was to Yevhen:

“Who is this before you, whom have they brought?”

“My brother,” said Yevhen and bowed his head...

The investigator asked me too:

“And what will you say: whom have we brought you for a confrontation?”

“I don’t know,” I answered him. “I don’t know...”

Then they asked Ivan Stoliar if he knew us both. He said no, because he was not from Vytvytsia—he was from Poland.

The investigator was foaming with rage and shouted:

“Ostap! I'll bring you half the village, the whole village, everyone will say that it’s you, not some Stoliar!” He even promised that he would take him to his native village, and when he led him through the village, all the children from the village would run after him shouting: “Ostap! Ostap!... Our Ostap!...” “Even your own brother Yevhen admits it’s you, your father will recognize you, and your mother, stop messing with us!..”

Looking at Ivan Stoliar, I understood that he was a rock, a true revolutionary, unbreakable in interrogation, ready to die...

The investigator presented us with the protocol of the confrontation for us to read and sign, which we did, after which he signed it himself.

They took us back to our cells. For a long time after that, I couldn't calm down, couldn’t get the recent experience out of my soul. I felt sorry for Yevhen, and even more for Ostap (Ivan). I understood how difficult it was for them (the brothers, Yevhen and Ostap) to endure such a meeting.

In reality, he was Ostap Vytvytskyi, not Ivan Stoliar. I helped him get legalized from the underground under that name—Ivan Stoliar, which I did not admit during the investigation. We did not betray each other.

They moved me again to another cell, larger, brighter, but my spirits in it became gloomier. The cell was on the second floor, on the side of the main street. Opposite, through the slanting visor, I could see the balcony of the third floor. And on that balcony, every day after lunch, a boy about my age, obviously a student, or perhaps still a pupil, would come out to study, reading something, writing, playing the violin, singing songs, chatting. Sometimes a girl would come to him. She seemed to reproach me with her very being, as if to say, look how we live, we are free, and you are wasting away behind these walls. And although I ordered myself not to look there, so that it wouldn't affect me, from time to time I would involuntarily glance over, listen to their song. But to reproach myself: why am I not like them, why am I not free, not studying, I was given the chance, I should have taken it—oh, no, God forbid! No! I didn’t envy them, because I didn’t know their souls. I asked myself: who are they? Perhaps they have an unfree soul, unworthy, in which case it is better and a greater happiness to live in prison, but with a free spirit...

The greatest pleasure for a prisoner is a walk. To break out into the fresh air, to see the dome of the blue sky above, and if it's a sunny day—the sun. Then it seems to you that you are free again, that the walls, the iron doors, the bars on the window, the door locks are behind you. And though you walk alone in a wooden cage, boarded up with planks to a height of about 3.5 meters and the same width, you are still not inside a wall. Sometimes you are lucky to see someone, to hear someone coughing in the next cage (because there are several of them here, and prisoners from each cell are put into a different cage), and there was even an instance of picking up a cigarette thrown over by a prisoner, a neighbor in the next cage. Only all this has to be done with lightning speed, because here, above the cages, there is a tower where a guard stands, and from above he can see everything as if on the palm of his hand, and God forbid he notices any violation—that prisoner will be immediately taken from the walk to the cell and deprived of it for some time.

You especially catch this moment when someone is being led into or out of a cage; sometimes you are lucky enough to see several prisoners—men or girls. For you, this is already an event... The 15–20 minutes of the walk, and sometimes even half an hour, passes quickly, and before you know it, the command rings out: “Enough walking, go to your cell.” Again, you reluctantly enter those unwelcoming walls; the clear sky disappears from above your head, the fresh air, the doors clad in iron are locked again, the barred window grates on your eyes. And your things are overturned, searched, because while the prisoners are walking in the yard, the guards meticulously inspect your cell, checking for anything incriminating, checking the bars to see if they haven’t been sawed with anything, the walls, every seam of your clothing… At every step they make you feel that you are not free, the entire prison machine is working to consume you, to destroy you as a person, they want to make you an obedient slave.

They called me for interrogation almost every night, except for Sundays. From this, I learned to determine the days, to orient myself in time, without using a clock (10 o'clock in the evening—they call for investigation, 9 in the morning—*balanda* and a bread ration, 1 o'clock—lunch).

I was getting used to prison. Going to the investigation, it seemed to me that even the prisoners in the investigation weren't screaming as much, weren't being beaten and tortured as much as on that memorable first evening… Although, to tell the truth: as many times as they brought me to the investigator, I trembled before his red, crooked face just as many times. It was an instinctive tremor, independent of me. It's like a beast trembling at the sight of a bugbear—when it's constantly being beaten. And you could expect this at any moment. Sometimes there were nights when they'd call you up—and no one would touch you with a finger, or say: “Speak, why are you silent!” The investigator would be writing something or flipping through papers, talking to someone on the phone or giving commands. But for the most part, the nights were “hot”—unwelcoming.

The Second Confrontation

They arranged a confrontation for me with a girl whose name I remember was Mariika, but I’ve forgotten her surname. She had supposedly confessed in the investigation that she knew me, claimed that I had visited her apartment, but didn’t know from where. And that I had a meeting with my friends there, typed some materials on a typewriter, that she saw me with a revolver, and that I argued with my friends about lack of discipline.

I categorically denied such testimony, arguing that I did not know such a girl, had never been to her place. These circumstances forced the investigator to bring us face to face.

I found Mariika in the investigator's office, sitting at a table. They ordered me to sit on the opposite side. At the beginning of the face-to-face confrontation, they warned us that we would be held criminally responsible for giving knowingly false testimony.

The investigator asked me: “Do you know this girl?” “I have already told you that I do not know such a person and am seeing her for the first time now.” “And do you know this young man?” he asked Mariika. “No, I don’t,” she replied. “But you said before that you did. Now you don’t. We’ll try to remind you.”

They grabbed me and took me out the door, while Mariika remained in the office. They beat her; she screamed with an inhuman voice. Soon the screaming stopped, and silence fell. They brought me back into the office, sat me in the same place, and Mariika was already sitting where she had been before, wiping tears from her eyes.

“Answer! Do you know this man now?” the investigator spoke with fury.

“Forgive me, friend, I can't endure the torture… I know you, you were at my place,” and she said everything about me that she had been ashamed to say in my presence before…

I forgave the innocent girl, broken by the NKVD’s club. She hadn’t harmed me at all with this: I had many more serious issues on the ideological front.

* * *

I was gradually getting used to solitary confinement, or rather, I had to: what was there to do when no one was put in with me, or me with anyone else. It's a pity I didn't understand Morse code: they would knock to me from the neighboring cells, but I didn't understand their knocking. I guessed that three strong punches on the wall, or two or one, meant how many of them were there. (Ed. note: three knocks means a call to talk, two—wait, one—danger, stop talking immediately). I would also knock back to them—I didn’t know how to speak through the wall, I didn’t guess that I had a direct “telephone” connection in my cell to the one below and the two neighboring ones.

How did it happen? I hear someone start talking, asking who is sitting next door, how many of you are there, answer. I immediately fell to my knees by the *parasha*, because I understood that through its opening one could contact people in the neighboring cells. A conversation started; I paid no attention to the rather unpleasant smell that hit me straight in the nose from the “telephone receiver” (as I will now call my *parasha*).

Suddenly, I felt more cheered after such a conversation; now the three of us in our cells knew about each other, who we were, what we were accused of. The loneliness was no longer so keenly felt, we exchanged thoughts, knew when someone was being called for questioning, whether they were beaten badly, what was said, and other prison adventures. We shared whatever we could find out, whatever our daily lives were filled with. For a long time, I reproached myself for not having guessed on my own how one could talk with friends in prison without a telephone, but only a *parasha*. Such a connection was of great importance to us prisoners. Our circle of acquaintances immediately widened, good advice and warnings were given about the possible appearance of a “snitch” in the cell (a prisoner who informs on other prisoners to the authorities). We had a small, but nevertheless existing, hub of communication and information.

A common misfortune—prison—united people against the enemy, the adversary.

The Third Confrontation

I lost count of the days, so I no longer name specifically which day it was, but write generally, as I remember.

One day—it was during the daytime—they took me to the investigator. I wonder what this could mean, do they want to replace my night interrogations with day ones? And I already imagine how good it will be to go to the investigation during the day, maybe they won't beat me so much, torture me… But the investigator handed me several photographs, asked if I recognized anyone in them, what I could say about them. I looked and declared to him that I did not know anyone in the pictures presented.

“But they know you!” the investigator grunted and arranged a confrontation for me. He took me to another, previously unknown office, where a man who was in one of the photos shown to me was sitting.

“Do you know the man sitting there?” the investigator asked.

“No, I don't!” I objected. “I’m seeing him for the first time.”

“And do you know this fine fellow?” the investigator asked the seated man and pointed a finger at me.

“I know him, we’re from the same village. We studied together in Lviv during the German occupation. True, he’s much younger than me, he was in the gymnasium, and I was already a medical student at that time, and there was nothing in common between us.”

He said a few more trivial things about me that in no way harmed my case. Apparently, the investigator wanted to connect his confrontation with me and his brother Ostap (Ivan), whom, by the way, he, Bohdan, had identified. From the investigator's words, I learned that they had brought all of Ivan Stoliar’s (Ostap Vytvytskyi’s) brothers, his father and mother, and also some fellow villagers for a confrontation. Everyone recognized him, only he—no one, insisting that he was Ivan Stoliar, not Ostap Vytvytskyi.

When his own father said at the confrontation, “This is my son, Ostap,” and burst into tears, he heard the reply: “Good man, I don’t know you, I am not your son, you are mistaken, my name is not Ostap, but Ivan.” He said the same thing to all his brothers, acquaintances, fellow villagers, whoever tried to identify him. (I learned this later from the stories of fellow villagers, when I was already free).

*A Conversation “at the Highest Level”

Outside, it began to smell of spring, and sitting in the cell became even more difficult. The walls and bars started to grate on the soul more than in winter; you could feel nature awakening from its slumber, resurrecting, stretching towards life, while they were forcing you to die...

Such a spring morning is sharply etched in my memory. They led me down the stairs. I thought they were taking me to wash, because the bathhouse was in that direction. But no, the guard turned right with me and led me into a spacious office on the ground floor. Here, too, the windows had bars, but without visors and were wide open, and beyond them, cherry trees in bloom were visible, their petals carried by the wind to my feet, where I had to stand. I cannot find words to pour out on paper this pain of the soul—the encounter with spring behind bars. “God!” I thought. “Will the time ever come when I can freely stand under a blossoming cherry tree and kiss its flowers with my living lips?” My soul was weeping, but its sobs could not be shown to anyone.

“Have a seat!” said unknown, rather respectably dressed representatives of the authorities in civilian clothes, speaking to me in Ukrainian for the first time. They introduced themselves as being from Kyiv, representatives of the Ministry of Internal Affairs. They talked for a long time about Ukrainian literature (apparently, one of them was a writer), about the international situation, the role of the party in global terms, about Soviet power in Ukraine, they were interested in my worldview, were well-acquainted with my case, apparently had read all my articles that had fallen into their hands, the resolutions of the OBZVU, about the tactics of underground work and more.

They spoke to me as an equal, not threatening me with anything, but on the contrary, recommended that I accept “freedom” from them, in exchange for which I was to publish articles in the press and on the radio condemning the Ukrainian national movement and the actions of the underground. They advised me to spit on my soul for the rest of my life… They promised to give me the opportunity to finish my studies at the university. If I was afraid to do it in Chernivtsi or Lviv, where a fratricidal hand could reach me, then I could go to Kyiv, where there would be no danger. To all this, I answered them directly:

“You know who I am. You can see my thoughts from my articles, from my activities. And can you really think that I will immediately transform at this moment and begin to serve you faithfully? I would be vile, first and foremost, not only before my own long-suffering Ukrainian people, not only before myself, but also before you. It pains me that you can think of me this way.”

Perhaps they expected such frankness from me, or perhaps not, but they only said:

“Unfortunately, you were not brought up in our system. With your head, you should be with us in the ministry. But as it is, we will throw you into such living conditions that not only will your mind be unable to develop—we will kill even the one you have now…”

“How can they kill my mind?” I thought. “That’s impossible, I am its master, not those who are buying me.”

Our conversation lasted for about three hours, after which they were convinced that I would not change my views, would not cooperate with them, and ordered me to be taken to my cell.

Triumph enveloped my soul: I was glad for myself that I had not agreed to condemn my soul to the torments of hell—betrayal; I felt my victory…

*The Parcel

The investigation was nearing its end. In the last few nights, they didn't call me anymore, and if they did, it was only during the day, to clarify something, they spoke calmly, promising to “give it to me with both barrels.” I did not expect mercy from them, I was preparing to die, to receive the death sentence. Although I did not feel any guilt in my soul, but, on the contrary, truth. But I knew all the vileness of the Stalinist times: the guilty would be left alone, and for the truth, they could shoot you…

The days passed in such reflections. I longed for a word from my parents, just a word or two, to know what had happened to them, whether they were alive, how they took my arrest, what they thought of me. What were my friends doing? Were they alive? Where was my superior, why hadn’t they shown him to me? Was he alive? Or perhaps he had poisoned himself, taken his own life? And so thought chased thought relentlessly.

“For the letter ‘S’,” the guard asked through the *kormushka*.

“Me,” I waved my hand and pointed to myself.

“Your surname?”

I answered.

“A parcel for you,” and he began to shake out dried bread from a bag, breaking the pieces, examining them to see if, God forbid, there was anything inside. He poured tobacco (makhorka) from a pouch onto a piece of paper, mixed it with his hands, felt the seams of the pouch, and when he was convinced that there was nothing forbidden there, he thrust a piece of paper and a pencil in front of me, saying:

“Sign that you have received the parcel.”

I recognized my father’s handwriting. It means, I thought, that my father is somewhere nearby. He, poor man, brought me these rusks and tobacco, although I had never smoked in front of him before.

And as soon as the guard closed the small door of the *kormushka* and his footsteps receded, I jumped to the window, grabbed the bars with my hands, and pulled myself up to the very top (because from there you could see the square with benches opposite the prison) and shouted:

“Dad!...” my hands went limp, my vision blurred for some reason, and I fell to the ground. I was trembling all over... I had really seen my father: he was sitting on a bench in the little park, looking at the prison, smoking his pipe, and crying…

When I came to, I grabbed the bars once more and pulled myself up, but I did not see my father there again. He was gone. Obviously, he had already left...

The next day, again at lunchtime, there was a parcel for me, only this time the note was not written in my father’s hand, but my brother Yosyp’s, who at the time when I was still free, was serving in the army. From this I understood that he was already home, had returned, had served his term... Thank God, at least it will be a little more comforting for my parents: I was gone, but another son had returned, it would still be easier for them to bear the relentless spiritual burden—a parent’s suffering.

*Easter

Days passed by, they no longer called me for questioning at all. In my cell, I must have walked hundreds of kilometers, my thoughts had been everywhere, dozens of times at home, with friends, acquaintances, I even remembered my childhood, every path, ravine, pasture, how I played “kickers,” “piggies” (such games) with the boys, herded cows, hid from rain and thunder, swam, fished, picked mushrooms in the forest, picked flowers in the field, went to church—prayed, held onto my mother’s skirt, visited the Jasna Hora of the Miraculous Mother of God in Hoshiv, how the procession went from the church, how I scraped my bare toes, pricked them on thorns, read something, wrote, sought truth, studied, organized… My God, the things you think about on a day as long as the sea!…

I found out about Easter by chance, when I heard one of the prisoners in a cell shout:

“Friends! Christ is Risen!...” To which replies were heard:

“Truly He is Risen!… Truly He is Risen!…”

And I joined in these exclamations, although I was alone, I wanted to exchange the Paschal greeting with someone, to be heard. I grabbed the bars with my hands, pulled myself up, and shouted at the top of my lungs:

“Christ is Risen, friends!… Christ is Risen!…” And tears streamed from my eyes…

Although the prison *balanda* did not change one bit that day, and it was the same ration, a piece of black bread, a festive mood still enveloped my soul. My thoughts flew to my home village, to my mother, my father, my brothers and sisters, to the church, to the belfry. And in my imagination, my hands reached for the ropes of the church bells. It seemed they were ringing... The whole world was rejoicing… “Christ is Risen!” sang the boys and girls, children chattered, playing *hayivky* near the church…

I remembered my childhood. Sometimes, near the church, we children would play “war.” Two or three, or maybe several dozen small children, schoolboy-“soldiers,” would stand opposite each other in rows. Everyone wants to be closer to glory, to a heroic deed. One of the strongest runs, breaks through the line of those holding hands at some point, and tears away a part of the “warriors,” taking them “prisoner,” and if he can’t break the line, he remains a prisoner himself.

Or, small boys would take painted Easter eggs from the girls and throw them over the church, and on the other side, others would stand with their caps outstretched in their hands and try to catch them. There was sometimes a lot of laughter when an egg turned out to be raw, broke in the cap, and splattered the catcher. And on the second day of the holidays, on “Wet Monday,” we would douse each other with water. Sometimes we’d be soaked to the bone—but there was so much joy and laughter…

I lived on memories of the holidays, and to endure them emotionally was harder than usual.

* * *

Spring came—the first of May. That day has remained in my memory for my whole life.

Although they no longer called me for questioning, on that day they took me, brought me to an office, and a drunk investigator, in the presence of several of his comrades, also drunk, beat me mercilessly, probably wanting to show off to those like him how much sadism, inhumanity, and brutality he possessed...

*In the General Cell

Eventually, fate smiled on me a little: I was lucky enough to leave the solitary cell and was moved to a general one, in which two prisoners were already living: Tsyhan (the prisoner’s surname) from the village of Duby, Rozhniativ district, who was imprisoned for his Baptist or Evangelical beliefs, and Borukh from Olesko, Lviv region—a militant, caught by raiding parties in his territory.

Life immediately became more comforting; now there was someone to talk to, to share thoughts, adventures, and events with. True, everyone spoke sparingly about themselves, trying to remain in the shadows. But still, we talked, there was something to talk about. We argued a lot with Tsyhan, the Baptist. He tried to convince us that he no longer takes up arms, does not and will not go to the army. He had become like this recently. Because two years ago he was like us, participated in an organization, dabbled in politics, but now he rejected everything…

Borukh the militant, a sturdy man, slightly reddish-haired, with a long face, of a cheerful disposition, talkative, told stories of his adventures in the field, how difficult it had become lately to operate in the open, almost impossible to hide, the bunkers were being given away by NKVD *seksots* (informers), the people had become afraid of their own shadows. But Borukh the militant did not lose heart, he dreamed of how to break free and to roam for at least a short while in his Olesko, to meet with his friends…

Everyone spoke about what ailed them. The arguments and discussions never ceased for a moment. During the day, they wouldn’t let us sleep, so we tried to occupy ourselves with something: we made chess pieces from bread, drew a chessboard with rubber from our heels, and competed with one another. We “phoned” through the *parasha* to the neighboring cells, finding out what was happening around, whose investigation was already finished, who had been sentenced, how many years of prison, hard labor, camps, and exile they got, whether there was a loss of rights. Sad news also reached us about who had been given the death penalty, who had written an appeal or received a pardon.

A prisoner is constantly thinking, contemplating, fighting against the unbearable prison conditions, never alone for a moment.

It seems like a trivial thing when there’s nothing to smoke. Any reasonable person would say: “It’s not fatal, one can do without smoking—it’s not food.” Yes, that's true! But it's also not true! For a person who constantly smoked while free and finds himself behind bars—it's incomparably harder. In these new circumstances, he wants to smoke even more: at least one puff, at least two drags of smoke. And here we found a way out: we would send a “horse” (a small string) through the window, past the visor, down to the cell below, and when the neighbors-prisoners saw it, they would immediately tie one or even two cigarettes or two or three pinches of tobacco wrapped in newspaper to the end, put in a few matches and a piece of the striking strip from a matchbox (that’s how the “rich” neighbors give). You watch the “horse”: as soon as they tug it from below—immediately pull your prize towards you.

But it's so easy to write about the “horse”; in reality, it costs a prisoner a lot of nerves and anxiety. Some have to stand guard by the door, listening for the guard's whereabouts, others cling to the bars, lowering the “horse” and waiting for its return. We worry that, God forbid, someone from the prison guard might see your “horse” jumping down the wall. Because if they notice, they’ll be here immediately, with a *shmon* (shakedown), after which they'll strip you, put you in the punishment cell on a penalty ration (300 grams of bread and a quart of water).

It’s good if, after such efforts, the “horse” returns loaded—with tobacco, but most of the time it returns empty, because you often end up at a cell where they have no tobacco, because they don’t receive parcels. Or girls are sitting there who don't smoke, and instead of tobacco, they tie a ration of bread to the “horse.” Because in prison, for some reason, the girls are often richer than the boys, they pass things to us, not the other way around.

Sometimes it also happens that you get tobacco, but there’s nothing to roll it in. But here it’s a minor detail: the visors of caps come into play. That's why in prison, no prisoner has an intact visor: even if he doesn’t smoke himself, his cellmates do, they will surely rip it open, moisten it, tear it into small sheets, and smoke it. No one pays attention to the quality of the tobacco or paper, as long as there is smoke...

Often, it also happens that we got tobacco, we have paper, but we don’t have a match. And here the prisoner must have a way out. The quilted jacket comes into play. We rip it open anywhere, pull out a good wad of cotton wool. First, we roll a small, elongated stick, gradually adding cotton wool, and tightly with our fingers against our palm we roll a good twist, as thick as a finger. Then we take the lid from the *parasha* and rub this cotton twist hard against the floor with it, back and forth, until we smell smoke. Then we abruptly tear the twist in the middle, blow on it with our lips or wave our hands, until we see a spark appear inside.

But all this must be done very, very carefully, so that the guard doesn't hear, because all these activities are considered a violation of the prison regime for a prisoner. We disperse the smoke around the cell so that the guard doesn’t guess that someone here was smoking, because he knows that in this cell no one gets parcels, so there shouldn't be any smoke, and if there is, then the tobacco must have gotten there by some “miracle,” and maybe something else got in there too—an immediate check is needed. Suddenly, several guards burst into the cell and shake everything down to the last seam. It seems that in such a situation you can’t hide anything from him, not even a needle. But we still managed. As for cigarettes—we would clamp them between our fingers, and somehow they wouldn't see. But they could also take them away, because they would tell you to open your palms. Or you would hide it in any place—and fortune would carry you through: they would look everywhere, but where you hid it—they wouldn’t notice, a fog would come over their eyes.

After such a shakedown, the prisoner feels as if he’s been through a bath. If they don't find anything—he cheers up, if they find something—he gets gloomy, and sometimes, he even earns himself the punishment cell.

And it's true that on some shifts, there is a guard who will himself pass a twist of tobacco or a cigarette into the cell, or give you a light, but most of them were people without soul or heart, their pleasure was to torment a helpless person. That's why the prisoners prayed to God for the health of some, and for the death of others.

Every day, new problems arise for the prisoner. Life bustles on in its own way, not like in freedom. Here there is the morning rise in the cell, breakfast, the thought of how to get a smoke, to hear something new, a conversation through the *parasha*, throwing the “horse,” a walk, and if it's the tenth day—they take you to the bathhouse to soak your bones, skin, wash the dirt off, and it's especially pleasant when the bath attendant throws out warm, almost hot, slightly scorched, fried clothes and their smell from the roaster. Or you see someone, especially pleasant if it’s a female prisoner... The guards will curse you with unspeakable words, trample your dignity, spit in your soul, take you back to your cell, warn you not to make noise. You often meet the gaze of the guard who peeks into the peephole almost every five minutes, so that it seems to the prisoner that the NKVD eyes are constantly watching him, and this unpleasant feeling never leaves him in prison. Then lunch again, thoughts, memories, walking around the cell, arguments with comrades, almost coming to blows, a game of chess, wrestling—who can arm-wrestle the other, a game of “Napoleon” (one person bends over, he is hit on the backside with a palm, and he has to guess who hit him, then that person bends over). And in general, blind man's bluff: they blindfold someone (he catches others around the cell, everyone moves quietly from place to place). Then a new game—you hold out two fingers, another person hits you also with two fingers—guess who hit. You do various exercises, figures, compete in “running”: who can hop to the designated place faster with their legs tied.

What one won't invent during the day! And a day is like the sea, it seems it will never end. But it will pass, and evening will come. And here come the stories about the war (because in prison everyone waits for it: it will be death or life), about the organization, the collective farm, its authorities, the school, various combat adventures, fables and tall tales, and so on…

They threw a boy from Volhynia into our cell. Red-haired, with cunning eyes, he somehow wanted to look into everyone’s soul, smiled maliciously, boasted of his exploits in the underground, which were not apparent from his appearance. For some reason, we didn’t believe him, his talk seemed insincere. True, we didn’t give him much opportunity to be interested only in us, but tried to look into his soul as well. His father, it seemed, lived in France at that time—a high-conviction communist. But it was hard to figure out the son, who he was—what his soul cared for.

Soon a fifth person was added to our cell, from Lviv, with the surname Vynnyk. A young lad, he was well-dressed, in breeches and boots, with a round face. With his arrival, our life immediately became easier; he was the only one of us all who received a parcel from home every other day, that is, a pack of cigarettes or tobacco, and some food. He shared everything with us to the last crumb. Now, after receiving his parcels, we had a legal right to smoke, they no longer scolded us…

The first among us to sign the “two-hundredth” (this meant informing the accused that the investigation was over and presenting him with the case materials) was Borukh from near Lviv. We all acted as “prosecutors,” guessing how many years of imprisonment he might receive—camps of general or strict regime. We agreed on where he would leave some mark so that we would guess how many years he was sentenced to, because there was such a procedure in the prison: after the trial, the prisoner was not returned to his previous cell. But Borukh’s trial, for some reason, did not take place that day; they returned him to our cell, which meant that the trial would take place the following week.

In a very short time in prison, prisoners become close, like family, they worry about each other, they are interested in each other’s fates. And we were very glad that Borukh had returned to us, that he had not yet been tried, because for some reason it is unpleasant to go to a trial where your fate, the deprivation of your freedom, is to be decided. Although, admittedly, such postponements of the trial cost a prisoner a great deal of health, nervous tension, and anxiety. They take you from the prison, put you in a Black Maria, take you to the courtroom, the guards bark at you as if you were a dog, they make you feel that you are completely outside the law, powerless.

So it was with our Borukh. Returning from the courtroom, he became more nervous, always repeating the words: “It would be better if they had already sentenced me, because for some reason it's very unpleasant on the soul when you are waiting for the verdict, not knowing your future fate.” We once again clarified with him that he would scratch his sentence on the wall in the designated place in the bathhouse with his fingernail. The second time we sent him off to trial, we prayed to God for the fate of our friend, that he would not receive the death penalty—execution by firing squad or hanging. He was to set a precedent of luck for us all. For some reason, we believed: if he didn’t get the death penalty, then none of us would get it either.

In the mornings, we all interpreted our dreams (because in prison they seem to come very often), and we paid special attention to the dream of the one who was going to trial…

They took our Borukh to be tried again. That day, all our talk was about him. Some of us guessed that he wouldn’t be sentenced today either, that he would be returned to us again; others thought not, that he would be sentenced for sure. Such disputes went on among us until after lunch.

Instead of Borukh, a new prisoner was brought to our cell, Ivan from Bibrka—a participant in the Ukrainian national liberation movement. From this, we were convinced that Borukh had already been sentenced, because for some reason there were never more than five of us in the cell. Our new resident was a very interesting person; he told us about the events that had recently taken place in the territories of the Lviv region, as well as in other regions of Ukraine. He had a great love for the liberation movement, and regretted that he had fallen into the enemy’s hands alive…

From his stories, one could guess that he had been the leader of a district-level militant group in the underground. He had survived more than one raid, had looked death in the face more than once. He told us many terrible things from the prison years of 1941. What happened in that very same “Lonsky” (as they called the prison where we were sitting). How many innocent victims it claimed, in what agony the former prisoners died there…

Somewhere in the prison yard here, there was a deep pit into which they threw half-dead prisoners. The pit was filled with water, and lime was slaked in it along with the people. Now the yard is asphalted, and you can't guess where this place is. The prisoners didn't know that the war with the Germans had begun; they only heard the roar of airplane engines and saw the enraged faces of Stalin’s Chekists. Unbelievable screams were heard in the prison; people were tortured brutally. Whoever was called from a cell did not return. Everyone understood that this was their last moment, that they were going to a torturous death... Therefore, the prisoners began to break down the doors, burst out of all the cells into the prison yard, there was shouting, uproar, the Chekists started shooting, driving the prisoners back into the cells. But no one returned to their previous place; they huddled wherever they could. No one admitted to their surname. The brutally enraged prison guards hunted through the cells. They called out, searching for the people they needed for execution.

The events of that time are documented. After the Soviet authorities fled from Lviv, tangible evidence remained in the prison, witnesses—tortured prisoners with their eyes gouged out, their tongues cut out, women with their breasts cut off, strips of skin taken from their backs… Whatever inhuman tortures the executioners of that time could devise, they used. Relatives identified their loved ones, close friends, and acquaintances among the corpses by the labels on their clothes, by birthmarks, or physical defects. Because it was impossible to recognize a person directly; no one looked like a human being, each had the appearance of a piece of mangled flesh.

It’s hard to believe that such things could happen, but you have to; you can't hide from the truth.

This bloody terror took place in all the prisons of that time. It didn’t matter whether it was a regional prison or a district one; everywhere, death reigned, and what a death—with torture.

Every “liberator” who came to our land brought the Ukrainian people their own “civilization and culture”—death, destroying the finest flower of our blossoming… All that injustice, done to our people, the innocently shed blood of the best daughters and sons of Ukraine, called us to defiance against all those who were not masters of our land but called themselves so. Having been raised on such soil, knowing the history of our native land, feeling with soul and heart the pain and wounds of our people, we could not grow up to be different. In our hearts, anger seethed, the echo of the age-old song was heard, “Our grandfathers went to their torment—and their great-grandsons will follow, for we… for we are a people—not beggars..”

A week later, they took us to the bathhouse, where we immediately rushed to look for Borukh’s prearranged mark, because we wanted to know how many years he had been sentenced to. At first, we couldn’t find it, but when we looked closely at the wall, we noticed the number “15” with the index “K,” which meant “katorga” (hard labor), and next to it a large letter “B,” which meant Borukh. So we had not the slightest doubt that Borukh had been sentenced to 15 years of hard labor.

A few days later, they took Tsyhan from the village of Duby from our cell to trial. As we learned later, he got seven years in correctional labor camps. We considered his case the lightest of all of ours.

In his place, our cell was filled with a new prisoner, a man from Lviv, who, it seems, lived on Horodetska Street before his arrest. I don't remember his surname well, maybe Lozynskyi. He looked slender, of medium height, with dark eyebrows, very quiet. Since the rule in prison is that whoever first comes to the cell gets the spot by the *parasha*, he too had to take the worst place among us. From his story, we learned that he had served in the SS-Galicia Division, a participant in the battles of 1943 near Brody. He didn’t stay with us for long; they transferred him, it seems, to another block. Later, by chance, we learned of his fate: he was sentenced to death, he wrote a plea for clemency…

The time came when I too was called to sign the “two-hundredth,” that is, the protocol on the completion of the investigation, and they presented me with the case materials, which were bound in two thick books. Investigators are great artists; in a very short time, they manage to write entire volumes of “indictment” papers on a prisoner. One even has to envy them. Indeed, not only an ordinary mortal, but a writer himself would envy them if he saw how much they manage to write in such a short time. I had signed some protocols about things that never actually happened. Unable to withstand the torture, I would tell them: “Write whatever you want, I’ll sign anything, just don’t torture me.” And they were not ashamed, they wrote, they were indifferent to a person's fate. This falsification of cases probably gave them pleasure. And there was no end to this cruelty.

After signing the “two-hundredth,” one could expect to go to trial in two or three weeks. And so I had to wait for my decisive verdict. God! The things I thought about during those days! I prepared myself for the death penalty. Though young, I undoubtedly wanted to live, but I had no intention of asking for mercy from those who had wronged me, my people, so many like me… I wanted only one thing, that a time would come when these prison walls could speak to people, tell them what we, the prisoners, experienced here, how we were tortured, how we died… I firmly believed in my honesty, in the justice of my cause, my conscience was clear, it did not reproach me, so it was not scary to die.

It seemed to me that I was counting my last days of life. In my soul, I said goodbye to my relatives, my friends, I examined my conscience, my entire, still so short, life. I am writing these lines now and I don't believe myself that I had such moments, when I said goodbye to myself, prepared for death... I was aware that I was being accused of a crime, but I did not recognize it in my soul. They called me a traitor to the motherland, but I was not one, because for me and for those who accused me, the understanding of the motherland was different. They believed that I had betrayed the Soviet Union, and I believed that I had not betrayed Ukraine, my people, but had acted honestly, as every honest Ukrainian should have done, being in my place at that time.

Whoever has experienced similar moments in their life will understand me. Because for a person who has not experienced something similar, it is difficult to understand all that sanctity… Often, the thought would involuntarily creep in, how will they shoot me, will I remain of sound mind until the last moment? Such thoughts stabbed my heart like a knife, my head ached, it seemed it would burst, the tension never left me. I became much more nervous, restlessly walking around the cell and thinking. During that time, I walked a rather long path within it…

On June 20, 1947, I was informed that the review of my case in court would take place on June 23. When the date of the trial became known, my thoughts began to work even faster, the tension of my entire nervous system intensified, my head ached even more, a chill ran through me even more strongly, my cheeks grew even more sunken, my mouth became even drier, everything I had lived by until now rose up in me even more fiercely...

The Trial. June 23–26, 1947

For some reason, I don't remember my last night before the trial. It seems to me that I was already sitting alone in the cell at that time. I only have a vivid memory of the morning, when I was called from the cell for the trial. The door opened, and the guard said in a quiet voice:

“Get out, you’re going to trial!”

The tone was unlike the one they used when they called for questioning. A certain crumb of humanity was perceptible in the guard's voice, as if to say, it's not my fault I'm calling you to trial, and this disturbed me even more than their previous harsh shouts.

I thought they would take me to the Black Maria. But when the guard led me up the stairs to the second floor, I understood that the trial would take place in the prison.

In the corridor, they stopped me by a slightly open, barred window—and here, for the first time in such a long time in prison, I saw myself, my face. I saw it—and didn’t recognize it. From the pane of glass, a man with a shorn head, a sunken face, dull eyes, a deep furrow on his forehead, thin, withered, slightly stooped, and pale as a wall, looked back at me—a man who looked a good five years older—it was me…

They led me into a hall where there were three rows of chairs. In front, there were several tables with chairs next to them, and large portraits of Stalin and Felix Dzerzhinsky hung on the wall. The windows in the hall were barred but without visors. On the left side, a door was ajar, obviously leading to the next hall.

They showed me to a seat in the first row. A few minutes later, they began to bring in my co-defendants, whose surnames I don't all remember. They brought in Petro Brunarskyi, a student at Lviv State University, who studied at the law faculty. My fellow villager, Yevhen Vytvytskyi, a student at Lviv Polytechnic Institute. Rudyi (whose first name I don't remember), a student at the medical institute. Oliinyk (I think Andrii), a student at the forestry institute. Yosyp Tutis, an engineer, with his wife, whose surname was Zhurba. Stefaniia Lupynis, I don't recall where she worked in Lviv before her arrest. Mariika (I don't remember her surname). Another woman who worked in Lviv before her arrest, a cleaning lady. And also three young men whom I didn’t know at all.

All my friends looked worn out, pale, white as a sheet. The once beautiful, handsome boys and girls with thick hair were aged; on each face, you could see sadness, suffering… We all greeted each other with our eyes, without a word, not taking our eyes off one another. Everyone had changed beyond recognition. Misfortune united us all as we awaited the trial…

Guards stood by the doors and watched over all of us, forbidding us to whisper.

A middle-aged woman entered the hall and sat at the far table—she was the court stenographer. A bell rang. The judges, dressed in black, the prosecutors, and the defense lawyers entered. It’s hard to say now how many of them there were. All our case files—tomes of books—were already lying on the table.

Thus, the courtroom was filled with a double audience—the accused and the accusers. The former were emaciated, sad—the latter were sleek, with puffy faces, cheerful.

After the preliminary procedures, a voice rang out:

“All rise! The court is now in session. In the name of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic”—and so on.

The presiding judge announced the protocol of the judicial investigation. We were being tried by a military tribunal of the MVS troops of the Lviv region. The judicial investigation began with the reading of the indictment. The presiding judge explained the substance of the accusation to each of us and asked if we understood the accusation, if we pleaded guilty, and if we wished to give testimony.

Since the leader of the OBZVU, Myron Sliusar, was not at the trial (which remained a mystery to all of us, because we didn't know if he had been arrested at all, and if so, where he was now, perhaps he had perished…), and it was only I, as his deputy, the judicial investigation began with me.

The presiding judge asked me if I pleaded guilty and if I would give testimony. At this point, I had no fear. During my time in the cell, I had thought everything through, comprehended it, and now my main desire was not to fall face down in the mud. I represented the Organization of Fighters for a Free Ukraine, I was ready to die for our ideas, for my convictions, and for all my actions. I replied that I did not consider myself guilty before the Ukrainian people, and they could consider me as they wished. My testimonies were all concrete and clear, all the archival documents that had fallen into their hands, written in my own hand and lying on the table before them, spoke for me. That is, I repeated everything I had said on the first day, when I was still in the prison on Pelchynska. I also mentioned that I had signed a number of protocols during the investigation in prison under torture, and therefore they were invalid.

The presiding judge asked the trial participants for their opinion on the order in which to question us—the witnesses and experts—and how to conduct the examination of other evidence.

The prosecutor interrogated me about the Organization’s methods of struggle and its recruitment of new members, and rebuked me for the idea of an “Independent Ukraine,” to which I gave him the same answer I had given the presiding judge.

The defense attorney asked me several questions, which I refused to answer because, from the very beginning of the judicial investigation, as soon as he was offered to me, I had rejected him entirely. It seemed wild to me that a man who was hostile toward me could defend me. To me, he was no different from the prosecutor or the presiding judge. He was my enemy; I considered his defense a formality. However, against my will, they appointed a defense attorney for me anyway.

Witnesses were called and questioned one by one, in the absence of the other, yet-to-be-questioned witnesses. I do not remember their names, and their testimony was of no material significance to my case.

For the most part, they asked me questions of an ideological nature. Here, I did not hide my love for the downtrodden Ukrainian people. From my articles, which lay before them, they could see my soul, my dedication to the fight for Ukraine’s liberation.

The first day of the trial proceedings was dedicated primarily to me. At six o’clock in the evening, the court session was adjourned, and we were all taken back to our cells.

The second day of the trial proceedings was conducted for all the other members of the OBZVU. My friends conducted themselves differently during the trial. Most members of the organization justified their actions by citing their youth and ignorance, claiming they had only understood their transgressions in prison, and so on. Some excused themselves by saying they had not been raised in the Soviet system, did not know its reality, loved Ukraine, and felt it was their duty to fight for its liberation, unity, and independence.

An OBZVU member named Rud conducted himself disgracefully in court. There were constantly tears in his eyes. He promised to be loyal to the Soviet authorities in the future, to atone for his guilt, condemned the OBZVU movement, and repented for his mistakes. And although he was not the youngest by age—he must have been 25 to 27 at the time—it was sickening for all of us to listen to his justifications and answers. His friends looked at him with contempt, and he could not look anyone in the eye.

They did not ask me or my friends about the leader of the OBZVU, Myron Sliusar. His name was mentioned only as the leader of the Organization when the indictment was read. There was no testimony from him in the investigation, not against the members of the organization, nor against me. There were some conversations I’d had only with him—they didn't say a single word about them, which led me to suspect that he had not survived.

The second day of the trial ended, with two or three members, I believe, still to be questioned. We were all taken back to our cells again.

The third day of the trial arrived—and the last. They questioned those who had not yet been questioned, after which the presiding judge declared the judicial investigation concluded.

During the trial, I learned that all my friends had been arrested several days before me, with the exception of one or two, I believe.

The prosecutor was the first to speak (as the court moved to the final arguments), and from his words, it was clear he was ready to eat us all alive. He especially emphasized my person, slinging much mud on the innocent souls of my friends… There were several defense attorneys in our case; I do not remember the exact number. In his speech, it is true, the defender cited my youth and also called to take into account the fact that I had not been raised in the Soviet system. However, he proposed to punish me according to criminal law. He was outraged by my ideological views.

Many other members of the Military Tribunal gave speeches; they all demanded we be punished. After the speeches, the court participants exchanged remarks, the presiding judge declared the final arguments concluded, and granted me the last word first.

“Friends!” I said, turning to my comrades. “I wish you to happily endure all the days of captivity and return to our native Ukraine, which will certainly be free in the future. I firmly believe that the red terror will be destroyed, and the prison of nations will collapse.”

At that moment, one of the members of the Military Tribunal hissed angrily in Russian:

“I told you that only the damp earth could re-educate this fine fellow!”

Thus ended my last word. I was prepared for the death sentence… I listened to the last words of my friends in complete calm. Each spoke differently. Rud wept, begging for mercy, just as he had during the trial, assuring the Tribunal that in the future he would atone for his guilt and prove his loyalty to the Soviet government. All the others did not humiliate themselves before the court; they expressed a desire to survive imprisonment and return to their loved ones happily. Everyone wanted to stay alive. No one wanted to die…

After the last words, the presiding judge of the Military Tribunal announced a recess, and the judges retired to the deliberation room to issue a verdict.

It was midday. The minutes of waiting for the verdict seemed an eternity; unbearable tension gripped us all. An incredible silence reigned in the courtroom.

A bell rang, signaling the end of the recess. The judges entered the hall to read the verdict. A formidable voice boomed:

“All rise!” Everyone present in the hall stood up. The following words were read:

“In the name of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, the Military Tribunal of the MVD troops of the Lviv Oblast has sentenced Petro Vasyliovych Sichko, born in 1929 (at that time I was listed as 1929, not 1926, which is my real year of birth), Ukrainian, a native of the village of Vytvytsia, Bolekhiv Raion, Stanislav Oblast, on June 23–26, 1947, under Articles 54-1a-11 of the Criminal Code of the UkrSSR, to 25 years of imprisonment with a deprivation of rights for 5 years and 5 years of exile, to serve the sentence in places of confinement of the MVD from February 12, 1947, to February 12, 1972.”

An incredible joy enveloped my soul, my whole being. It was as if I had been resurrected from the dead, born a second time into the world. It meant they would not execute me behind these gloomy walls! New thoughts began to churn: God is good, life changes, prison is not eternal. I will be free again…

It is difficult now to convey on paper the joy that came alive in me at that time. Only a person who has stood face-to-face with death and by some miracle—a higher power—was saved from it can understand this moment.

I did not know that the death penalty had been abolished back in May 1947, and we were tried in June 1947, which is what saved me from it.

After my sentence, the verdicts were read for all my other friends. The terms varied. Only I received twenty-five years in correctional labor camps. Most of the Organization’s members received ten years in correctional labor camps with deprivation of rights. Rud, the one who wept, received seven years in correctional labor camps; others got five, and one, the youngest of us all, got three years.

The presiding judge explained to us all within what period and where we had the right to appeal the verdict, as well as the right to petition the Presidium of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR for clemency. He said that copies of the verdict would be handed to us within three days of their announcement.

An atmosphere of animation prevailed among us. We whispered, sharing what we had just experienced. No one shouted at us anymore. This moment lasted for a very short time; we were ordered to be taken back to our cells.

*The Transit Cell

I found myself in a different, more spacious cell. Only prisoners who had already been sentenced were held in it. Everyone surrounded me, each interested in my sentence and what I was tried for. A completely different atmosphere reigned here, unlike the one where pre-trial prisoners are kept. The people were more animated, the conversations different from those before trial. Here, they spoke of transit points, where the convoys go, to which camps, who would like to end up where, and with whom. How someone conducted themselves in court, who was an informant; traitors were exposed, promises to take revenge on them were made, various indignations, admiration for someone, the obedience of some to others, contempt for the weak-spirited, respect for the strong. Mostly, everyone presented themselves only in a good light, remaining silent about the bad, concealing it from everyone. But in reality, who had been what kind of hero during the investigation and at the trial—that was known only to each individual, for here there were still no accomplices who could tell about each other, because not only before the trial, but also after it, they were scattered in different directions; they tried to ensure they would never meet again.

But, as the popular wisdom says, “you can’t hide an awl in a sack.” So it was here: your good deeds will speak only well of you, and conversely, the bad—only ill.

In the cell, there were also those who had already been in the camps of Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk, and other places. Fate had thrown them back here for a retrial, and thus they had the opportunity to see Ukraine again, to re-live the investigation and prison, and to prepare for a new transport, again to Siberia. From their stories alone, it was difficult to imagine the true reality of camp life; much of it was incomprehensible. I wanted to break out of prison sooner, because everyone said that it would be easier in the camps.

In the cell where I found myself after the trial, by the entrance, in the corner to the right, “OBZVU” was written in large letters on the wall. Apparently, one of my comrades had been in this cell before the trial, because no one present knew who had written these letters.

There were about twenty-five of us convicted men in the cell. The circle of prison life, its history, expanded; everyone told something new, brought something with them, shared their experience.

*The “Barrel”

Here we learned from one village council head from Hutsulshchyna (I’ve forgotten his name) that the Bolsheviks had resorted to a trick, using “the barrel.” And what “the barrel” is—I will relay his story.

“I was arrested in my village and taken to the district center. There they beat me severely, trying to make me confess to having ties with the Ukrainian underground, with the insurgents. I categorically denied everything they were trying to prove, because I could tell from their questions that they didn't know anything specific. I was beaten to a pulp, black and blue all over, but I kept silent, not a peep about any ties. I could see that they were already convinced I was telling the truth.”

“I sat in the district prison for a week. After that, they put me on a flatbed truck and said they were taking me to the oblast, to the Stanislav prison, which I believed. As we drove, I kept dreaming in my heart (because I knew we would be driving through a ravine, past a forest): ‘Oh, if only our boys would set up an ambush there, open fire on the truck. Maybe they’ll fight them off, rescue me, and if I’m killed in the shootout, at least I won’t have to suffer anymore.’”

“And as soon as we drove into the ravine, my ‘dreams’ came true. Suddenly, I heard a burst of machine-gun fire at the truck. A shootout began. They immediately pulled me from the truck and ordered me to lie face down on the ground. ‘Hurrah!’ the Muscovites shouted, firing back, having taken up advantageous positions in the valley, as if for defense. The shootout lasted a good ten minutes. I even saw several ‘dead’ Muscovites, with blood seeping from their chests, and some dead partisans as well. But there were more ‘partisans,’ they launched an attack, shouting: ‘Glory! Kill the damned rabble!’—and ran toward us in short dashes. The one lying behind my back was also ‘killed.’ Blood even splattered onto me from him. I was glad to be alive and in the hands of ‘our own’ boys: ‘Oh, thank you, friends, God bless you for snatching me from the hands of those butchers,’ I said to the squad that had freed me.”

“To be honest, in my own area, I knew all the fighters, the regional leaders, and some riflemen from the companies. But among those who had freed me, I recognized no one. But what did that matter to me? It was good to be in the hands of my own people. I watched as the boys took weapons and documents from the dead Muscovites, dragged them into the ravine, and covered them with brushwood. And I see: before my eyes, they take the weapons from the dead, remove their belts, pull their documents from their breast pockets, and drag them down by their feet.”

“‘Well, then! You’ll come with us into the forest. There we’ll check you to see if you betrayed our movement, the Ukrainian cause, to the Muscovites.’ And they led me down a path into the forest. At first, they led me along like this, talking, joking, asking if the Muscovites tortured people much in prison, if they starved them. And I told them everything honestly, as if in holy confession. I was glad and happy to be with ‘my own.’ Deep in the forest, they asked for my forgiveness, saying they had to blindfold me so I wouldn't see the path leading to their bunker. Conspiracy demanded it.”

“‘Fine, friends! Blindfold me. I understand that conspiracy demands it of you. But rest assured, if I haven't betrayed anyone until now, though you can see how beaten and swollen I am, all black and blue...’”

“They led me into the bunker, removed the blindfold from my eyes, and asked me to sit down. The bunker was quite spacious, as bunkers go. And I had seen more than one of them, and had even built some myself, helped others build them.”

“‘Friend!’ the squad leader said to me. ‘We have information that you confessed everything in prison, told the Bolsheviks about your ties with our people, about the bunkers. We now have reason not to believe you.’”

“‘What are you saying, my dear boys! It’s not true. I didn’t give anyone up, although I know everyone who operates in our parts, where they hide, I know the bunkers. Everyone knows me.’ And I began to name the pseudonyms of those with whom I maintained contact, where each was located. I proved to them that the bunkers had not been raided. ‘I hid food, clothes, and weapons there with my own hands. That is the best proof that I did not betray them, because those who remain at liberty know that I know about those hideouts, and since the Muscovites have not come to them, it means I haven't talked.’”

“The leader was taking everything down, and I sincerely tried to vindicate myself, telling him everything I knew about the underground life. Yet he did not believe me. He shouted at me menacingly: ‘You’re lying! You’re pretending! You told the Bolsheviks everything.’ And he ordered the fighters to hang me from a hook that was driven into the ceiling. The fighters jumped to their feet, shouting in one voice: ‘At your command, friend commander!’—and threw a noose around my neck, told me to stand on a stool, and tied the noose to the hook.”

“An incredible fear engulfed me, and also sorrow that I, an innocent man, must perish at the hands of my own people. I began to pray: ‘Friends! What are you doing? I’m one of your own! Who are you destroying? I swear to God I told you the honest truth.’ And I began to swear on everything under the sun. I swore by God, by my wife, and even by my little children, by my Verkhovyna. It seemed that even stones would tremble from my pleas and entreaties, but they still did not believe me.”

“‘Hang me! If you are so faithless. I have no other way to prove my truth to you!’—and I burst into bitter tears.”

“The commander’s heart softened; he ordered them to remove the noose from my neck and offered me the protocol to sign.”

“‘I will sign it for you, friend! I am ready to sign it even with my own blood that I have told you the honest truth,’—and I signed it very gladly. I began to feel relieved when I saw that they were starting to believe me.”

“‘Fine! We believe you, friend village council head,’ the leader said ironically. ‘But we will still check how truthful you have been with us. We will now move you to another bunker.’”

“They blindfolded me again, led me out of the bunker, and walked me through the forest for some time, after which they removed the blindfold. A squad led me on. Suddenly, a shot. ‘Get down, friend!’ the fighter commanded, and we hit the ground. The shootout continued. A commotion, like panic, broke out among the squad. I heard them shout: ‘Bolsheviks!’—a command. ‘Take up positions, we engage!’”

“The machine guns chattered, the fighter lying next to me fired furiously from a PPSh (submachine gun). Suddenly, he cried out, clutched his chest, from which I saw blood flow. The squad began to retreat, and before I knew it, the Bolsheviks had already surrounded me and were leading me under rifle guard to the road where their truck was standing.”

“The Muscovites were coming out of the forest, each carrying something in their hands, some a PPSh, rucksacks, belts, bags, that they had taken from the killed fighters.”

“My God! And I am trembling, I felt sorry that our boys were killed, that I had again fallen into the hands of the Bolsheviks. I understood that if they had my protocol in their hands, it was the end for me. But a little hope flickered in me that maybe he escaped, or maybe he didn't take my protocol with him from the bunker, so I could still save myself.”

“And the Bolsheviks were ferocious, like enraged beasts, angry that they had lost several of their men in the shootout. All the way they grumbled at me, prodded me in the sides with rifle butts, calling me a ‘bandit—a Banderite liaison’...”

“They brought me back to the district center, took me to the chief, and in my presence reported to them that they had caught me in the forest with Banderites, though unarmed. They took me in for interrogation, asking who I was, what I was doing in the forest, where my weapon was. And I told them who I was, that my name was Marchuk (I just remembered it now), I had been the head of the village council, they had arrested me, were taking me from the district to the oblast, the boys from the forest had rescued me from your soldiers, taken me to a bunker, wanted to torture me to death, were leading me somewhere through the forest and then you rescued me from them again, that's how I ended up with you again.”

“‘Well, are you going to tell the truth, who are you, who were you in contact with?’”

“And I deny it, say no, I don't know anyone. They started beating me again, but I didn't confess... And then some Muscovite enters the office and, I see, places my protocol before the chief, the one I signed in the bunker for the squad commander, and says:”

“‘We found this document in the bag of the killed gang leader; read what he said there.’”

“I realized that it was useless to deny it here: my protocol had fallen into their hands during the battle, they knew everything, and then I said:”

“‘What is written in the protocol is not true. I was saving my own life because they wanted to hang me, and I had to justify myself somehow.’”

“But that protocol was enough for them. It was written so clearly that one could find the bunkers and arrest many people based on it. I understood that my protocol had buried me as well. Based on this protocol, they arrested many of my fellow villagers, and found the bunkers. They took me to the village, where I couldn't look anyone in the eye; everyone spat on me: ‘You filth! Traitor! You played at being a Banderite, and now you sell us out. You yourself forced us to do all that, and now you betray us...’”

“My God! What I went through, I cannot find the words to tell you!”

And the elderly Hutsul prisoner, who must have been nearly fifty at the time, burst into tears:

“Forgive me, friends, if you can, for my blameless yet guilty betrayal, and if not, then better kill me, let me not suffer, I find no place for myself in this white world. But a bullet in the forest was not fated to kill me, back then, before my protocol was drawn up. As I later understood, and as the boys in prison explained to me, it was a ruse. No squad of our insurgents had rescued me; they were disguised Bolsheviks. And I, pure and holy, believed they were our own, and told them the whole honest truth, as if in confession.”

Marchuk wept, and we consoled him, saying that we were not angry with him, that we forgave him, for he was not to blame. The wronged man showed us the scars on his head from the beatings, his bruised shoulders, his legs battered by boots.

Everyone’s spirit sank upon hearing the story. My God! An innocent betrayal, yet how many victims it claimed, how much mistrust it sowed among our own people… The best flower of the Ukrainian nation was perishing.

Two more prisoners in the cell confessed to a similar sin. One was an agronomist, from Berezhanshchyna or Ternopil, I think, and the other from Rivnenshchyna.

From these stories, it became clear to us that “the barrel” was at play all over our Western Ukraine. We discussed how to pass this news to those on the outside, so that newly arrested friends would not fall for such a trick. Each one of us kept in mind that at the first opportunity, upon meeting with relatives or anyone, we would tell them about the insidious deception—“the barrel.”

We had to hear all sorts of stories among the people. Everyone had experienced something; death had already looked more than one of us in the eye, so there was much to talk about. Many heroic events were also recounted by the prisoners about the underground movement in Ukraine at that time. Much was said on the topic of “informants in prison.” Prisoners told of various people planted in their cells under the guise of good, knowledgeable fellows from their own side, who constantly delved into their souls. They were often called for interrogation. Though, to be fair, when an investigator wants to call his informant from a cell, he always calls other, honest prisoners at the same time, so that no one would guess who the traitor is. Usually, such an informant was placed in the cell, as prison experience later suggested, not under his real name, but under a fictitious one. He was moved from cell to cell under a different name. For the loathsome service they provided, they were promised a reduced sentence, and even freedom. That is why there were such abominations in prison, who sat in cells for years, were not taken on transports, were well-fed, supplied with tobacco, and they, like trained dogs, wandered from cell to cell searching for innocent victims. Just as no citizen on the outside remains without the surveillance of the “all-seeing eye”—even more so in prison. In every cell where even a few prisoners were sitting, one of them could be unholy.

*The “Mute”

The following incident occurred. A prisoner went mute during interrogation from beatings, fear, and emotional turmoil. He could not speak, showed everything with gestures, only waving his arms and pointing to his head; one could understand from him that it ached.

A problem for the investigators. The defendant had lost his speech. They couldn't speak with him, couldn't interrogate him.

They put him in a solitary cell, and after some time, they put another man in with him—just as unfortunate as he was. A mute, who didn’t speak, only babbled something, foamed at the mouth, slobbered.

The poor fellows sit for a day, a second, saying nothing, for what would they talk about amongst themselves, being mutes. But on the third night, the new cellmate wakes his neighbor in the middle of the night and starts speaking to him, but very, very quietly, so that no one could hear, and in God’s good name, he asked him not to say a word about it to anyone.

Well, the other one wasn't made of stone either; it was hard for him without a living word: how could he not respond to someone as wretched as himself, and who had even spoken in their native language. It seems he could even offer advice in the case, guide him on the right path. And so he, too, began to speak.

Three mute days had so exhausted the neighbors that they no longer slept until morning, but spoke in the dark, each pouring out the sorrow from his soul to feel lighter, wanting to make up for lost time. And at night it's good to talk; the guard looks into the peephole less often, and especially into their cell, he seemed to have forgotten to look at all. Well, during the day they would have to be silent again, to play the role of mutes.

The neighbors talked their fill during the night, so much so that it seemed they had known each other from childhood right up to that last minute. In the early morning, they dozed off—after all, they hadn't slept the whole night; sleep overcame them. But the guard adheres to the prison regime: at the appointed time, the mutes were awakened, given breakfast. And though they were still mutes, their gazes were already cheerful, their eyes smiled at each other; they knew they were someone else to each other now.

But the neighbors did not enjoy their “friendship” for long. “Cruel fate” soon separated them: after breakfast, the new neighbor was taken away. The mute was left alone again in the cell with his muteness. But it was not fated for him to be mute for long. That very day, before lunch, right after the mute neighbor was taken away, he was called for interrogation. And he, of course, being mute—waves his arms, babbles something. At that moment, the door from the next office opens—and to his astonishment, in walks his mute neighbor! But no longer mute, but talkative, and a very good talker at that, introducing himself as a senior investigator.

Such are the wonders that happen in prison. How clever, cautious, and prescient every prisoner must be in prison.

And who was mostly caught back then—youths, young girls, in a word—the youth! And if they were a little older or even elderly—they were without prison tempering, did not know such tricks...

Prison is a house of suffering and torment. But also a school for all who have been in it! It's no wonder that on the wall of almost every cell one could find an inscription like: “He who was here—will not forget, he who has not been here yet—will be!”

In prison, it often happened that heroes became non-heroes and, conversely, non-heroes—heroes. What was needed was an unbreakable willpower, determination, and intuition that would suggest how to act, in whom to see the “prison ear” (the investigator’s informant), and not to yield to persuasion.

A prisoner had to know that every investigator is, first and foremost, a psychologist. He understands prisoners well, immediately determining which method to apply to whom: pleading, terror, promises, cold, or hunger. Different people gave in differently. Some believed promises, another was broken by terror, yet another by hunger, the punishment cell, or a loss of spirit. But there were also unbreakable prisoners; they responded to terror with silence, did not accept promises, endured hunger patiently, and were ready to die at any moment.

The prison, with all its fear and regime, with its entire being, presses on the prisoner's psyche, on his whole self. One must truly be courageous to endure it all, not to break, not to lose faith in oneself, to remain a human being.

*Zolochiv Prison

Three days had passed since my sentence was pronounced, but a copy of it had not yet been handed to me. Instead, they called me out of the cell, put me in a “voronok” (a vehicle used to transport prisoners), and took me to the station, where “Stolypin cars” (wagons also used to transport prisoners) were already waiting for us. Here they crammed us into the wagons like sardines in a can—to the very limit.

Again, different prisoners, new acquaintances with them, various guesses—where are they taking us? Arguments, different opinions, mistakes. Some expressed the opinion that we were being taken somewhere far away; others—that it was probably to some nearby camp, likely in the Lviv Oblast; and still others, that it was to the Far East. These were the guesses of still-inexperienced prisoners. The inmates with prison experience correctly said that we were probably being taken (no one would say for sure) to some prison, likely a district one, because everything indicated that our wagons were not equipped for long transports.

And so it happened. We were brought to Zolochiv, transferred to “voronoks,” and taken to Zolochiv Prison. We were distributed among the cells. And after about an hour and a half, we were taken to bathe. Here I met several of my comrades. My God! What joy there was. We wanted to share everything at once, to tell what we had endured during the investigation, who knew what about our other friends, who had had the chance to see whom during the investigation, who had faced whom in a confrontation, how each had behaved at the trial. There was much to talk about, for each of us had experienced a lot during the days of investigation.

We were all worried about the fate of the OBZVU leader, Myron Sliusar. No one could say anything for sure about him. True, my friends had heard from other prisoners who were in cells with our comrades that they had seen Myron in prison, being led to an interrogation. Others had heard his voice, which was hoarse, as if from a cold. But no one could tell anything definite about him. Apparently, he had perished in prison in the first days of his arrest, because no one had a confrontation with him, nor was there any testimony from him. We felt sorry for our friend, leader, and sincere brother-in-arms. Could he have really died so young (at twenty-one)?... The suspicion tormented us all...

Zolochiv Prison resembled Lviv Prison in all its aspects; there was nothing superfluous here, everything was the same as there. The same bars, visors, a slop bucket in the corner of the cell, the floor, no beds, iron-clad doors, a peephole, a food hatch, dirty, scratched walls, and nothing more—all according to strict prison regulations.

They did not keep us here for long. That very same day, after lunch, “voronoks” took us to the station, to be loaded into the same wagons, and again we were taken in the direction of Lviv. Now no one doubted that they were taking us to the transit point in Lviv—to Zamarstynivska. Everyone just thought about getting there sooner, to the transit prison, and from there onto a transport, and hopefully to a good camp… Only the old prisoners, who had already been to Vorkuta, Arkhangelsk, Kamchatka, and other camps of the Soviet Union, having assessed the situation, were not so eager for the transport. They always told us newcomers: “Don't be in such a hurry to get there; it’s not so bad here yet. There it's cold, hunger, lawlessness; people perish in vain, like flies…”

Transit Point

We found ourselves before the high gate of the transit point.

“Sit!” commanded the guards who had brought us here and were watching our every move, shouting from time to time, “No noise, no talking!”

There were a full five of them guarding us, including the convoy commander—a senior lieutenant, who immediately went to the guardhouse, obviously to the transit point authorities. After some time, he came out, but not alone, but with several officers, our new masters. The authorities haggled amongst themselves for a long time, while we examined our pen—the transit point—with our eyes. This was my first camp. How it appeared to me—I will convey in a few words.

An area, a square measuring 200 by 200 meters. Enclosed by a solid wooden fence with jagged tops, over three meters high. At the top, the fence was wrapped with barbed wire in three strands, half a meter high, after which it projected inward at a 30-degree angle—a strip approximately a meter wide, maybe more.

Around the fence was a forbidden zone—a strip five meters wide, tilled and evenly raked, and also enclosed by several strands of barbed wire up to a meter high. At the corners of the fence, as well as in the middle, generally at a distance of no more than 50 meters (depending on the terrain), stood watchtowers—booths on four inwardly sloping posts that rose high above the fence, designed so that the guard had a good view of the camp both from the outside and the inside. The booth was paneled with boards from the bottom up to the halfway point, and the other part was open on all four sides or the two frontal ones—depending on the required field of view. Inside the tower was a telephone connecting the guard with the neighboring towers and also with the guardhouse. A guard was talking to someone on the phone. Next to each tower, a searchlight was installed at an angle to illuminate the inner and outer forbidden zones. All these creations of human hands were something new to me.

From the checkpoint (as the guardroom of the camp supervision was called), someone brought out chairs and a small table, on which they placed a folder. As we later saw, it contained our “birth certificates”—personal files in which the prisoner’s surname, name and patronymic, year of birth, nationality, place of birth, where he was “christened” (i.e., by which court he was convicted), article, term of punishment, deprivation of rights, exile, and other data not read out to the prisoner were recorded. That is, special notes regarding his character.

The authorities had long been examining us and our files, and only after that did one of them open the large gate—a new world, the entrance to the GULAG archipelago (Main Administration of Camps).

They called out each one of us by file; the person whose name was called got up from the ground (everyone was sitting) and stepped a few paces forward from the column and answered all the questions put to him by the new “merchants”—the heads of the transit point. They were interested in knowing everything about the prisoner that was written in his file.

They also read my name, checked me against my file, searched me all over, patted down all my clothes, after which they said: “March into the zone!” And for the first time in my life, I entered a camp—a transit point, a new world, completely unknown to me. New masters were already waiting for me here, who were no different from those who handed us over, except for their ranks and uniforms.

“Sit down!” they ordered us. “Wait for the others.”

And in fours, as if we were soldiers, they lined us up, us recruits, row after row.

The panorama of the transit point—its life—opened up before me. While waiting for all the others who had not yet been processed, I examined this new world, contemplated it, the essence of its existence. On the inner side, along the fence, there was also a forbidden zone five meters wide, the ground tilled, evenly raked, and also enclosed by many rows of barbed wire.

The entire zone was visible as if on the palm of one's hand. Two-story barracks, windows with bars, but no more visors. Only one barrack had visors. As the prisoners who had already been here explained, this was the punishment cell—the BUR (barracks of enhanced regime). Between the barracks were paths, some open spaces, where here and there one could see loitering prisoners (those who had permission), carrying something in pots, buckets, or just in their hands, trays with bread or sprat, some clothes—in a word, all sorts of things. No one was seen idle.

“Up!” the command came. We stood up. At that very moment, the last of our group entered, and the great gate closed behind us, as proof that our new life was beginning right here—behind the gate. As the experienced prisoners used to say, the gates open wide to enter here, but they don't even want to open a small wicket to leave.

“Don’t wander off, we're going to the bathhouse; you'll wash up, we'll list your things, follow us!”

Now only two guards and one of the prisoners, their subordinate, probably the commandant of the transit prison, a camp lackey, led us.

A thunderstorm with lightning began in the sky, a light rain started to fall, we all hurried to get under a roof somehow. And although some of us protested that we did not want to bathe because we had already been bathed in Zolochiv, no one listened to our protests: among us were some who hadn’t been bathed, so all of us had to bathe again that day. Here we were served by prisoners just like us, although a bit different. We were all pale as sheets from prison, emaciated, while they were clean, plump, and of a different nature—roguish. Mostly, they were prisoners without a conscience, rabble, the scum of the transit point. Knowing that we were newcomers, not yet aware of the local laws, not daring to defend ourselves, they began to “bargain” with some of our group (the newly arrived). They brazenly took the best clothes that caught their fancy, supposedly “paying” something, giving someone a bread ration or two for a good coat, a pack of tobacco for a suit, or nothing at all, just murmuring: “They’ll take it from you anyway. And in general, you’ll get your eyes scratched out for this: better to give it up nicely. Have a smoke,”—and shoves a cigarette under your nose, or worse—gives you the finger.

All our clothes were taken to the delousing chamber. A whisper went among the knowledgeable prisoners: “Tie up your stuff well, or it’ll get mixed up with someone else's and you won't find it.” Whoever still had some good clothes trembled with fear, because the “merchants” (the crooks) did not stop scurrying among us at that time. They felt like masters here, as if in their own home. They looked into bags, checked pockets, and even gave some a shove if they resisted. For some reason, there was no one physically strong among us at that time to offer resistance to that scum. We were all somehow intimidated, because we truly did not yet know the local “laws,” we lacked the camp mettle. Their words alone made our souls shudder with fear. We heard nothing but: “Horned devil” (that’s what the “legitimates”—the *blatnye*—called the “illegitimates,” ordinary people), “Bitch! Scumbag! I’ll scratch your eyes out! I’ll eat you alive, guts and all!”—and other unholy words. The things we had to hear!—the Russian language in all its beauty, because for some reason they didn't swear or call names so terribly in Ukrainian.

Although there were guards here, and more than one, several of them—for some reason they said nothing to them, to those crooks, did not forbid them, but on the contrary, pretended not to see this lawlessness. This showed that they were in cahoots with them—trading in stolen clothes, profiting from people’s rags. Because clothes on the outside were expensive at that time, hard to get. And for the stolen goods, the guards brought the rabble tobacco and “drinks-and-snacks” (vodka and chasers, as the prisoners who had already been here explained). The guards and this criminal world lived in harmony, like real brothers—they were two peas in a pod.

The bathhouse at the transit point is very large—a hundred, or even a hundred and fifty people could bathe at once. There were barbers here: they shaved everyone’s “pubes” (hair under the arms and in the unmentionable place). And also anyone whose hair had grown out even a little on their head—they were shorn immediately.

The barbers here were also “big shots” compared to us, they lived well, you could see it in them, in their clothes, on their faces—well-fed, not hungry. And all that camp service personnel, drawn from the prisoners, considered themselves the “elite,” the authorities, for which they sold their souls and the souls of their brethren. From the first minute, from the first day of my stay at the transit point, I saw who they were, what those camp dogs represented.

With great difficulty, we washed ourselves, after which we were released through another door—towards the delousing chamber. There, from an open chamber, several lugs carried out armfuls of our clothes on wire hangers. They threw them on the ground among us, and we scrambled for them, making noise, shouting, because many were missing something, but no one paid any attention to this: shout all you want, even if you burst, no one will help you with this, if it’s gone, it’s gone, God be with you. They only yelled: “Get your things faster, this isn’t a nursery! Get out, the next batch is coming to bathe!”—because the transit point is never empty, life here is constantly bustling with its daily, unceasing rhythm—some arrive, others depart.

When we were dressed, they made an inventory of our belongings—a formality, as if they cared that nothing was lost, so they knew who had what. They followed their procedure.

By the time we went through all their procedures, it was already well into the evening. Then they brought us dinner—balanda and bread. They poured a ladle of balanda into aluminum bowls for each of us and shoved a 300-gram bread ration into our hands. For some reason, there were not enough bowls, a commotion started, everyone felt hungry, trying to grab a bowl from someone as quickly as possible, to get balanda as quickly as possible. And the prisoner who got his hands on a bowl was in no hurry to part with it; he had to lick it clean, even better than my mother used to wash dishes at home.

There was also a problem with spoons; there weren’t enough of them either, because everyone licked theirs ten times after eating before passing it to another. To be fair, that wasn’t a big problem: a prisoner is not a lord—he can eat balanda without a spoon, and quickly too: he’ll drink it, and if there’s anything thick in it, a piece of potato peel—he’ll grab it with his hands.

The transport from the prison consisted mainly of our Ukrainian Galicians. Almost everyone crossed themselves three times after dinner, thanking the Almighty for His grace. The conversation among us livened up. As usual, after eating, everyone became gentler. Although no one was full—just teased their stomach with the balanda—they still had a hot meal.

After dinner, an order came: “Guys, gather your things, we'll take you to rest,”—and they led us in small groups to different barracks.

I ended up in barrack number five, I think, on the second floor, in a cell as large as a hall. Prisoners destined for transport, who were soon to be sent to Stalin's concentration camps of death, lived here. Everyone lay in a heap on the floor in six rows: the first two rows with their heads to the wall, the next two rows in the opposite direction, feet to feet, so that there was a passage between them, the middle two rows with their heads toward the second rows. These two corridors served as a passage to the latrine—a hundred-liter wooden barrel standing in the very corner. In each row, there were almost fifty people, with about 300 prisoners fitting in the cell. Everyone lay on their right or left side, because on a transport there was no room to lie spread out. Under each person’s head were their belongings, shoes, a bag with clothes or dried bread, if they had received a parcel. An incredible stuffiness reigned in the room; the air—you could just faint. The windows, which had no glass but only bars, were a lifesaver.

About ten of us entered the cell.

“Newbies! Where are you from, boys?”—questions rained down on us from all corners of the cell. Some propped themselves up on their sides, and there were those who stood up, greeted us, clapped us on the shoulders:

“Don’t lose heart, you won’t perish, friends!”—they consoled and comforted us and placed us next to the latrine barrel, to which we didn't react at all, knowing that such was the law here: whoever comes later, his place is there.

It was so noisy in the cell that it was hard to understand who was saying what, who was asking, getting angry, or complaining.

We squeezed into a corner, so that the person at the end of our group had his shoulders pressed against the latrine barrel.

“Where are you pouring, what are you doing, you shameless oaf,”—we had to snap back from time to time, because the carelessness of some, especially those with diarrhea, often caused us trouble…

The cell was almost entirely filled with Galicians. It seemed that all of Western Ukraine was behind bars. Who wasn't here! Former insurgents, members of the OUN, fighters, local cell leaders, supply men (those who procured provisions in the field), various workers from the field, riflemen from the SS-Galizien division, people who had given food to someone from the underground, sheltered someone for the night, someone caught carrying a *shtafeta (Note: from 'estafeta'—a secret note passed from hand to hand by underground couriers. —Ed.)*, someone hiding from the Soviet army, something found in a letter home: the censor didn’t like it—they were labeled a “traitor to the motherland,” or someone who just loved Ukraine, told some anti-government joke, or simply didn't appeal to the government for some reason; they saw in him the Ukrainian spirit, unsubmissiveness, he refused to sign up to be a snitch-informant, fell into disgrace, was considered a traitor... And they knew how to give a sentence to anyone. As popular wisdom said, and often the investigators themselves boasted: “If there’s a person, a case will be found, we’ll spin a term.”

An atmosphere of hatred towards the Soviet authorities openly prevailed in the cell. Everyone cursed it to high heaven, telling horror stories about its lawless actions, its abuse of the people, its treachery, perfidy, and betrayal. Here, no one was afraid to talk about anything, to voice their pain just as they wished, not fearing eavesdroppers or betrayal. Everyone was indifferent to everything, although they were aware that even in such a cell there was a government “ear.” But everyone spat on this “ear”: together, they had thousands of years of punishment. Few had a sentence of less than ten years—most had fifteen, twenty years of hard labor, or even twenty-five years of correctional labor camps.

The people here were of all ages: fifteen-year-old boys and older men, as well as eighty-five-year-old grandfathers. But no one lost heart; everyone believed in a better future, held up bravely.

Opening the door, the guard announced: “Lights out, go to sleep, not a sound.” Some began to cross themselves, whispering prayers, thanking God for the day lived.

That night, for some reason, I couldn’t fall asleep for a long time: the incredible stuffiness, the stench of the latrine barrel, thoughts about the day’s events. Everything I had seen and heard that day did not fade from my imagination. And the loud snoring of some prisoners, groans, shouts in their sleep, jostling, pokes in the side with an outburst of anger: “Move over, I have no room to lie down”—completely drove away sleep. And people going to the latrine, so someone steps on a foot, stumbles over someone, fighting for their spot, because as soon as you climb out from among the people—your place is already taken, you have to force your way back in with your side.

Finally, sleep overcame me: I didn't even notice how I fell asleep. When I woke up, it was already morning. People were crossing themselves, whispering prayers, thanking the heavenly King for the night they had lived through. They told each other their dreams, interpreted them, deciphered them. Because for some reason, in captivity, everyone has them. Sometimes they are even tormenting, with no end in sight. And under these circumstances, for some reason, prisoners gave special meaning to dreams.

They brought bread, cut into 650-gram rations. It was distributed. Some, not waiting for the balanda, nibbled it crumb by crumb, savoring it until it was gone. Truly—this is the most pleasant moment for a prisoner, when he is eating, and he always wants to eat.

The pot of balanda was also brought in. Bowls of soup were passed over heads from one person to another, and some even had it spilled on their heads. It bubbled like in a cauldron, the cell did not quiet down.

After breakfast was the medical round. They registered the sick, gave some a pill, and others a kind word: “It will pass, it’s not dangerous.” People with high temperatures were taken to the medical isolation ward or moved to a quieter cell.

Some were called out from a list, given the good news: “Come out with your things!” Which meant—going on a transport. As we used to say—“got dispatched.” And the speculation began about the transports, where they were going, where, who, and where one would like to end up and with whom. Here one could already hear about various destinations. The cell became more spacious. We moved away from the latrine barrel, freeing up space for the newcomers.

From the conversations, we knew they wouldn't keep us here long, no more than a week, maybe they would send us off in two or three days. Each of us awaited our unknown destination.

*A Visit

They called my name, but not with the words “with your things,” which meant they were calling me for some other reason. I grew alarmed, made my way to the door, and went out into the corridor, where I heard a new order from the prisoner on duty: “Come with me.” And I followed him. I see he is leading me to the basement. I grew even more alarmed, not knowing the reason. But he noticed it in me and immediately reassured me: “Don't worry, kid, I'm not leading you to your death; you'll see someone of yours now.” And my heart immediately felt lighter.

In the basement stood Mariia, my comrade, and with her another girl. What a great joy it was for me! We greeted each other warmly, sharing impressions from the days we had lived in captivity.

“I just found out you were here,” said Mariia, “so I made it my goal to meet you here, because they’ll soon scatter us across the world, and God knows if we’ll ever meet again in life.”

Mariia brought me her food parcel, which she had received from home, and also a pack of cigarettes. I resisted, saying I didn't want to take it, but she persuaded me, assuring me that she would get more, and there were other girls with her who also had things from home, whereas no one would bring anything for me, so I had to take it. I was curious how she managed to arrange our meeting. She said that they were taking people from her cell to peel potatoes in the kitchen, and she had asked to go. And as she was walking past the neighboring barrack, she saw Stefa Lupynis, our comrade, through the window, and learned from her which cell I was in. And since her mother brings her a parcel every day, she asked her to bring a few packs of cigarettes, and for them, the prisoners on duty, through a guard, arranged our meeting. She promised to bring me her parcel and a bread ration again tomorrow, because she would eat in the kitchen, and she knew I was hungry.

Our meeting lasted about 10 minutes. The man on duty asked us to finish, because he was afraid someone would report our meeting to the higher-ups. We thanked him sincerely for arranging the visit, said goodbye, and I returned to the cell.

Everyone greeted me joyfully with the words: “A parcel! A parcel!...” They were curious who it was from, who had brought it. I shared the parcel with whom I could, gave out all the cigarettes, and had a tasty smoke myself, with great pleasure.

Mariia did not leave my thoughts, nor did any of my other comrades. I eagerly awaited the next day, our second meeting. But things never happen to a person as they think or plan. So it was with me the next day.

*A “Brother’s” Farewell to His “Sister”

After breakfast, the commandant of the transit prison entered the cell with some other transit camp lackey and read a long list of names of those who were slated for the transport. He said: “Whoever I call, get your things and come outside.” A commotion arose in the cell; those whose names were called were gathering their belongings. Some were happy about it, others were sad. Each had their own reason. The one who was being transported with a friend or a good acquaintance was happy, while those who were leaving their friends and acquaintances behind at the transit point were sad, as were those who were staying and did not know what awaited them in the future.

Acquaintances, friends, or those who had just met here (because in misery people bond very quickly for some reason) said their goodbyes. A shiver ran through everyone’s body, an inner turmoil was felt, tears glistened in some people's eyes, they hugged and kissed each other, wished each other a safe journey, to endure all sorrow, and to meet again in freedom in the future. No one wished anyone ill. In the moment of farewell, even enemies—that is, those who had not endured torture, had informed on their comrades, had confessed to cases, had harmed their friends—even they were forgiven; they wished them to endure all sorrow, a safe journey, because human nature is such that it is more inclined to good than evil, accustomed to forgiving, not remembering, not repaying evil with evil.

I had nothing to pack, I had not yet acquired any things: what I had, I wore on myself, I was ready to go.

The doors opened, the list was read once more, and they let us out one by one into the corridor, where our escorts—the guards—were already waiting, leading us in small batches into the courtyard of the transit prison. And here, as in the corridor, bargaining was in full swing: there were “buyers” from various camps of the Soviet Union, “purchasing” prisoner-slaves for hard physical labor. Several transports were being prepared at once, which were to go in different directions. In the courtyard, there were several thousand prisoners, divided into groups—men and women, people of all ages, even 14- and 15-year-old children.

For the first time in such a long time in prison and at the transit point, I had the opportunity to see so many, like a sea, of these wretched people, for whom an unknown, distant road awaited. They were all dear and precious to my heart and soul—they were like me, and I like them.

It was bubbling like in a pot; everyone was talking about something, sharing their thoughts, their experiences. The mood of everyone was elevated. We men, especially, could not take our eyes off the groups of girls who were also being prepared for transport not far from us. We called out to them, greeted them by waving our hands, for which we received mutual compliments from them. Here, everyone felt they had the right to smile and sympathize with someone like themselves, and not someone else. Life itself had made a difference between people, divided them into free and unfree, unshorn and shorn…

Toilets were no longer used here: everyone relieved themselves simply by stepping aside, in full view of everyone. To be fair, the women in this respect, even under such conditions, were more cultured, more neat than us men. Several of them would go off together: some would hold up a spread-out blanket, while others relieved themselves—and vice versa. This was happening in many places, as the prisoners were divided into a dozen or so groups.

Next to each such group of people stood a small table, at which sat a medical commission and representatives of the transit and transport authorities. On the tables lay stacks of prisoner files, from which each was called by name for the commission. True, before the doctors were to examine the prisoner, the guards ordered him to strip naked, as his mother bore him, forced him to raise his hands, show his palms, squat several times, while they peered into his unmentionable place. It seemed they were peering into the very insides of a person with their piercing gazes. After this, the prisoner would approach the doctors, while the guards shook out his clothes, felt every seam, checked his shoes, tearing off the soles to make sure there was no hidden knife or other cold weapon.

The medical commission was a formality: they asked the prisoner what he was complaining about (though it had no effect on anything), ordered him to open his mouth, show his tongue, looked at his teeth. Sometimes, they would pinch the skin on someone’s buttocks with two fingers, and everyone’s were like two cloves of garlic. Such a commission lasted no more than one or two minutes. After which the prisoner would go to his clothes, thrown at his feet like a dog, and get dressed, then fill the fourth spot in his row in the newly formed column, and wait impatiently for the next command. Thus, slowly, four by four, a column was formed, ready for departure. The entire courtyard of the transit prison was filled with male and female columns, which showed that several transports were being prepared to be sent to different regions of the Soviet Union. Each such formed column was surrounded by soldiers, and no one was allowed to leave it, nor was anyone allowed to join it. The slightest noise, turning, or conversation among the prisoners was cut short by the guards, who often shouted: “Silence! No noise! Tighten up! Why are you fidgeting?!”

Right after the commission, as soon as I found myself in the transport column, my female friends and comrades, who were still at the transit point, came up. They brought a sack of dried bread and several packs of tobacco and wanted to give it all to me. At first, it seemed that it would be simple to do; they would pass me the sack, I would take it, thank them for it, and the good deed would be done. But, as it turned out, it was not so simple. You could burst trying, begging the guard, but he was implacable, only shrugging it off: “No! It's forbidden by law! I don't allow it!...”

Our column had already moved three times, each move bringing us closer to the gate. There! There! We'll soon be at the gate. And the girls keep begging and begging the convoy commander: “Please, take this sack of dried bread yourself and pass it to our friend. What, does it pain you? Have at least a crumb of God in your heart!...”—and they teared up, the poor things. They share their thoughts with me from time to time; in a moment of desperation, they speak to me, which was strictly forbidden by the regime.

All hope that I would be able to get the sack was lost. Our column found itself right at the gate; any minute the gate would open. And then—goodbye, transit prison! March to the station, meet the wagons. Everyone was in an incredible state of tension. All of it cost nerves and patience.

But something unexpected happened. A thought flashed through my mind to suggest to the girls, or more precisely to one of them, Stefa Lupynis, to approach the commander of the transport column (since we were already completely at his disposal) with a plea that I, her brother, was going on the transport, and she, my sister, had a sack of dried bread and wanted to give it to me.

Stefa, without wasting time, ran to the transport commander and asked: “Please allow me to give a sack of dried bread to my brother, who is already at the guardhouse.” He turned out to be a balanced man, with something human in him; the girl's plea touched his soul and he gave his consent. He came out of the guardhouse and watched what the meeting and immediate farewell of the “sister and brother” would be like. Overjoyed, Stefa grabbed the sack by its tie with both hands and rushed into the column to the group of four where I stood with my comrades. The moment of our meeting and farewell was moving. Stefa placed the sack in front of me, and then, weeping, threw herself into my arms, saying through her tears these words: “May you have a safe journey, friend, may God help you endure everything and may we meet again in life…”

It was not only she who cried—I cried too, my fellow transportees cried; for some reason, at that moment, and especially under such circumstances, it was incredibly painful and sad for everyone.

I hadn’t yet had a chance to say a word of thanks or comfort to her when the gates opened at that moment, and the convoy commander’s command rang out: “Girl, get out of the formation, stop saying goodbye!”—Hearing these words, Stefa began to sob even more violently, and our voices rang out together: “Goodbye!... Goodbye, friend Petro!... Goodbye, friend Stefa!...”

The transportees stirred, each adjusting something on themselves, some buttoning up, tying a rucksack or just some bundle, some wiping sweat from their foreheads, some blowing their noses, and some whispering something to a comrade in the formation. This lasted no more than a minute, when a commanding shout sounded: “Attention, prisoners! A step to the right or a step to the left is considered an escape attempt; the convoy will use weapons without warning. Understood?!”—Only a few voices responded that it was “understood.” But the convoy commander was not satisfied with such a response; he shouted even more angrily several times in a row: “Understood!... Understood!...”—Only then came the semi-muffled response from the column: “Understood!”—“If it’s understood!” said the guard, “take your things!”—and he began to count: “First four, come out.”—And when they were outside the gates, only then did he command the second group: “Second four, come out!”—And so he gradually gave the command to each group of four. The transport imperceptibly flowed from the transit prison to the outside, beyond the gate.

The command came: “Next four, approach!”—And so the turn came to my group of four. I crossed myself, threw the sack over my shoulders, and turned once more, and then again, towards the girls who stood at a distance from the column, wiping their tear-stained eyes with their palms, waving to me and saying sincerely, from the depths of their souls, through their tears: “May you have a safe journey, friend! A safe one!... May God protect you from all evil.”—And during that time, on the command of the guard, I passed through the gate.

The Transport

Some for the last time, and some not, we said goodbye to the streets of our native Lviv, through which the guards led us, as if we were criminals, constantly shouting at us like cattle: “Keep up! Don’t talk! Don’t look around!”—And whoever, in their opinion, seemed to stick out a little to the side or lagged behind—they brought a dog up to him, which strained toward the prisoner, foaming at the mouth, rising on its hind legs, so that it seemed it was about to tear him to pieces. But the “good” guard restrained it from this act, allowing it only to tear at the prisoner's clothes with its teeth.

They led us up the familiar Horodotska Street. We had to pass by the tenement house where my friend, Stefa Lupynis, had lived before her arrest. The window, which had previously been boarded up and in which some of our “first-aid” things were stored, was broken, torn out; it was evident that everything had been taken, ripped out from between its frames.

From the sidewalks and windows of the buildings, people looked at us with sympathy, and we felt in our souls that they also wished us to survive captivity and return to our native land. They too seemed only semi-free to us; in their eyes, one could see sorrow, and on their faces, nervous dissatisfaction. It seemed to us that not only we were imprisoned, but the entire Soviet Union was one large camp of enslaved people.

They brought us to the railway station, where an equipped train was already waiting for us—freight cars whose small windows were crossed with barbed wire. And above the cars, an electric wire was strung and spotlights were visible, which were meant to illuminate the cars. A telephone wire was also strung, connecting the end cars where the guards and the kitchen were located. Even a person without experience, who had never been transported in such cars, could guess from their equipment that they would be taking people very far away in them.

The last car had a metal rake attached underneath. When I asked some people who had been on transports before what this rake was and what it was for, they explained that this rake was so that if someone broke through the floor in the car, wanting to lie between the rails to be left behind when the train departed, he would not be saved: this rake would drag him along, break him, crush him, not leave the person alive. Because the guards have such a strict law: it is better for a prisoner to perish than to escape from them.

Our group of 50 people was led to one of the middle cars, the doors of which were wide open. Here they read us the pre-transport “prayer”: “Attention, prisoners! In the cars, arrange yourselves on the bunks on both sides. Do not dare to scratch or break the boards of the bunks or the car. Appoint a permanent car monitor who must, at every stop, as soon as the guard on duty approaches the car, report as follows: car number so-and-so, states its number, there are so-and-so many people in the car, states their number, all is in order! Or, if there is any remark, report it, after which state your surname. Understood?!”—We all answered in unison that we understood. After that, counting us one by one, they let us into the car, which was equipped on both sides with two-tiered bunks, the upper ones level with the window, which was located almost under the ceiling of the car, the lower ones about half a meter above the floor. The passage opposite the doors was clear. And in the wall was an equipped chute that protruded outside through an opening and served as a latrine. Next to it stood a small poker, which was used to scrape out the remnants of waste that did not fall out when used.

I was lucky to find a place on the upper bunk, near the window, which was considered the best spot in the car, because it was summer, the month of July, extremely hot, and it was still cooler by the window, a breeze blew through. And even during the day, leaning on my elbows, I could admire the endless expanses through which, it seemed, they were taking us to the end of the world, and there would be no end to them.

We arranged ourselves on the bunks head-to-toe—that is, the first ones lay with their heads towards the aisle, so that their feet were extended near the head, neck, chest, or shoulders of the next person. This way, more people could fit. The tightness was extraordinary. As soon as someone squeezed out of their spot and went to the latrine, returning to their previous place, or rather, squeezing back in—it was a problem, because their spot instantly disappeared: the people lying there shifted a little, and it was unnoticeable where anyone had been lying. In such a case, one had to reclaim one’s spot by force, that is, first by squeezing in a little with one's side, and then more and more. Everyone grumbled, made noise, shouted: “Where are you pushing, don’t stick your feet in my mouth, near my eyes, what are you doing?”—But everyone understood perfectly well that the person had been lying there and somehow needed to lie down again; they wouldn't stand or hang in the air—this wasn't a visit to an uncle's house, but a transport.

At every stop, the guards would constantly run up and meticulously tap every board of the car wall with wooden mallets to ensure the boards were intact, that no one had sawn them, that no escape was being prepared. And the car monitor from among us prisoners, as soon as they started tapping the car, would report: “Car ten, 50 people in the car, all is in order, monitor Moskva.” Why did I mention Moskva?—because Ivan, with the surname Moskva, was indeed traveling with us, from somewhere near Berezhany, short, thin, reddish. Where he got such a surname—he couldn't explain it well himself. We assumed his ancestors were probably from Moscow, and he thought so too, but in his soul, he was a true Ukrainian.

So, whenever he gave his surname “Moskva,” being the car monitor, we always had trouble. The guards serving the car thought he was mocking Moscow and, upon hearing his surname, would shout: “We’ll give you Moscow now, you’ll know how to offend it!”—But Ivan would justify himself, saying he was indeed Moskva, and all of us in the car would confirm with a shout: “But that's his real surname, is it his fault that he is really Moskva.”

The night checks were especially bothersome. They were like this. At a stop, guards would run to the car and shout: “With your things, move to the right side!”—This meant they were about to count us. Then they would slide the door open, and we all had to be on the right side of the car, that is, on one half, from which we would run to the other during the count.

This is where true hell began. The guards, like devils, would burst into the car with lit lamps in their left hands and mallets in their right. First, they checked the free half of the car, and only then did they start counting: ”First!” shouted the guard, hitting the first one with a mallet on the back, head, wherever it landed. “Second! Third!”—and so he continued his count.

But not once during my time on the transport did the guard's count add up on the first try. Usually, at the tenth or twentieth prisoner, he would inevitably lose count and shout again: “Go back to the right side!”—And he would start counting all over again, so it was not always advantageous to be at the beginning, because sometimes they wouldn’t get it right even on the fifth or sixth try, so the first ones would get as many mallet blows as there were recounts, while the last ones were not yet counted—beaten with mallets. But the first ones counted had the advantage of getting better spots than the last. It was good if we got somewhat conscientious threshers who would hit gently with the mallets, not too hard, but just to strike. But mostly, these were people without a conscience; such a count gave them pleasure; they would crack people's heads with the mallets, raise bumps, leave bruises on their backs. And such a count would happen two or three times a night, depending on whether it seemed to them that someone had escaped or was trying to escape, or if they had any doubts at all, or maybe the transport instructions provided for so many counts.

At first, these mallets shocked me greatly, but eventually, I got used to them, knowing that it had to be this way and no other.

As for food, there was its own specificity here too. In the morning, they would distribute herring or sprat, and later, if they managed to do it at that stop, fine, and if not, then at the next one—bread, which would be in two or three hours. Not waiting for the bread, most prisoners, almost all of them, ate this salted fish on an empty stomach, and after that, they received a bread ration. They impatiently awaited the balanda, which was usually brought just before lunch. Despite the fact that it was mostly burnt, made from spoiled fish, and from similar products, we all drank it down in one gulp. The eaten salted fish intensified our thirst; we wanted to drink incredibly. This thirst—to drink—did not leave us all day, the entire transport, because apart from this balanda, we were not given any other liquid throughout the day, which was extremely insufficient for us, especially in such weather—hot July days and with salted fish eaten on an empty stomach. Almost all day, there was no other conversation among us than about water and food; everyone remembered their well near their house with its healing water, which they could drink to their heart's content, and no one forbade them, no one measured it out. The Carpathian streams, springs—freedom—were remembered… Everything that a person once had, and now lacked, did not have, had been taken away, was remembered... Sometimes such a conversation was even strange.

I am writing these lines about my transport in the July days, complaining about the heat that tormented us, and my wife (Stefaniia Petrash) reminded me of her transport, also in 1947, but not in summer, but in late autumn.

*Stefaniia Petrash’s Transport

“We left on a transport from Lviv on November 8, 1947,” she recounts. “Outside, we already had frosts, and the nights were quite cold. True, they had poured coal under the bunks in the cars, and there was a stove to burn it, but we only used it two or three times during the five weeks on the road. What good was the coal under the bunks if there was no kindling? Once we managed to light a fire by breaking the poker that stood by the latrine chute into splinters, and it was no longer needed there anyway because the chute with the waste had frozen, so we women began to relieve ourselves in the coal. I remember one incident. We managed to break off a piece of a plank from the door, chopped it into splinters, but Anna Sikorska (I even remember her surname), went to get coal from under the bunks and got her hands dirty with feces (because up to that time the chute still worked, it was forbidden to relieve oneself in the coal) and grumbled: ‘I know, it was those Hungarian women, those good-for-nothings, who fouled the coal, the wretched ones with diarrhea!’”—“And traveling with us,” my wife recounts, “were three Hungarian women who had hit rock bottom; diarrhea tormented them; they barely left the latrine chute, one or the other sitting on it for hours, and when the chute froze, they went to relieve themselves in the coal. And they slept there, the poor souls, because they stank; no one wanted to take them in among them. These three women no longer looked like women. They were just skeletons. I remember the surname of one: Tuliash. They said she was the wife of some former great Hungarian official, a minister or someone—I don’t know, and the other was a daughter, also from some noble family. The origin of the third was unknown to us.”

“There was even such an incident with them. They brought us balanda for breakfast made of barley groats and sugar beets, and on top of the soup floated a piece of crackling from some carrion. The Hungarian women, taking advantage of the opportunity that they were near the door, were the first to rush to the pot, plunging their filthy hands into it up to their elbows. And we were all quite dirty, because no one gave us a drop of water, not to wash, but even to drink, but they were especially dirty, all their hands, up to their elbows, were in human waste. And since there were 43 of us women in the car—each one cursed them to their very core, expressed her outrage. But hunger is no friend, as the folk proverb says; what was the point of being squeamish and thinking about the unfortunate women's dirty hands: the stomach screamed that it wanted to eat, the herring eaten on an empty stomach demanded liquid from us, and we, one after another, without shame, drank the received balanda, joking and laughing at the Hungarian hands that had recently been washed in it. As if nothing had happened.”

“Later, we all got diarrhea from the frozen bread. They gave us one loaf for three people, but it was frozen, hard as a stone, there was nothing to break it with, so we had to take turns gnawing a little at it. Our teeth broke on it, and the cold burned our lips, but hunger forced us to gnaw-eat that gift of God.”

“My God! And how we wanted to drink... But they didn't give us a single drop of water. The frost that constantly covered the boards of the car saved us: some scraped it from the wall with a spoon, and others simply licked the frozen boards with their tongues or broke off icicles from the windows—that’s how we quenched our thirst. It’s terrifying even now when I remember it all, it’s hard to believe that we endured all that on our own skin, that we survived. But there’s no denying the truth: what was, was.”

My wife also recalls this from the transport. “In Omsk, they decided to take us to the bathhouse. It was 50 degrees below zero outside. And I was wearing only loafers on my bare feet, on low heels. They only let 50 women into the bathhouse at a time. And they brought us there, I think, 350 women. It was a party from several cars, so whoever got into the first fifty—went into the bathhouse first, and whoever in the last—last. I got into the first, I won in that I went to bathe right away, but then I had to wait outside in such severe frost until the next six groups of fifty had bathed. In that time, a good two or even more hours passed. I thought I would give up the ghost, freeze to death, or get frostbite on my feet. But God saved me from both misfortunes. True, some of our people got frostbite on their feet, faces, hands and legs. This was an obvious mockery by the transport authorities of us frail women. Everything was done only on purpose, to our detriment, to our destruction. The older women who were traveling with us on the transport pitied us, cried, lamented over us young girls, often saying: ‘You’ll freeze to death, little children. God, oh God, what a terrible fate has befallen your young lives, how you poor things must suffer, agonize. For we are already older, have lived a little, so it’s not so scary for us to die. But you haven't lived yet, you've just blossomed, you should be growing, developing, but the frost doesn't allow it.’”

“From outside, they took us back to the cars, where the temperature was little different from what it was outside. But still, it was cozier here. The doors were closed, some had some rags, wrapped themselves in them, and we breathed some warmth into the air.”

“From Omsk, a different convoy took over, Siberians, who were less cruel than the Lviv one, they didn’t count us so often and hit our backs more lightly with the mallets…”

*Fedir Fedoliak

I return again to my transport, which was also bathed, but not in Omsk, but in Chelyabinsk. When they led us out of the cars, we did not recognize each other. In those two and a half weeks of travel in the cars, everyone had grown a beard, become blackened, and looked terribly unrecognizable. And the one who seemed to me to have changed the most was Fedir Fedoliak, who was in the same cell with me at the transit point and was traveling in a different car on the transport. He had a very black beard, which in that short time had grown about 2–3 centimeters long, which aged him by a good ten years or more.

This Fedir is an original person. There was much to talk about with him, and much to learn from him, to find out interesting things. He was a seasoned participant of the UPA, was wounded in battle, after which he was left with a crippled leg (I don’t remember anymore, right or left), which would not bend at the knee.

He told us a very interesting story: how in one battle he ran into a burning house where a small child was crying. He said everything was on fire in the house, even the ceiling, beds, furniture—everything that was wooden in it. And in the middle of the house stood a wooden cradle, which the flames did not touch, although everything around and under it was burning. In the cradle, a little baby was waving its tiny arms and legs and crying, the poor infant. Even straw was sticking out of the cradle, some rag was hanging down. It seemed that they should have been the first to burn, but for some reason, they were not. This phenomenon, he said, struck me so much that I was dumbfounded, stood for a minute over the baby and shouted aloud: “God! You have shown me a miracle!... I believe in You now, in Your great mercy and power…” And he snatched the baby from the cradle into his arms, carried it out into the garden, and placed it in a spot where the fire no longer threatened it. At that moment, over the infant, I told myself that I would no longer shoot at anyone. No matter what battle it was—no one would die by my hand. And from that time, said Fedir, I could no longer shoot, not even resort to weapons in the most critical time for my own necessary defense, which my friends noticed. Later, I was wounded by an enemy bullet, was sent to the field for treatment, where I was arrested.

True, I have deviated a little from the topic, but when I remembered this surname—Fedoliak, I had to describe this incident that happened to him, so as not to forget it. He told it to us so sincerely, from the heart, as if confessing, which forces me not to remain silent about this incident-miracle, a small one that transformed a person for the better.

*Chelyabinsk. The Endless Road

In Chelyabinsk, they gave all of us a full sanitation treatment, shaved our beards, underarms, and other places, as prescribed by sanitation instructions. The bathhouse here was extremely large; at once, maybe three to four hundred people, or even more, were bathing. Here, everyone drank their fill of water, not caring what kind it was, potable or industrial—it was good that there was plenty of it.

Taking advantage of the opportunity that there were more of us in the bathhouse, everyone tried to find their countryman, an acquaintance, or to learn something about them. They shared impressions from the days of the transport. In conversations, one could feel that everyone missed Ukraine as a small child misses its own mother when replaced by a stepmother. True, no one's spirit fell here; they comforted each other with words that even prison is not eternal, that freedom will come, a time when we will return to Ukraine.

The thought of escape probably never left anyone, because all the talk among the boys was that it was almost impossible to escape from the cars, but from the camps—we would see. I treat this matter from my own perspective. From the first day of my imprisonment, such a thought always tormented me—how to escape, to break free, even for an hour, for a minute... Most of us said this: “If I could break free just once more—I would never be caught alive here again, I'd rather kill myself than ever surrender to them alive.” Because no one could forget the days spent under investigation...

The bathhouse where we bathed was for a special purpose—it served the transports. The staff who were here were also good specialists: they scrounged among us for better clothes, because at that time almost all of Russia was half-naked, without good clothing. For a few spoonfuls of *makhorka* or a few cigarettes, they would swindle precious clothes from us. Or they would simply steal them under the guise of “lost in the delousing chamber”—what can you do, try to catch the wind in the fields.

Few paid attention to clothes or shoes. Especially the avid smokers—they were ready to be left naked, to give away everything they had, just to have a good smoke for what they bartered. But it was impossible to smoke like that alone, because as soon as a smoldering cigarette appeared in someone’s mouth—smokers would immediately surround him and beg: “Give me a drag! Do you hear? Do you hear? Me!... One more for me!...” And it was impossible not to give. What can you do, such is the law here that at least ten smokers share one cigarette, and about the same number or more ask the smokers not to let the smoke go to waste, but shout: “Blow it in my mouth, you hear?... Me!... One more for me!...” Now it seems like a joke, but it was the honest truth…

Here the guards changed: the Lviv ones handed us over to the Siberians. Again they read from the files, calling each one by name. Only when the convoy was sure of the presence of a particular prisoner, saw him with their own eyes—only then did they sign for his custody.

After the bathhouse, they led us back into the cars, now under new masters—the guards. That day we did not move, because they were conducting a major inspection of each car individually.

After midnight, in the early morning, the train set off on its further journey. Again the cars swayed, again the wheels clattered against the rails. With every minute, every hour, with every day lived, we moved further away from our native lands.

True, the Siberian guards counted us less than the previous ones, they didn't look into the cars as often, they didn't recount us as often. They obviously thought that we were already in a foreign land, far from Ukraine, so we would not dare to escape, which indeed had its significance; they had convincing practice in this. The boys stopped talking about escape; everyone just clicked their tongues, uttering words like: “Oh, those cursed enemies have taken us to the end of the world, so far from our native home!...”

The expanses of Russia seemed endless. You travel for a day or two, sometimes three in a row, continuously seeing only steppe, steppe, and steppe. Or conversely: only forest, forest, and forest. A village is separated from a village or a railway stop from a stop by a distance of 50, sometimes 100 or more kilometers. Not like in our Ukraine: village next to village, and a stop from a stop at a distance of some 10-15 or 20 kilometers.

And the villages in our Ukraine are significantly different from those we saw in Russia. All Ukrainian villages are bright, each cottage is neat, welcoming, whitewashed, surrounded by a fence, a cherry orchard or just an orchard near the house, flowers planted.

But the villages in Russia are gray, gloomy, there are no orchards near the houses, nor are there fences to be seen. Russia is dull: you travel through it and your soul languishes incessantly, crying for your native lands. And only from time to time do you hear everyone sigh, uttering words like: “Lord, will we ever see our own lands again?”

The journey seemed endless. When they get stuck at some railway stop, they marinate us there for hours, or even a whole day or two, without moving from the spot. The unbearable heat tormented us to the extreme. It seemed we would suffocate in these stuffy cars. We prayed to God for evening to come sooner, for the coolness of the night, which would slightly ease our breathing, people would revive with the hope that the next day would be easier, the heat would subside, or it would get cloudy outside, and they would not delay our train at the stops, because when moving, at least a little breeze entered the cars.

My God! The things we didn't talk about on the road. Everyone talked about themselves, their life in freedom, the days spent in prison, and especially during the investigation. Many of us still had traces of beatings; we showed each other the bruises on our bodies or the fractures, telling under what circumstances we had “earned” them.

*Wife’s Memory

I am writing these lines, and my wife has told me a few of her prison episodes. So that I do not forget them, I am writing them down immediately.

“When I was in Halych prison in 1946,” my wife recounts, “the cell where I was with the girls was semi-dark, because the window faced the corridor, through which one could see the stairs leading to the second floor, where the investigators' offices were. We wouldn't have even noticed the person crawling down the stairs. But his wild, inhuman roar, his screeching, made us perk up, go to the window and look to see who was screaming there. We saw a boy we knew, Fedorniak, from the village of Krylos in the Halych district, sliding down the stairs, swollen like a log from beatings. He was no more than 22–23 years old at the time.”

“After that, we couldn't calm down for a long time. The savagely tortured youth did not leave our minds; his terrible, mutilated appearance and cry cut our hearts and souls like a sharp knife, because each of us present in the cell could expect something similar at any moment. Two days later, during our walk, we learned from other girls that he had died. They also said that on the day of his death, a bird was beating against the window of his cell. So they already knew that someone would die there, but who—they did not know. Only now did they learn it was Fedorniak. Each of us, upon hearing such sad news of his death, prayed in her soul for his departed soul, asking the Almighty for the Kingdom of Heaven for him.”

My wife told another episode, how she was in Stanislav prison in 1947 with Vira Filiak, who was from the village of Dychok in the Rohatyn district. She fell victim to the insidious “barrel.” When they were transporting her to Stanislav prison, in the Krylivsky forest near Halych, she was supposedly rescued from the Bolsheviks by her own people, and she told them the whole honest truth, after which almost 180 people were arrested. Her mother wrote to her in a note, which she had unstitched from the hem of her clothes: “What have you done, my daughter? Why did you sell out so many people? They will curse you.” But she, poor thing, was innocent, a victim of treacherous deception, and she wrote this to her mother in a note that she tucked into the sole of a shoe she was sending home for repair. But in the cell, my wife says, there was a girl with us from Kosivshchyna, who called herself Nadiia Pasichniak. We believed her, just like all the other girls. She saw Vira hiding the note in the shoe. But she was called for interrogation every day, and we didn't guess why she was called so often, because we too, after her, were sometimes called. So it was on that day. First they called her, then me, and then Vira. She met me in the corridor as I was being led back from the investigation, and she was being moved to another cell, and she shouted: “Stefa! Nadiia Pasichniak sold me out. They showed me the shoes and the note. Beware of her, she’s a snitch.”

“Oh,” I thought to myself, “now we’re going to give you a rough time in the cell!” But when I returned to the cell, Pasichniak was already gone. The girls said she had been moved to another cell. Fate brought me together with her again in 1949 in Magadan, at a transit point. But this was no longer Nadiia Pasichniak, but Paraska Seniuk, because those were her real name and surname. Obviously, she had been living in prison under a false name. I remember now that there were times when parcels were handed out, she always received hers on the day prisoners with the letter 'S' got theirs, and not on the day for the letter 'P'. And when she saw me at the transit point—and we met by chance—she was opening a door, and as soon as she saw me, she immediately fled. After my release, I met her again in Magadan and said: “Well, Paraska, even though you snitched on us, they still didn't pardon you; you're sitting here with your rotten soul, just like us.” But she fled from me again. Her dirty conscience will keep her in fear all her life; every minute she will be afraid of her own shadow, of meeting former prisoners, all honest people.

Later I learned that a tragedy had befallen Vira Filiak. This unwitting betrayal of many people gnawed at her conscience, and she decided to end her own life. She took advantage of the opportunity when she was being led down a corridor where there was an open, unbarred window. She asked the guard on duty to let her go to the toilet. He let her go without following her, deciding to wait for her in the corridor. But she bypassed the toilet door and suddenly jumped out of the open window, plummeting from the second floor. She fell onto the concrete pavement, was shattered, and lost consciousness. She only came to in the prison hospital, as they were pulling shards of glass from her body, legs, arms, and face. For as she jumped out of the open window, she had hit the pane, which flew down with her with a crash. She had to lie in the hospital for a long time. But eventually she recovered: thank God, she had no broken bones, and she was transferred back to a general regime cell.

*A Month of Memories of Ukraine

I return again with my story to my car, continuing the transport journey.

We had to swelter in the car for a month. During that time, we all became like family, like one single family. We already knew each other by name; there was mutual compassion. Among us were also those previously sentenced to death, who had sat on death row awaiting execution. They remained alive only because the death penalty was replaced with a prison sentence of twenty-five years.

I remember a man traveling with us, aged around fifty to fifty-five, maybe even older, Kovalchuk or Kovalevych—I don't remember his name well anymore. I know he was from Lvivshchyna, from the village of Remeniv. He had survived an execution. The hair on his head was almost all gray. He told us that he had gone gray in a solitary cell, while awaiting execution. After the trial, he barely slept, and if he did fall asleep, he would wake up at the slightest rustle, nervously listening to see if they were opening the door and if they would say “come out!”—which meant going to be shot.

“There was almost no hope of staying alive,” he recounted. “Because anyone who received the death sentence, it meant—goodbye, life; very few had it commuted to 15 years of hard labor. I benefited from the fact that the death penalty was abolished before I was supposed to be executed. So by a miracle, I remained alive: death was replaced by 25 years of correctional labor camps.”

And it's true, if you looked at him, you could immediately tell that he had experienced something more than us, that is, death... In general, all those who were sentenced to death and remained alive were significantly different from all other prisoners. They were more nervous, and some especially so. Even their gaze, it seemed to us, was different, not like ours. But in return, we had more respect for them than for others. In some things, even if they were wrong, we would yield to them. This was how it was at first, because later this line between us blurred; we were all irritated, restless, angry… Being in prison and camps gradually left its mark on a person, a sign of some kind of stupor, so that by a person’s gaze you could immediately tell how long they had been imprisoned.

Matus from Lvivshchyna, whom I have already mentioned, was traveling with us in the car; he had been imprisoned since 1944. They brought him from the Vorkuta camps to Lviv prison for a retrial. He was very different from all those who had been in prison for only a few months, half a year, or a year. We still had the marks of freedom on us, not only in our clothes, but also in our very manner of behavior, which he had completely lost. He had long had no clothes from the outside. He was in torn padded trousers, a quilted jacket, and had boots and a hat with earflaps of a special cut, which he had already been issued in the camps. His behavior seemed strange to us at that time. He could eat the heads of herrings left by one of us, lick a bowl clean after someone else, spoke little, avoided people’s gaze, constantly begged for a smoke or at least a butt, slept wherever he fell, was unpretentious, to resist something, to be indignant about something, even at the authorities who had imprisoned him—he had almost none of this left. He seemed a pitiful person, who had so quickly allowed himself to be disfigured by prison and the camps.

I often, looking at him, would ask myself anxiously: “Will I really become so indifferent to everything after a few years in the camp?” At that time, like anyone who has not been there, I could not comprehend what kind of machine this was—Stalin's prisons, transports, camps—that reduces a person to nothing. A person who has survived this fear, beatings, cold, hunger, abuse, and by some miracle remained alive, is very easy for the masters to command after that by creating slightly better living conditions: they then become meek, life seems like paradise to them, and the masters so kind and good.

Mostly, our car was filled with former UPA soldiers, members of the OUN, workers of the regional networks, fighters, that is, participants in the Ukrainian liberation struggles. Here you could hear the history of Ukraine from antiquity to the last days. Everyone spoke with love about our people, their historical feats in the past and present, thoughts about the future. And most of the stories were about roundups, ambushes, the “red broom,” the defense and retreat of the insurgents into the Carpathians, into the dense forests, about crossing the border…

The train rushed relentlessly into a distant, unknown foreign land, while in our memories, we lived in our native land. We remembered 1937, 1938, 1939, how the Polish government abused Ukrainians. Polish army units were sent to the villages for the pacification of the population, which mercilessly abused our people. If they met someone in the village in an embroidered shirt, with a tied ribbon, and God forbid a blue and yellow one—they would rip it from their neck, and flay their body with whips, forcing them to trample this ribbon in the mud, and asked the peasants: “Tell me, whose land is this?!”—God forbid he answered “mine” or “my brother’s, or my father’s,”—they would throw him on the ground and mercilessly beat him with whips, stomp on him with their feet, and like beasts, shout at him: “Say that this is Polish land!” Only after hearing from him these words, which were to their liking, would they leave the tortured man and look for a new victim.

Some were brought to the Prosvita building, forced to take down portraits of Taras Shevchenko, Bohdan Khmelnytsky, and others from the walls. They were forced to stomp on the removed portraits, to carry out their will. What didn't the punitive expedition do to our people at that time! There was no end to their torment. The time was similar to the Tatar calamity. The people, mostly the youth, saved themselves by fleeing to the forests, ravines, impenetrable thickets, and swamps.

The prisoners told many stories about the Polish-German war of 1939, about the arrival of the Soviet authorities under the guise of “liberation.” It’s true: even before the war, we read in the press, because conscious people explained to the nation what the Soviet Union was, about the terror, famine, collectivization, etc. And I told the boys how my father initially viewed the arrival of the Bolsheviks. He did not want to believe it, always telling us: “Children! It’s not true that there’s such misery there. I was there during the First World War, I saw with my own eyes how fertile the lands are there, they groan with grain. That land flows with milk and honey. It's the lords and priests who lie that people are so poor there.”

But my father did not have to say such words to us for long. Arrests began, the exile of entire families to Siberia, terror against the population. The stores became empty, and if there was anything, it was in limited quantities. The newly arrived “liberators” from the East turned out to be terrible people; each showed themselves only from a bad side. The persecution of religion began. My father became gloomy, his eyes grew dull, his face pale, he grew haggard, became taciturn. Only from time to time, sighing heavily, he would say to us all in a half-whisper: “Children! They wrote the truth to us in the books, and the lords and priests also told the truth about it, the people spoke the truth about them. These are not the Muscovites I knew—these are great enemies of our people. They did not bring us freedom, not liberation, but the true destruction of the Ukrainian people, enslavement, which all of us, the entire Ukrainian people, must fight.”

As my father once thought about the Soviet government, so did I, and so did many people in Western Ukraine. But my father very quickly changed his opinion about it, and with him, I did too, as did the entire population of our Western Ukraine. The people were waiting for a liberator, but with their own eyes, in a very short time, they saw and felt on their own skin, with their entire being, that conquerors and terrorists had come, and so they began to organize, to revolutionize, to prepare for resistance.

The year 1941 arrived, June 22. The German-Soviet war broke out. Everyone impatiently awaited the moment when the Bolsheviks would flee from us as quickly as possible, as the people said, the plague, the red contagion—what didn't they call them then... Although I was a small boy then, in my 15th year, I remember well how the Soviet troops fled from our Carpathians, from the direction of the villages of Lypa and Luzhok, they fled headlong. Many of us, children and adults, had gathered near the church and in the cemetery, from where it was no more than 150–200 meters to the road. It was night, dark, but even in the darkness, we could see clearly how the Muscovites were high-tailing it out of our Carpathians.

Among us was an elderly man, Yosyp Vitvytskyi, who had been in Russia during the First World War and had come to love it so much that he even brought back a wife from those lands. But no matter how long she lived in our Ukraine, she never learned the Ukrainian language, she would “kaka” and “chtoka,” for which people constantly reproached him, so that this Muscovite business was a thorn in his side. And although, so to speak, his wife's “brothers” had come, he could no longer stand them with his whole being, they had become so loathsome that he would passionately ask all of us: “Good people, is it true that the Muscovites are fleeing?!”—And we would all answer him together, some with a familiar nickname, some with “Mr. Vitvytskyi, it’s true, they are fleeing, they will never return to us again.” We said this because our hearts desired it.

The godfather, Mr. Vitvytskyi, once convinced that we were telling the truth, which he had heard and seen with his own eyes, could not bear it. Overcome with joyous emotion, he ran to the doors of the nearby church, which stood beside the cemetery, prostrated himself on the ground with his arms outstretched in the shape of a cross, and prayed fervently, in a half-whisper: “God! I thank You for letting me live to see this moment, for letting my eyes see this filth fleeing from our native land…” We, too, all knelt together by the church, weeping and also praying, thanking the Almighty for His grace that the Muscovites were fleeing from Ukraine. At that time, all of our Ukraine was praying as sincerely as that godfather, as we were. Everyone longed for freedom, for truth, for all that was their own, for what was dear to our hearts and beloved by our souls.

Everyone was talking about change. Everyone believed in a better future, was swept up by their dreams and desires, and waited with bated breath, day by day, for a change for the better.

Joyful days arrived: Soviet rule was no more in Western Ukraine; it had fallen. On June 30, 1941, in Lviv, the Act of Proclamation of the Ukrainian Independent Unified State took place. Everywhere, in the centers of their villages and towns, the people raised memorial mounds. A Ukrainian state government was formed, and blue-and-yellow flags with Volodymyr’s Tryzub fluttered over all institutions. Ukrainian folk and national songs resounded everywhere; everyone rejoiced that the end of the Muscovite yoke had come.

But hordes of new “liberators”—the Germans—were advancing on Ukraine. Arrests began, a new destruction of Ukraine. Her finest people were thrown into concentration and death camps and executed by firing squads. Political figures were forced to go into the deep, organized underground.

In Volyn, the UPA was born. Officer schools were organized, new hundreds of insurgents and territorial combat units emerged, the number of youth members, OUN members, women’s and men’s networks, and sanitary units grew, and propagandists were trained. The people took up arms, ready to defend their independence, to die for freedom. Legends were recalled among the people about enchanted regiments, fated to sleep in the rocks until the opportune moment. And everyone now believed that this time had come, that the legendary regiments were awakening from their long slumber, ready for battle. Not only young men, old men and women, but even small children took part in this struggle.

A boy, not yet of age, who was riding in the train car with us, told us about his activities in the underground. He lived in a border zone. It was almost impossible for an adult courier to pass through this zone, as he would be immediately detained by the border guards, but the boy passed through, carrying dispatches from one commander to another and back. This is how he performed his sacred duty as a courier.

He had a dog, a shepherd, who was very attached to him and followed all his commands. When he needed to lie down, she would immediately press herself to the ground, and when it was necessary to hide, at the command “Into the firs, not a sound,” she would immediately crawl in. He had taught her many things. She helped him carry the dispatches. He would tie a note under her tail and go himself empty-handed, with a switch or a small whip in his hand, as if looking for a lost lamb or a missing cow or calf. The border guards knew him as a shepherd, for they had seen him pasturing a flock of sheep near their zone. Although they often detained and searched him, they would let him go, because he always gave them a reason they could believe. In time, they came to consider him one of their own. Sometimes he would bring them apples from the village or something else they wanted, so they grew fond of the boy. And he kept carrying and carrying the dispatches to their designated locations.

However, misfortune befell him as well. The dog stopped to relieve itself near a border guard, which allowed the guard to notice the note under her tail. The boy, whose surname was Draganchuk, was immediately arrested, and the dog was caught, with the guards rejoicing that she had “confessed.” Bitter was the fate of this child, who found himself in the hands of the enraged border guards…

Then another man told of an instance when he was traveling on liaison from one station to another. A young girl had led him to the contact point, and from there, at the next station, others were supposed to take over. But these “others” were preoccupied at the time with hard physical labor: they were urgently digging a bunker underground and were exhausted, and they were no longer young. An impasse was reached: he could either spend the night in that village or set off on his own, at the Lord’s mercy, through a little-known and very dangerous area. Not knowing the paths, he could run into a Muscovite ambush. The insurgent grew anxious: he couldn't stay the night, as he had to reach his destination urgently. But at that moment, an elderly seventy-year-old woman—a grandmother—came to his rescue, promising to lead him to the station he needed. The insurgent rejoiced, as did the old woman, that the honor of guiding an insurgent along unknown paths had befallen her.

“Well then, let’s go, grandmother,” said the insurgent.

“In a moment, my son,” she replied. “But I must take my revolver with me, because the area is dangerous. We might meet Bolsheviks along the way, and we’ll have to shoot back.” And she reached into a hollow pear tree that grew in the orchard among other trees and pulled out, to the insurgent’s surprise, a revolver. She loaded it and, holding it in her hand in a combat-ready position, said: “And now, my son, we can go. If it comes to it, we’ll take the fight to them. We have something to shoot back with, and if worst comes to worst, to finish ourselves off. We will not be taken alive by the damned Muscovites.”

Seeing this, the insurgent gasped with joy and amazement, saying:

“Now we will surely win our freedom! Ukraine will definitely be free if our old mothers and grandmothers have taken up arms to defend her independence. It is bound to happen!”

At every step, in the smallest corner of our native land, one could feel the people's sympathy for the national liberation struggle. No one spared their strength; everyone was ready to give their life at any moment, without the slightest hesitation, for the holy cause. Thus, gradually, all our villages, especially in the mountainous regions, were transformed into military fortress-camps.

The year 1944 arrived. Gradually, and in some places in a panic, the German army was retreating to the west. The front was approaching the Carpathians. Everyone prepared some kind of hiding place that could serve as a shelter for themselves or someone else in a time of need. They dug caches for underground literature, for old publications, for anything that might seem displeasing to the Bolsheviks. Bunkers were prepared for storing food, clothing, for everything that might be useful for the underground in the future. Every child was informed that they must not say anything to any stranger who appeared in the village, not point out where anyone lived, but to answer everyone with “I don’t know,” or to remain completely silent and run away from them.

And how bravely parents had to endure, even witnessing the death of their own children. There were cases when an insurgent, a member of a combat unit, or a regional commander would be killed in battle. He would be brought to the village with his eyes gouged out, and the people would be rounded up to identify the dead man. And they allowed themselves to do even worse things. They would bring the beaten bodies of boys and girls into the village, arrange their naked corpses in sitting positions, propping them against the wall of the village council or club, twisting their dead arms around each other’s necks, and mock them, saying they were lovers. Or they would do other things, with them lying down… What didn’t they do with the dead! Passersby’s hearts bled… And what must have been happening in the hearts of parents who walked past such a dead child of their own, desecrated by the enemy? They dared not even shed a tear, lest the enemy guess whose child it was. Only after getting far from enemy eyes would they give vent to their hearts and their tears. At night, they would secretly carry away the dead bodies of their children, friends, acquaintances, and strangers, burying them, whenever possible, with reverence and honor.

In the villages and forests, the roundups never ceased, sowing fear, terror, casualties, and grief among the people. I even know of one such case. A whole family was digging potatoes in a field: a grandmother, a grandfather, a mother, a father, a few neighbors, and their small children. Suddenly, shooting broke out in the forest. Bolshevik raiders ran up to the people and shouted: “Where are the Banderites hiding?! Speak!…” To which the people replied that they didn't know. “Ah, you don’t know! You don’t want to talk!” And before the parents’ eyes, they shot their small children. This tragedy took place near the Sukhodilsky forest, in Rozhniativ Raion in Ivano-Frankivshchyna, in the autumn of 1945.

These were the circumstances under which our people—our grandfathers, parents, and children—lived at that time. It was Sodom and Gomorrah in our native Ukraine. In the prisons, a tortured people, the finest flower of Ukraine, groaned in agony. And those who survived the beatings, sentenced to long terms of imprisonment, were transported in cattle cars to the Far East, to the cold of Siberia for hard labor, which they were forced to perform under inhuman conditions.

The train sped us toward a distant, unknown foreign land, but in our thoughts, we were still living in Ukraine, not parted from our families, friends, from the underground, from what was dearest to our hearts.

*Abagur. A Father’s Reunion with His Son

In the month we had been on the road, we had grown weak and old. They brought us to Western Siberia—the town of Abagur in Kemerovo Oblast, where there was a transit camp. Toward evening, they let us out of the cars. Everyone was overgrown with stubble, black as dirt, unrecognizable. But we were glad to have finally reached our destination, to no longer suffer in the train cars. Although we knew it wouldn't be porridge with honey here either, still, barracks were not cattle cars.

Here, at the transit point, we met many people of different nationalities. True, we Ukrainians were the most numerous. There were participants in the liberation struggles from the Baltic countries—Estonians, Latvians, Lithuanians. There were also Belarusians, Russians, Jews, Chechens, Ingush, Uzbeks, Tatars, and others. You could meet a person of any nationality here; in a word—an ‘International.’

The Abagur transit camp was somewhat different from the one in Lviv. Here there were more thugs, murderers, and recidivists. Bartering, exchanging, stealing rags—it all seethed around us. What wasn't there! Sheer hell! People were bashing each other's heads in, cutting one another. Here, might made right.

They didn't keep us here long. They gave us a night's rest, breakfast—and then the runners began scurrying about with lists, reading out who should prepare for the next transport to a camp. With us were also those who had already served ten years or more of their sentences. These people seemed strange to us, lost, wild. Foul language never left their lips… And it was so terrible that at first, it seemed to me that one of them was about to meet his end. Imagine, hearing for the first time one person say to another: “I’ll eat you alive right now, you animal! You scum! Bitch! I’ll kill you! I’ll wipe you out! I’ll gut you! You’re a faggot! You filthy pig!”—and so they showered each other with similar words. They endlessly passed ‘death’ sentences on one another. I soon figured it out when I saw that they could say such things to each other and then sit down to eat with the very person they had just showered with filth. For many, such insults as ‘animal,’ ‘scum,’ ‘I’ll eat you,’ ‘I’ll wipe you out,’ and the like were terms of endearment.

Before the gates, we prisoners on the transport were lined up in fours and ordered to sit, to rise only when called, and to exit with our belongings through the gates, where a convoy waited for us, having arrived from the camp to which we were being sent.

The gates opened. Behind them, guards with dogs began to stir. At a small table on which our personal files lay, stood the head of the transport, a captain, and the transit camp authorities who were handing us over. For such was the order here: some handed over, others received.

The roll call began, based on the files. A few prisoners were already outside the gates, waiting to one side. They were ordered to undress; they were searched, every scrap of clothing shaken out, every seam felt.

Before my very eyes, an incident occurred. They read out the name of an old prisoner from a file and commanded: “Step outside the gate!” which he did. And there, outside the gates, the head of the convoy was a captain—his son. Taking the file in his hands, he froze: he glanced down and saw on the file his father’s name… A political charge, a sentence of 25, 5, and 5… He was dumbfounded, raised his eyes, and saw his father walking toward the gate. The captain cried out: “Papa, is that you?!” And at that moment the father, seeing his son, also cried out: “My son!!!” And then, before everyone's eyes, a tragedy unfolded: the captain unfastened his holster, pulled out his revolver, and raised it to his temple. A shot rang out; the captain fell, his arms flung wide, blood spurting from his temple. The father, seeing this, screamed in a crazed voice: “My son! My beloved son! My little boy!” He fainted and fell to the ground. Instantly, several soldiers rushed to the old man and dragged him back into the zone, while others picked up the captain. The gates closed. The unconscious old man was carried to the medical unit, and a murmur arose among us: we were all under the spell of the tragedy we had just witnessed. After this incident, everyone felt a strange sickness in their soul. Many people were wiping away tears, unable to compose themselves; everyone was pale.

The break lasted no more than 15 minutes. The gate opened again, names were read from the files, prisoners went out, were searched, sworn at, and so the transport column was formed. It grew and grew with each file read. The previous captain was no longer in sight; a new one had taken his place, as if nothing had happened.

*The Foot March to Toza

Everything here seemed strange, wild to us. When the reading of the files and the searches were over, they counted us several times in our rows of four (because for some reason the count never tallied on the first try). Then they began the “prayer”: “Attention, prisoners! No talking in the column, do not stray to the sides. A step to the right or a step to the left is considered an escape attempt, and the convoy will use its weapons without warning! Understood?” We all reluctantly replied that it was understood, thinking that they would now lead us to trucks and drive us. But it turned out differently. They said we would be walking to our place of residence. How far that was, they didn't tell us. Every other guard held a dog on a leash, and every single one had a cudgel in his hand, which surprised us—why did they need sticks for the road?

The command came: “Take your things! Forward march!” The column moved, and a cloud of dust rose behind it, for it was hot outside—the end of July. We soon found out why the guards needed the cudgels when we heard the shrill cry of a young Tatar guard: “Hey, you animal! Why are you lagging behind?!” He ran up to the column and brought his stick down hard on the backs of two prisoners who were falling behind. They cried out in pain. The guards on the sides did the same: they christened the prisoners on the left and right with their cudgels wherever the blows landed. By now, no one had any doubt as to what those sticks were for.

We were exhausted, walking through the wilds of Gornaya Shoriya. We stumbled, fell, helped one another up, and begged the implacable convoy for a rest. But they paid not the slightest attention to our pleas. They halted the column only when someone fainted or was covered in blood. And to top it all off, everyone was suffering from diarrhea. But stopping the column for each person to relieve himself—that was out of the question. Everyone did it on the move, supported by others.

At the mountain passes, where we came across a stream, we drank our fill of water, even though it was bad for our ailing stomachs and worsened the dysentery.

On the first day, we reached some hamlet, called Toza, I believe. I remember we spent the night in a stable from which the horses had been led out, and we took their place. We fell down like sheaves of wheat onto some sort of dirt floor and slept like the dead.

At dawn, as soon as light broke on God’s earth, they herded us all up for the next stage of the march. Almost no one ate breakfast, because everyone had eaten the dry ration issued for two days at the transit camp on the very first day, before even reaching Toza, at the first rest stop. True, there were some who had saved a piece of bread, not having eaten it at the first or second pass, but there were only a counted few of them among us. And when they ate that bread, their rightful ration, before everyone's eyes, all of us who had long had nothing looked at them with envy and anger, because with this they were tormenting our empty, hungry stomachs, intensifying our hunger. That is why prisoners disliked those who managed to save their issued ration until the appointed time; that is, if a dry ration (bread and fish) was issued for two days, he would divide it into two days, and if for more, he would divide it for more. Although one who did so was often met with unfortunate failure. One who had long ago eaten his ration, upon noticing another prisoner’s uneaten ration, would try at the first opportunity to punish him: to steal and eat it. Such an act was considered a terrible crime, because for the theft of one's own ration, they could kill you, they were supposed to kill you, for so dictated the unwritten law of the prisoners. And yet many of the hungry were glad, remarking: “That’ll teach him. He won’t save his ration anymore and taunt us with his bread. Let him eat like the rest of us, and not divide it by days.” For the most part, it was the criminal offenders who stole bread, not our political prisoners.

As if the guards’ abuse weren’t enough, we also had to endure the criminal offenders. They were already accustomed to this kind of environment, for it was not their first conviction; for some of them, this was their third, fourth, or umpteenth conviction, about which they themselves would say: “This is my third, fourth, or sixth trip. We’ve seen tougher transports than this. This here is a picnic.” But for us, it was our first transport, and it was becoming unbearable. We had never seen anything like it, and so we met with failure at every turn. Just as the guards often called us “traitors to the motherland,” “Banderites,” so too did the crooks, which pleased the guards.

*The Camp in Shodrovo

On the second day, toward evening, they drove us to a small village called Shodrovo, which lay scattered across hilly terrain, surrounded by forest. Somewhere below, on the opposite side, the Mzras River was visible, quite full and turbulent, reaching a width of 50 meters, and in some places even more. At the foot of the village, a stream flowed, and near it was the camp. In the distance, its watchtowers and electric searchlights were visible.

A camp. My first camp. What awaited me in it? What awaited all of us? A hundred different thoughts churned in my aching head, each heavier than the last. All of them were anxious, grim, offering little hope.

It was already getting dark outside. The searchlights lit up the forbidden zone. Black clouds were gathering in the sky, and somewhere on the far edges of Gornaya Shoriya, thunder rumbled, and lightning intermittently illuminated the sky. The convoy herded the prisoners on, like cattle, with cudgels and more cudgels. We were all on our last legs, and though we understood it would be good to get to the camp as quickly as possible before the storm unleashed its full force, the rain was growing heavier. They forced us to run. We fell off our feet, got up, and ran again. Barely alive, we reached the camp gates.

The guards who brought us here were from this very camp. But the law is the law; no one believes anyone's word. They handed us over according to the files, in the presence of the camp chief, the security officer, the head of the KVC (Cultural-Educational Section), the head of discipline, and the rest of the camp menagerie.

For some reason, out of all those chiefs, I remember well the appearance of my first camp chief: stout, of medium height, always puffed up like a turkey cock, red as a bedbug gorged on human blood. How loyal these chiefs must be, I thought, to be entrusted with such a contingent of people as us—“traitors to the motherland”… For some reason, it seemed to me then that all those chiefs loved the Soviet regime as strongly as they hated us—not a crumb more or less. We were the measure of their hatred, as well as of their loyalty to their Muscovy.

The guards on duty searched each of us separately, feeling every last seam, ordering us to unbutton our blouses, looking into our bosoms, patting us down on our shoulders, looking at our hands. Only after this were we let into the camp. It was very small, designed for 300–400 people. The area was enclosed by a high plank fence, on top of which ran three strands of barbed wire; beyond the fence was a forbidden zone 4–5 meters wide, and then a second, lower fence. There were only two barracks here, one larger, one smaller. There was no kitchen as such, only two cauldrons with a capacity of 200–250 liters at the entrance to the camp, set under a roof of four posts sunk into the ground, covered with tar paper. There was no bathhouse here either. A deep pit in the corner of the zone served as the latrine, crisscrossed with scraps of planks, but in such a way that anyone who went there had to be very careful not to step in the filth, as everything was hanging by a thread.

Though the camp was small, there was no shortage of thieves. As soon as the new prisoners entered the zone, they were the first to surround them with their “kindness,” each one taking a new arrival under his “care.” And they did it so brazenly, without fear of the camp authorities! While some were still being searched by the duty guards outside the zone, others who had already entered were being “checked” once more by the rabble. If anyone tried to shout or protest, they would poke two fingers toward his eyes, saying: “Bitch! Horned devil! You won’t get away from us here! If you resist, we’ll scratch your eyes out, eat you alive!” And we had no protection from anyone. In the camp where they brought us, only criminals were imprisoned, for whom camp life was, as they often said themselves, their “own home, here I am the master, I do whatever I want.” For us, the camp was a true hell, and those criminal offenders were its devils. In a word, hell on earth.

They put us in the first barrack, which had three tiers of bunks. But we didn’t get a single one of them. We were all placed under the bunks. We crawled in on our elbows, because it was so low there that you couldn't even lift your head a little. Everyone was exhausted from the day-long march; although we were wet, we were glad to be given at least some kind of shelter for rest.

On the middle bunks, the `zakonniki`—the “camp elite”—the highest-ranking, pure-blooded professional criminals, had settled in. They even had pillows under their heads, and their berths were covered with various jackets, suits, all sorts of things they had plundered from the political prisoners. This entire leadership of thieves was playing cards, while their stooges were preparing them supper, frying something in bowls and pots. The smells wafted through the entire barrack, teasing our hungry stomachs, not letting us fall asleep, because since eating our two-day transport ration at once the day before, we had not had anything in our mouths since, except for water. But the “pure-bloods” had steamed and fried food, because all the fats, meat, and sugar that were due to the prisoners by norm, what the camp authorities hadn’t stolen, these “pure-bloods” stole the rest of. And for the unfortunate “muzhiks,” as they called them, all that remained was pure `shmonka` (cabbage soup without fat or meat), a true `balanda`.

One could truly envy them, observing their life from the perspective of “under-the-bunks.” They were dressed in the finest clothes, because whatever anyone in the camp had that they liked, they immediately took it, sometimes giving some rag in exchange, and sometimes not even that. They dressed in their own fashion: shirts untucked, pants flared. Lord, what a sight they were! Their bodies were all inscribed with quotes: “Love till the grave,” “Farewell, youth,” “My dear Mashenka,” etc., and various tattooed drawings, from Lenin to a horned devil. Most of them had eagles tattooed in the middle of their chests, with the inscription underneath: “I won't forget my dear mother.” And on their arms, many had a tattooed heart pierced by an arrow, or with a knife stuck in it, which meant “There is no happiness in love.” There were some who had Hitler tattooed on their chest, a girl, an angel—what wasn’t tattooed on their chests and all over their bodies! Even this: a mouse fleeing into the hole of their anus. Or above the eyebrows—“Slave of the CPSU.” Some had nice tattoos, but most of them were just filth. True, all these tattoos had their thieving purpose, and not just anyone could get any tattoo they wanted, but had to get what corresponded to their “profession.” For example, a pickpocket would have a beetle tattooed on his hand between the index and thumb, crawling in the direction of the hand, which means—crawling into a pocket.

This “nobility” constantly entertained themselves by playing cards. They gave each other massages, applied tattoos, laughed like horses, while among us, you couldn’t have squeezed out a drop of blood, let alone seen a smile on anyone's face. They sang and croaked various criminal songs. All their behavior irritated us incredibly, but we could do nothing to them. We had no camp experience, we were afraid of our own shadows, while they felt at home in it.

Among us, under the bunks, lay a Hungarian lawyer—Mr. Bertsi. He was wearing a beautiful fur coat, which they hadn't managed to take from him during the transport. The `urkas` noticed it, and one of them bet on it. That is, the coat was notionally put up by him as a stake. He lost it to another `urka`, after which he sent his stooge to bring him the coat. The stooge went up to Bertsi, grabbed him by the legs, which were slightly visible from under the bunks, and commanded: “Crawl out of there, you scum!” There was no right to resist; the lawyer crawled out, wearing the fur coat, which he never took off, as the cold and drafts under the bunks were getting to him. “Take off the coat, you scum!” shouted the stooge, but the lawyer just waved his hands and, in innocent, broken Russian, began to explain that he couldn't take it off because it was cold under the bunks, he was freezing, and the coat was his, so who had any right to it?

Oh, when the stooge heard such an answer, he threw himself at the lawyer with his fists and began to pummel his sides, shouting words of anger: “Hey, you scum! You lost the coat in a card game and you're still arguing, you don’t want to give it up!” The lawyer wanted to say something else in his defense, but the coat was instantly ripped off him by two other stooges who had come to help their “buddy.” For his stubbornness, the stooges beat the lawyer's sides until the senior `urkas` commanded them to stop, once the coat was already spread out between them: “Leave the scum. Let him crawl under the bunks! Next time he’ll know what it means to defy us…”

Physically and morally beaten, Mr. Bertsi crawled back under the bunks and wept bitterly. The insult choked him; for a long time, he couldn't say a word…

The adventures of the first night in the camp did not end there. As soon as the people, exhausted from the transport, began to doze off, the smaller fry, the lesser, less-empowered thieves, crawled under the bunks, also wanting to profit a little from the newcomers. It seems I can still hear (though 32 years have passed since then) that screeching, the screams of people, when the vermin crawled under the bunks. They put knives to people's throats, pulled sacks from under their heads, scraps of clothing, grabbing whatever they could get their hands on. Such a cry arose that even the guards came into the barrack to quiet the prisoners, ordering them to sleep! Several times during the night such a cry arose, because the assault by the crooks on the newcomers was often repeated. The watchmen would run into the barrack again, beating people with the clubs they never parted with during their shift, ordering them to crawl under the bunks. But the crooks were respected by them; not one of them got hit with a club. And why would they, since they were their blood brothers: they steal, and they will sell this stolen stuff to them for a song—for a pack of tea or cheap tobacco.

In the morning, as soon as it began to grow light, yesterday's transport prisoners, today's camp inmates, crawled out one by one from under the bunks, half-asleep, with haggard faces and bags under their eyes. Everyone wanted to stretch a little, to straighten their numb arms, legs, and back. The wake-up call hadn't sounded yet. The criminal world slept a sweet, quiet sleep, like small, innocent children, spread out on the rags they had just robbed from us. That's why our early morning noise was not to their liking. The senior `urka`, with a contorted face, hissed like a snake, squeezing through clenched teeth: “Scum! Bitches! Filthy pigs! Horned devils! Now, under the bunks, march! Go to sleep!” And who wanted to crawl back under that dirty, wet bunk again? But what could you do—by disobeying the order of such a “great man,” one could fall into disfavor, get a blow to the ribs or back. And besides, the law was on the side of the criminals: it wasn't wake-up time yet, we had no right to get up. Whether we liked it or not, we had to lie there until the designated hour.

We crawled back under the bunks, but no one closed their eyes again. What had befallen each person during the night spread under the bunks in half-whispered rumors. There was almost no one among us from whom something had not been stolen during the night. And if it wasn't stolen, then at least their sack of belongings was slashed. The thieves' pacification had touched everyone. From me, for example, they stole my winter hat.

There were cases where they had taken some people’s shoes, leaving them barefoot. Fortunately, my footwear remained on my feet, probably only because it was already tattered and unappealing. Because anyone who wore something better was sure to be left completely barefoot by morning. If someone hadn't been successfully “proletarianized” in prison, at the transit point, or on the transport, then here, in one night, by morning, they were “proletarianized.” People lost their clothes, because it often happened before that some had given their health, and some even their lives, for their clothes.

At dawn, the guard on duty struck a rail, and the clang of the metal echoed throughout the camp, which meant “reveille”—we had to get up, it was forbidden to sleep any longer. The all-seeing eye of the guard darted into every corner, even under the bunks, checking if any `zeks` wanted to luxuriate, to sleep a little longer, and if he came across one, the guard would run up to him and, without a word of warning, christen him with his club. This kind of wake-up applied only to us, the politicals, and that lesser rabble, because the “nobility” of the camp, the leadership, was still sleeping a sweet and lovely sleep: it was clear from everything that they were privileged people here… Respected even by the administration. And this same guard, who beat us so heartlessly with his cudgel, spoke to the “nobility” on familiar terms: “Vasyok, Kolyok, Zlodiyok,” and so on. Oh, what buddies they were!…

I left the barrack to familiarize myself with the zone. I went to the stream that flowed through the camp, next to the fence, and washed my face with the cold water. Walking around the zone, I prayed in my mind, asking the Almighty for grace, to help us overcome all these difficulties, to survive them. From the camp, you could see the hamlet of Nizhniy Shodrov, whose houses were scattered on the slopes and somewhat reminded me of a Carpathian village. Near the houses, you could see gardens; potato tops and all sorts of other things were green. The hamlet was also no longer asleep; here and there, you could see passersby. “My God! People live in houses here too,” I thought. “And in our camp, so close to these people, there is another life, Sodom and Gomorrah.”

Here, for the first time, I saw one of our own among the thieves, from the Lviv region, with a criminal charge and a short sentence, six or seven years of camp regime. But it was no picnic for him here: the eastern thieves did not honor thieves from Galicia; he was ragged, skinny as a rail, morally crushed. And when this man saw us, his countrymen, whom he had not met until now, he was very happy about it, telling us: “Oh, it's so good that there are a lot of you guys here! You'll settle in, get used to the circumstances, and you'll crush those eastern thieves. They are cattle, not people.” And he did not leave us, followed us step-for-step, wanting to talk his heart out. You could see he longed for his native language, for familiar faces. And he comforted us: “You guys won't be here long, maybe a week, two weeks at most. They’ll send you deep into the taiga to log wood. It will be a bit better for you there than here, because, as you see for yourselves, this is both a camp and a transit point—neither one nor the other. But there, it will be a permanent place.”

*The Ration

Someone commanded: “Get your bread, the soup is ready.” And indeed, from somewhere beyond the zone, the foremen with their assistants—the stooges—were carrying in bread rations, not on a tray, but in some kind of rain-capes or blankets, and on the sides walked guards with clubs, all the way from the watch post, from which it was clear that here you couldn't carry bread openly, or they would pounce on it and steal it.

Our newcomers also began to stir. The more energetic ones, not yet complete goners, took charge of us: they got the lists from the work assigner, found out who was assigned to which brigade, where to get the bread, with whom to go for breakfast. The grouping into brigades began; everyone stuck to their foreman, like bees to their queen in a hive. Only two men from each brigade were allowed outside the zone to get bread, no more. But since we knew that the bread could be stolen, we all waited in a group by the watch post for our foreman with the bread as if for God himself—our provider—because everyone was terribly hungry. There was no other conversation among us than about the bread ration. Everyone wanted to get only the “heel”—the crusty end of the loaf—or at least a sliver of crust; no one wanted the soft middle part. Although there were some “scholars” who argued that the center of the bread was more valuable, that it had more proteins and other qualities that the “heel” no longer had. However, even those “scholars” reached out for a “heel,” because for some reason, it seemed to everyone that it was more filling, that you could eat it longer, chew it more.

And when that long-awaited moment came, when the bread was brought, and each person was called by list and the foreman personally handed him his bread, everyone winced if he didn't get a “heel.” Even when a 70-year-old, toothless grandfather was given the soft middle, he got angry and protested: “I only want a heel.” And everyone answered him in chorus: “But grandpa, you have no teeth, what will you chew it with?” To which he replied: “Don't worry, I’ll manage to chew it somehow, as long as it's a heel.” In those moments, a person thinks of nothing but that piece of daily bread. It was a great and important event in a prisoner's life—to receive a “heel,” and with an extra piece of bread to boot—that was pure happiness. How each person's eyes shone with joy upon receiving a “heel,” and with rage upon receiving the middle. No one took their eyes off the foreman's hands; it seemed to everyone that he was dividing the bread unfairly, that he had favorites and unfavored ones. But try to please everyone, to satisfy their desire, when on a whole tray of rations there are only two or three “heels.”

Everyone who received a ration would place it on a piece of cloth and pinch off a piece, a very small one, to stretch out this pleasant moment for as long as possible. And he would gather the crumbs with his fingertips and toss them into his mouth, even licking the cloth with his tongue, because it seemed to him that very tiny breadcrumbs had gotten caught between the threads, and he couldn't let them go to waste either.

True, there were also those who didn't agonize over their ration: they would grab it with both hands and eat it straight from their fists until only empty palms remained. Saving the ration until the soup was served—that was out of the question. You had to get it over with as quickly as possible, because among the crowd roamed people so hungry that, disregarding everything, even the fact that they could be killed, if they could snatch a bread ration from someone—they would snatch it and choke on it. There were even such cases. A man would snatch a ration from someone and eat it on the run, fleeing and eating, and even if they caught him, knocked him to the ground, and started stomping on him—he still wouldn't let go of the bread, choking on it and roaring from the blows.

It was almost impossible to get to the cook who was ladling out the soup under the tent. A crowd of people pressed in on him, several brigades at once, each wanting to eat breakfast as quickly as possible, and the cook just waved them away with his ladle, and from time to time, he would wallop one of the goners on the back with it—a crack would echo through the zone. And the vermin, his bootlickers, would even add: “That’s what he deserves! Hit the son of a bitch again!” My God, what wasn’t shouted there, what wasn’t said… The crowd was hungry, enraged, everyone’s eyes were fearsome; it seemed they were ready to eat each other, if only the order were given. And although the guards and the zone commandant, the foremen, tried to establish order here—they were all powerless. The disorder continued. The mass roared: “We want to grub! It's our brigade's turn! No, ours! You scumbags, wait!” And whichever foreman had more authority, had stronger guys, that brigade ate breakfast faster!

Though, it's true, when the stooges of the camp “nobility”—the authoritative `urkas`—arrived with their pots, the crowd fell silent, parted to the sides, giving them passage to the cook, because here the law was that no one dared to contradict them in anything. Otherwise, they would have had their heads torn off by anyone who resisted them.

The cook (named “Kolya”), seeing them from afar, immediately softened, reached for their pots, stirred the cauldron with his ladle for a long time until he had scooped up the thickest part, poured it out, and repeated this many times, until all their dishes were full. On top of that, he offered them a kind word: “If it’s not enough for Uncle Lyonya, come back for more. I’ll keep some for you.” The stooges emerged from the crowd, not thanking “Uncle Kolya” for this “service”—they considered it their due, because here it was their right… Even the guards themselves were silent when the soup was poured for them. Oh, how all the hungry people envied those well-fed “Uncle Lyonyas” and their stooges at that moment! Every hungry person would have wanted to be them at that moment, these “men of the code”—this was what every hungry stomach desired, not reason.

Only after they had gone did the same shouting start again. It was as if someone had replaced Uncle Kolya: he became angry again, waving his ladle right and left as before. Someone shouted at him: “What the hell are you doing, you scum, you gave me nothing but water! Give me more!” “You want more?” yelled Uncle Kolya. “Give me the pot, I'll give you more, you bastard!”—which meant he might pour the soup back into the cauldron and throw the bowl over the crowd, not even giving him what he had given before.

A new commotion erupted in the crowd. Someone was pushing, someone was being beaten, pulled by their clothes, kicked, they shouted: “Beat the son of a bitch! He wangled extra soup,”—which meant he had managed to illicitly get a second ladle of soup. And here they gave this “scumbag” a moral lecture: “We're dying of hunger, and you're eating our own ration! We should kill you for this, you bastard!”—and whoever could reach him with a fist or a foot, sent blows to his back.

When they finally dragged the half-dead man who had “wangled” the soup out of the crowd—when I looked at him, a chill went down my spine. He was a living corpse, a true `fitil`, a wretched goner, a dystrophy case whose mind probably no longer worked as it should. One could have forgiven him the crime he committed in front of everyone, ignored it.

My soul was deeply struck by this human injustice: when the stooges took full pots of thick soup for those parasites—the `urkagany`, whose faces were excessively greasy—this was a normal phenomenon, they weren’t taking “our own ration,” everyone was silent, even agreed with them and didn't push, but said: “Take it, it's your due!” But that goner, who was already dying of hunger, was subject to punishment, to condemnation!

People took the soup in whatever they had: a small bowl or a tin can, some in a military mess tin, and some in God knows what, it was horrifying to look at, but here it was all considered a normal phenomenon. No one observed hygiene, because here there was hunger—it levels everything.

The crowd around the kitchen was dwindling, almost all the brigades had had breakfast, when the commandant called for those who arrived yesterday to approach the cauldron. Our brigades also stirred, lining up one after another. We had only one problem, that almost none of us had dishes. And if someone did, it wasn't enough. So they stood over each other, hurrying one another: “Eat faster! Give it to me! Me! Me…”

A good half of our men had not yet had breakfast when a whisper went among us: “There's not enough soup for everyone, the cauldron is almost empty.” It was terrible news for those who hadn't eaten yet, and panic broke out. But Uncle Kolya was not at a loss: he grabbed an empty bucket, plunged it into the second cauldron where there was boiled water, scooped it up, and poured it into the soup. He did this once more, then grabbed the ladle and stirred everything that (remained) for a long time.

(The manuscript breaks off here – page 100. — Ed.).

   

Published in:

The Three Uprisings of the Sichkos. In 2 vols. Vol. 2: Memoirs. Interviews. Letters / Kharkiv Human Rights Protection Group; Editor-compiler V. V. Ovsiienko; Designer O. Aheiev. – Kharkiv: Folio, 2004. – pp. 3–80.