And I was sent to the orphanage "For the children of the enemies of the people", there was this kind of orphanages. I was there for two years while my mother was like this. Two years - it was terrible to stay there, I'm not even mentioning they were not giving us food, they punished us and there was a dungeon for children like myself, you couldn't even laugh, you were sent immediately to the dungeon. And I remember in the spring, it was probably 1947, no, it was 1948, I dug up rotten potato after the winter and baked it on the stove, on the hot stove, to eat at least something. Well, of course, what could happen after that? I had dysentery and not just that, but bloody dysentery, they left me in the hospital, they even moved me from a ward to a kind of pantry, I was crawling there because I could no longer walk. I couldn't stand, as they say, I was almost dead there. But my mother recovered.
Well, you can imagine - the route was through all Ukraine, through all Russia, through the Urals, Novosibirsk, Omsk, Tomsk, Krasnoyarsk, and then… they were transporting us through Liena, Vitim, Mama, on the barges, and bears attacked us, and I remember that, because once we stopped somewhere, and we convoyed by a boat with NKVD officers on board. They stole a little bear from a mama bear, and you can imagine what she was doing. She was chasing us, she roared, she climbed on that barge, it was like hell there, oh my God! And I was so young, but I remembered that.
My father was a blacksmith, and when… I would like to tell you a little about my parents… In 1939, when the Soviets came, my father served in the Polish army, he was in the Uhlans, here near Kremenets city, in Bila Krynytsia, there were Polish barracks, he was a great horseman and he was even taken to the reburial in Krakow of [chair squeaks]… see, it's difficult to recall…
Someone from the people present: of Pilsudski.
H.R. of Pilsudski. He was… I always wanted to know that because: somewhere in the archives there should be the pictures of him being there, because not everyone.... he was a Ukrainian at Pilsudski's reburial. So he was so… and he had to take part in that German-Polish war, but he had some kind of trauma, and he was forced… he was forced to prepare the horses for the shift, and the comrades left, and he didn't have time to prepare the shift for them, because they had already been defeated by the Germans. The Uhlans rode horses against German tanks. He witnessed how the Polish authorities fled to Romania through Bila Krynytsia, he saw them all. So what I wanted to say, as an option, you know. That's why he didn't take part in that war and in general, there was no Poland as a separate state, it was already under the Germans. He changed into such... in a ceremonial uniform, took a good horse and rode on that route Kremenets - Dubno, he was lucky there were people on the road who told him: Soviet tanks were already coming, and if they saw someone in Polish clothes, he wouldn't get home. And so he dropped everything and got to the house through the woods.
1953, death… We were called there, to the square, and our teacher, I was 12 years old, and our teacher after she heard the news from the loudspeaker, there was this black loudspeaker, she fell on the sidewalk when... we heard the news about his death. And we were laughing silently. That's who we were back then… And after that I was called to the commandant's office, and they said: "You are free. You can go to Ukraine. Children are not responsible for their parents." I remember it so well, I was already twelve. "You are free. Children are not responsible for their parents." And I… I muttered…: "Somehow we were responsible for the actions of our parents when we were 3 years old."
Halyna Reshetnyk was born on September 1, 1941, in the village of Radiv in the Rivne region.
Her father, Ivan Mykolaychuk, was a sotnia commander in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army. For this, he was sentenced to 10 years in labor camps. In 1945, Halyna Reshetnyk and her mother were taken to the Mama settlement in the Irkutsk region. They were there for over 10 years. And in 1956 the Mykolaychuk family returned to Ukraine together.
Now Halyna Reshetnyk is a pensioner. She lives in Ternopil. She is a member of the Ternopil Regional Union of Political Prisoners and Repressed People, the Society of Children of Political Prisoners. Halyna Reshetnyk is the honorary chairman of the Ternopil Regional Women‘s Association.
