“My father came wearing a military coat and he had also a fur coat. At night, bandits came knocking on our widows, wanted us to let therm in. They took both my father's coat and the fur coat. I was sleeping in bed with this stuff under me and they would just take it out. I don't remember my father going to war. Just him coming back.”
“We were hiding for two weeks, until the Germans left. After they left, we returned, but there was nothing left at home. Both windows and doors had been smashed and the house had no roof. There was no poultry or livestock. There was nothing left. We had to build everything from the scratch again. And my father was already gone. He was fighting the war already.”
“In 1947 I went to school. There were eighteen years old as well as seven years old. We were all together. The school in the village was just this simple house and there were just three classes.”
Neonila Hryhorivna Klymjuk, née Danyljuk, was born on November 29th 1940 in the Vovnychi village in Rivne region, located in the west of Ukraine. She witnessed Nazi occupation of Volhyinia in years 1941 to 1944 and the events in the aftermath of the Second World War. She recalls her father serving in the Red Army and residents of Vovnychi being transported to Soviet labour camps (GULAG). After the war, Neonila Hryhorivna went to a school for ten years, then she had been working at a collective farm and after that doing several other jobs. In 2019, she has been living in the city of Dubno in the Western Ukraine.
