Olha Zabolotska (Popadyn) (1923)

“To our house. To our house they came at night… - They came at night? – They came at night. They did everything at night. Even the car pulled up. It stopped not near the house, but on the corner of Staroznesenska, they left the car near that well. There were four of them. – What did they look like? – They were dressed in civil clothes. One of them was older. One was the head of our investigation department. Pyemyonov. – Pyemyonov? – Pyemyonov, and three other men. One was older. They were all speaking Ukrainian. They woke us up. Dad got up…Then they told me, “Are you Olya?” I said, “Yes!” – Well, then get ready. We will go talk to you.” They didn’t search our house that much. Before they came my sister was cleaning up and put all her belongings on the table. And they took some of her stuff from that pile. They took what they considered to be suspicious. They didn’t search that much, because they didn’t have a search order. And then, “Get ready and we will go.” And I asked, “Can I take some of my belongings with me?” They said, “Yes, you can”. So I took some linen… And one of them, the one that was older looked at me that I was so little. – How old were you back then? – I was 17. But I was very little so I looked younger. That man said to my dad, “Give her money”. And my dad gave me 200, or I don’t know how much exactly, rubles. That would help. I could buy some groceries with this money. Once a month I could buy something. We went to that car and got in. Back then that bridge on Staroznesenska was not complete, so we went straight to Zamarstyniv.”

“They found out my last name in Zamarstyniv. So they took me straight there. They were asking me all kinds of questions. I was wearing glasses… They would always say, “Take off those glasses!” One of them had a very piercing eye. He thought that due to those glasses I can endure his look. – “Take them off”. – I took them off. Then he took a rubber stick and said, “Are you familiar with this Polish rubber?” I said, “I don’t know anything about it”… But I just couldn’t see from that distance. I saw that they were showing me something but I could not see what exactly it was. Then I put on my glasses and said, “I see now, it’s a rubber stick; I saw it before.” Will they hit me with it or not? Because they were intimidating me all the time that they will hit me. Then they showed me a picture of a girl. It was Lyuba Shevchyk – everybody knew her. He asked, “Do you know her?” I replied, “No”. And he said, “You don’t know Lyuba Shevchyk?” He conjugated her last name as if she was a man. So I asked him whether it’s a he or a she. He got very angry with me and hit me on the face very hard. And then I realized that they will beat me up.”

“ – Tell us, please, what happened from that moment when you found yourself in the cell again after the trial and as you waited for the coming of the “second liberators? – We were in the cell together with criminals. Conditions were horrible there, we didn’t have any room. But we were all of the same spirit. The only difference between us was that some were Ukrainians and some were Polish. On the left side there were Polish people and on the right side there were Ukrainians. This is how the cell was divided. But when we came that distinction was no longer accurate. There were political prisoners, who were mostly on the left side, and all the others. The cell was huge. We wrote letters, received packages. We wrote what we wanted and received all that in the first packages. We already knew that we would be deported so we asked to send us things that we will need in the east. I was getting very sick there. When I was in Zamarstyniv I was a healthy person, but there I started getting really sick. I was in a hospital three times while I was there. And when I was in a hospital for the third time, the war came. – And where was this hospital? – They had their own hospital. It was a Polish prison, and hospitals there were so well-equipped that everyone had their own bed. We didn’t have to lie on the floor anymore, or on those dirty mattresses. There was a doctor and a nurse, they gave us medicine, and the food was good as well.”

“It happened on the 22^nd, and it was Sunday. I woke up because a nurse came in and shouted, “Close the doors! Close the windows!” I thought, “Why should we close the windows?” But it was the beginning of the war. They wanted us to close everything in order not to hear the shooting. But we heard it. In the very same day. And then a bomb dropped across from the “Brygidky” prison. After that bomb dropped we knew for sure that it was the war. And when we woke up on Monday there was no one around. Workers that worked there crushed the doors and told us to get out. But we were wearing only our night gowns. We couldn’t go like this outside. We ran to the locker room to get out belongings. As I was looking for my stuff and as we were getting ready the place was already fired at.The Bolsheviks came back and started the fire. Some men ran out to go straight home. They were shot near the gates. Then they were shooting us also. Several bullets flew to our room. So we all went to the corridor. And from the corridor we heard: the soldiers were going upstairs. So we ran back to our room. Then the soldiers came, but they were not from the NKVD and said, “Who wants to run away?” – No one. But after them our NKVD people came. Then they ran away all the way to Krasne. They were brought from there back to Lviv. Maybe if they were not forced to come back, people wouldn’t have died. Because then they started destroying people.”