“I remember that once we woke up in the morning and we saw German soldiers on horses coming into our village. We got terribly scared. But they weren’t German, they were the troops of the Ukrainian nationalists. They took the uniforms of the German soldiers they had killed. So they were dressed up as German soldiers. So we ran into the fields because the forest was a little further down the road. So we were hurrying into the fields because we said to ourselves that they’d slaughter us. But they followed us on horse to the field. Bad idea. They caught me and asked: “what are you, a Czech or a Pole?” I said I’m a Czech. “So go home, why are you running away from us? We’re after the Poles.” They were killing the Poles…”
“All right, then came the year 1941, the German occupation followed. How do you recall that June when the Germans came to Volhynia? Did you see any German soldiers in your village?”
“Well, sure we did see them, they were passing on the main road which was some eight kilometers away. But it was... well, these “Banderovci” (the paramilitary troops of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - comment of the translator) stopped them when for example a single German car passed. They had German uniforms that they had taken from murdered German soldiers. So they’d stop the car, shoot this German officer and take his uniform and then stop other German cars. Germans would stop, you could hear that, they would order them to drive into the forest where they shot them and got more uniforms. Just like that. And it so happened that as they burned down Malín, they promised to turn against us because they said "no grain to the Germans". No one was allowed to supply the Germans in the cities with grain. If they caught him in the forest they‘d take it.”
“After this German occupation have you witnessed some maltreatment, some persecutions, harassment of Jews and the like?”
“Well, I remember that it was prohibited to hide Jews at your place. If you violated this your family got executed, just wiped out. But there were Jews coming to the fairs, we knew them, they were sometimes quite wealthy, they had their gold etc. They were paying customers. But everybody was afraid because these troops of the Ukrainian nationalists were after them as well. I remember these two Jewish boys they came to our home and asked for some food so we’d give them some hot potatoes or what we had and they then rushed away because it was extremely dangerous for them as well as for us. If they caught them at our place they would have wiped out our family. “You knew these two boys?”
“Yes, I knew them. They ate and then they left.”
“I meant if you had known them before the war.”
“Yes, we knew them before the war from the Poles.”
“Where did you know them from?”
“Well, they racketeered from town to town.”
“And do you know where they lived afterwards when they were hiding?”
“Well, I heard some rumors that they actually managed to get away and emigrate to Israel.”
„Tell me where did they hide.”
“Most of the time they were hiding in the barn. There was hay and straw and they held out there the whole day. When it got dark they went out to search for some food.”
“Before I turned on the recording device you told me about this Malín. If you could tell me know what you know about the burning down of Czech Malín.”
“Well, you could hear that they were there, we heard the shooting, the Ukrainian Nationalists were shooting at the Germans in the village of Czech Malín. About twelve or fifteen kilometers away was the town Oliga. And in Oliga there were a lot of Germans. They surrounded them and they said that it was the Ukrainian Nationalists' troops, not the Czechs, that was the reason why this village Malín was burned down.”
“Well, you were talking about how drastic this incident was, that they drove the people into a barn and then burned the barn down with the people inside. Well, if you could repeat it one more time just to have it on the record, how a few of these men were able to escape.”
“Well, it was like this. A few of them went out of town and in this way they saved themselves. And then the cattle… they left the herds of cattle in the forest as they were driving the Germans into the town. They left the cattle and a few guys managed to escape. Either you escaped alive or they killed it anyway. Near this Šumperk there is a former German village, it was called Malín.”
“All right and could you now tell me what else happened in your village in connection with the Ukrainian Nationalists' troops?”
“Well, for the details, there was a village, this village Koryta, and we belonged rather to the village Falkovščina, Krásilno. Czechs, well, but as they were uniting it we accepted the name Koryta, it was a Ukrainian village. There was this orthodox priest, I remember, this “báťuška”, this Ukrainian orthodox. He had two daughters, they were ready to get married, grown-up women. It so happened that someone revealed the Ukrainian Nationalists to the NKVD (the Soviet secret police - note by the translator), to the Russians. For that the Benders retaliated by hanging them in front of his window, and each of these two guys had an axe stuck in his back and written underneath it was: “this is how we’ll deal with all denunciators, we’ll kill them all.”
“What did this priest have to do with it?”
“Nothing, it was a warning for the village.”
“It’s really sad that these young people died for Czechoslovakia. They died for their fatherland which they actually didn’t know. It’s also a pity that there’s no memory of Volhynian Czechs fighting for Czechoslovakia.”
Jaroslav Peterka was born on April 12, 1925, in Falkovščina in Volhynia. After the division of Poland the village was ceded to the Ukrainian village of Koryta. Jaroslav grew up in the family of his father Adolf Peterka who was a farmer. He witnessed the Soviet occupation in 1939 when Poland was divided and also the German invasion in 1941. He also witnessed the atrocities perpetrated on the Jews, Poles and Germans by the so-called „Banderovci“ (the paramilitary troops of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists - OUN, note by the translator). In the spring of 1944 he and his father joined the 1st Czechoslovak army division in Rovno. During an air raid of Rovno he suffered a leg-wound when he rushed from the barracks to the trenches. This injury resulted in life-long consequences. From the army he returned back to Koryta to work on the family manor. In 1947 the whole family went to Křešov near Štětí, where they were given an estate that had prior belonged to Germans. After the rise of the Communist to power his father was imprisoned for two months in Litoměřice for not complying with the supply quotas. In the fifties the Communists took away their farmstead and Jaroslav started to work as a driver. In 1956 he married Helena Doležalová, with whom he lives until today in Roudnice nad Labem. He later returned to agriculture before he retired.
