“Village developed really in patriotic spirit. Even on the holidays people came and glued Volodymyr the Great and posts “Let’s celebrate holidays without alcohol”. Do you understand? We had also a reading-room… There was a dairy. All of this was quite conscious. We had our own performances, concerts. Everything was on a high level. Thus much it was friendly. We celebrated all of our Ukrainian holidays: Shevcheko’s days, historical holidays of our heroes – all of them through reading.”
“We moved to Ustryk. We were detrained from carriages near Vilshanycia, station Usiadova and Ustryky. When we came to the station people from these villages came and started to still all that was there: caws, horses, cases, chests. Mother’s sister (her husband died in Polish-German war) was with us. I helped her to hide a chest. And I got a butt-stock kick in my back. On the station we entrained everything on the second day. If you had horses you could take them. But what could you load on carriage? I took children, food, featherbed and all the rest was left. Poles came at once and burgled. Or our guys came and burned out everything.”
“We knew the places where to go unnoticeably. We went through the forest near border. Especially we knew how to transport wounded people. Then one went from one side, second – from another one. And one more was going and listening to everything from the other side of border. We knew all pits, springs, thickets. We communicated by owl’s sounds. This was the worthiest – to lead them. And we should place wounded people. Lots of people didn’t know about that. We looked for places, where to hide. I remember we found the kryivka for one night and in the morning hided all the traces. Where were they? They were near the springs or thickets. All ground we threw into spring and there were no traces. And entrance was from the spring.”
“I was included into OUN Youth at once. We went to the studies on stadium at the Lychakivska str. We had different exercises, threw grenades. We had studies what to do in case we would be caught: what to say, how to behave, in order everybody said the same.
OUN Youth was in the front of Uspen’ska church, where the policlinic and sport-gym are. In this sport-hall we took the oath – Decalogue of Ukrainian Nationalist: “I am the spirit of the eternal element that saved you from the Tatar invasion… ”
“They came to the village. They came to one house and arrested Chmara. And one more man – Nechaj. These were pseudo. But the last was running and left wounded. They caught him and came to Paliy. There the goat was standing. They ordered to take the goat out and there was an entrance to kryivka. Two men came out of it but Paliy – the owner of the house (such a big guy) – left. He started to defend oneself by shooting. The house was a new one. Poles thought that it would burn out and shot in it. But it didn’t burn out. When Paliy finished his bullets he fell down through the threshold. They came running and thought he was killed but he exploded a grenade under himself. We came and saw that all walls were with blood.”
Mykola Malahìvskyi was born in 1928 in the village of Serednycia, Lìskyi County, Riashiv voivodship (now Silesian voivodship, Poland). He graduated 5 classes of primary school and then continued his studies during the first Soviet occupation in 1939-1941. During the German occupation he studied at the College of Arts (Kunstgewerbeschule) in the city of Lviv to the photographer. Then he joined the Youth subdivision of OUN. In a native village he became a member of the local bojivka (small military unit) of self-defense, that was a part of Gromenko‘s (Mykhajlo Duda) UPA sotnia. During realization the combat challenge he was wounded in a shootout with the Poles. He was treated at home and partly legalized himself. As a result of the agreement between the USSR and Poland about the exchange of populations in 1946 he with his family was settled out of the territory of Poland. He settled in the village of Komarno, Gorodotskyj area of Lviv region (then Drohobych region of Ukrainian SSR). He was under the supervision of the Soviet secret services. In the 1950 ‚s he studied at the Veterinary College. Later he worked at the Lviv factory «Avtonavantazuvac» (autoloader). Now he is residing in the city of Lviv.
