Evženie Šiková

Were there any Jews hiding in your village during the war? "There was some Mr. Sik, a Jew, who used to come for a visit. He worked at the mill. He came to my dad once and told him to go with him to the cemetery to take a look at his sister’s tomb. You know, my dad made this tomb for them earlier. Anyway, my dad told him now that he doesn’t want to go because he is afraid they all might get shot there. Or some other time we heard that the Germans killed another Jew, some Mr. Sotola. The Sotola family lived at the very end of our village. There were many of them living together. There were cousins and brothers all named Sotola. And this one played the drum, so everybody called him Sotola-Drummer. Apparently he was hiding himself in the dog house and the Germans found him and shot him. That’s what we heard." Did they find him there? "Yeah" So this was the only Jew who you knew about during the occupation? "One day we went with our mom to rip the poppy seeds. And on the next they we came back to pull out the poppy plants and we found twelve Jews lying there. We told them that we have to pull out all the poppy flowers so they should leave. And until the morning they really left." Were there any children too among them? "No, only grown ups."

You saw the Soviet soldiers arriving. What did they look like? "Well, bad. Comparing to the Germans they were poor. And the horses...terrible." What did the horses look like? "They were so slim and miserable. And so were the soldiers. Walking with their heads down never allowed taking anything. That was forbidden. Once someone made them a pot full of large barley, but because they couldn’t eat it got rotten so they pour it onto our backyard. I don’t even remember what we did with it, because it was already uneatable." Not even the pigs? „Nobody" How long did the soldiers stayed there? "They never really stayed. They moved back, then the Germans came instead and after some time the Russians came again. They kept taking turns." All this happened during September...After that it has settled down and the Russians stayed for two years, right? "That’s right. They stayed for a long time. At the beginning they came and took our horses away. They only left us two cows and collected half of our house. There in the house they established the local national board office. Later on as the front was approaching there was about 5000 of wounded people. So they took also our other room which they used for injured officers. The soldiers stayed in the barn. The officers put a hooked nails into the wall and hang their carbines. It made me cry. We had our walls painted with nice oil paint and I didn’t want them to destroy everything there. They said: ´We are fighting and you are just sitting here, you can sleep while we fight.´" And when did they fight against the Germans? "That was when the front was proceeding forward toward the Germans." Were they going back on the German side? "Yes. That was in 1944..."

"When he got home he ate and then he went to lie down in the kitchen. When it got dark outside, my dad went to lock the door and suddenly someone knocked on the door. It was the Bandera’s force. They knew he was already at home. He has been at home for only two hours and they have already known that. They went straight into kitchen and sat on the sofa next to my brother: ´Take your pants off! We apologize, but take your pants off.´ (She speaks in Ukrainian language-translators note) Do you understand what I’m saying?" Not really. "They told him to take his pants off. So he did it. He also had an English army style shirt and army pants. He gave it to them. And they said: Now your coat too.´ He told them that the coat was stained with blood from his injury. Because when he got wounded, that was in April, it was still cold outside and they provided him only with a thin blanket at the hospital so he covered himself with the coat too. Anyway he gave them now his coat too and they left. He stayed at home for a week and then told us: ´I’ve had enough of the Bandera’s I won’t stay here. I’ll go to Czechoslovakia. I’ll get some job there, but I’m not gonna stay at home.´"

Did the family members returned from Siberia after all? "Oh no, the have starved to death there. They were already older people and lived in such a misery. The mother sent us twice a letter. We always sent some packages to them. We sent flour and legume. But they didn’t get any of the packages. Not a single one." And how did you later find out that they died of hunger? „They stopped writing to us. But we don’t know anything else." That’s awful. So there were both of the parents. And who else was there? "My husband’s brother." His brother? "He was only eighteen. They all died there."

The Germans were not coming to your place at all? "No. Only one polish family named Viervovsky was hiding in our attic. Their father was a polish executor. They had two children. At first they only hid some of their stuff in our attic and later they stayed there too. They stayed for a couple of days in our drier. Our parents always brought some food for them, but my dad said: ´You can’t stay here forever. If they would find you here they would shoot us all.´ and he suggested they could go to Luck town. So at night they really left. They managed to get there after all. Later on they sent us a letter from Luck town. She, Mrs. Viervovska used to have parents who lived there. After few days Mr. Viervovsky came back on a carriage pulled by two German horses accompanied by four Germans. He returned to collect their belonging from our attic. They loaded everything on the carriage and off they went. Now there was this road around the school leading to Lavrov (the Ukrainian village nearby) and right behind this school we had a cemetery. Behind this cemetery was a small wood property that belonged to my uncle Charles. Now as they reached this wood the Bandera’s bandits jump out of there and started to shoot at them. Mr. Viervovsky and the Germans ran quickly into the field and hid themselves there. The Bandera’s bandits took all their stuff including their horses and left. So they returned home with nothing." May I ask you now, who was he - this Pole hiding from...? "The Bandera’s force was shooting the Poles too, you know." So he wasn’t hiding from Germans? "No. He was hiding from Bandera’s force." And when he came back to your place, did he bring the uniformed Germans with him? "Yes, but only a few of them. There were four of them."

What are your memories of the June of 1941 when the Germans arrived? What did you think when you first saw the German soldiers? Did it make any impression on you? "They didn’t really stay for long though. Once when they started the shooting my dad told me to take my younger sister and go to Sklin - the next village. It was about twelve or fifteen kilometers away and we had uncle who lived there. While our dad was saying good bye to us the German who stood near us told to our dad (he could speak in polish):´They better stay here, because it might as well be even worse there in just the little while. And so we stayed at home. The German was right in deed. The German front got stuck in Sklin for about three months. In the meantime three new families moved to us. It was the Mlejnek family, the Kellner family and some two brothers. They came with cows and horses. They placed the animals into our barn and slept up in the attic. Our grandma slept in the kitchen. All of us girls slept also in the attic. Our dad always locked us up there. Because the front remained in their village for a long time, they stayed in our house also very long."

So what is the deal about the Poles and the Ukrainians? Did they kill some Poles there? "There are twelve Poles buried right behind our barn. To be precise, right behind my uncle’s fence. They were two brothers named Bernadsky. They lived in a village called Niesvice where the train station was. They were really nice people. They used to help the poor Ukrainians by giving them some flour and grain when they were miserable. They trusted them completely. And after the Bandera’s force began to operate here they received a proclamation that they don’t have to move anywhere, that they can stay and nothing will happen to them for they were so nice people. So the have really stayed and didn’t go anywhere. They kept working on their farmstead, which was nice in deed. They were just farmers. But someone must have told them something. Once, it was early in the morning, they came unexpectedly with the two hay-wagons on my uncle’s backyard. The wagons loaded up with their stuff. They had such beautiful horses. My uncle wasn’t at home. He was working in the field. Therefore the two of the Bernadsky family members - Mr. Bernadsky and his 15 years old son went to get my uncle on the field. When they returned together at home the rest of the family members (10 people) was already held by the Bandera’s force in the barn. The 15 years old boy sensed that something is wrong and started to run for his life. But one of the Bandera’s people saw him running away and shot him. The rest of the family (altogether 11 people) had to get undressed and they all got stabbed. At that time the major of the village was some Mr. Dragoun. They found this major and asked him to burry those poor people right away. And so they did. They dug a big grave in the garden where they buried the family. I still see them. It was absolutely dreadful. Do you think, the Ukrainians were chasing them and caught them just in your place...? "They probably found out where they were, because they found them very quickly. They just arrived and in ten seconds the bandits were there too. It took only a while. Before the father and his son came back from the field with my uncle, the bandits were there. There were only two of them who stabbed the poor Bernadsky family. But some people said, that other Bandera’s members were hiding in the ditches by the road. We used to have quite deep ditches, because when we had lots of snow, there was a lot of water running through it. So apparently there were many hiding in there in case that someone would defend the Bernadsky family they would shoot them too. I guess."