"My father was leaving, and that was in 1941. My mother was of 1907 and my father of 1903. He was no longer in the army, but in the work division, you know? That was when Hitler came in 1941. My father had four classes, he understood everything. When Hitler came, he understood what policy it was and how it all was, Hitler was here and Stalin was here."
“Once my mom came to her friend, an unknown man was sitting there, and he asked, 'What kind of woman is this?' And she replied, 'Such and such.' He kept asking and my mom said that she had a daughter who had to work. She said: 'She has seven classes, where else to learn? After the war, they took everything from us in the collective farm. They even dismantled our shed. That's terrible.' He said,' And where does she work? ' 'She doesn't work yet.' He suggested that I go to Verba in Rajtkom to the Komsomol. He said: 'She must join the Komsomol.'”
"I took seven classes. It was the first seven-year school and I graduated in 1948. There were good teachers and a handsome principal. I remember Katerina Ivanovna. I remember their last names. They were such good people. [Did you learn Ukrainian?] We learned Ukrainian. "
Mariia Yakivna Bohuta was born on January 25, 1931 in the village of Mynkivtsi in Rivne region in what was then interwar Poland. She experienced both Soviet (1939–1941) and Nazi occupation (1941–1944) in the village. Her father Yakiv was selected by the Nazis to work. The witness only knows so much about him that he worked in Voronezh region, then allegedly got to Prague and then sailed by boat to Sydney in Australia. The witness did not know anything about her father or his stay in Australia and did not learn about him for the first time until 1972. The witness herself worked for the Komsomol youth organization in the towns of Pyriatyn, Turya and Nosovytsia, where she retired. In 2020, Mariia Yakivna lived in Dubno in Rivne region of western Ukraine.
