Ewa Szpiech

„I remember the summer of 1943 as if it was yesterday. A nice summer. On the opposite side of the street lived someone called Chryćko (Hryc´ko – Hryhoryi), who was also known as „ryży“. We knew that he was a hot-blooded Ukrainian nationalist. We went with our mother outside and saw people in Chryćko´s garden. They were on the cherry trees picking cherries. So many men! To come back to the story..., the same day my father went to the field. His collegue from school came, a neigbour, living just two houses away from ours. Later, my father said: ´If I hadn't met him, we would not have escaped.´ But the neigbour had told him: ´Listen Józek, since this morning they have been watching you. The men at Chryćko who are picking cherries, are bandits. They plan to kill you in the evening and they want to gather all the people from the village to watch your murder. Listen, I do not want to watch your death.´ I went to the courtyard and saw my mother in the hall at the doorstep making butter. My father took a bundle into the barn and started packing.... My god, suddenly they started to shoot. They were shooting at us from the cherry trees. It was a miracle that they did not hit anyone, because they were shooting a lot. The next day we arrived in my mother´s home village. There, the Ukraininans hadn´t began to loot yet. We stayed there for one year. Afterwards we moved to Radziechow. Father wanted to escape even further – but where to? The towns were the most secure. My parents rented a railway cargo car to Sanok. We all had an experience in the cargo car to Sanuk because a baby was born in the cargo car, a little one. We stayed in Sanuk until 1945. Immediately after the war, when the Russians had thrown the Germans out, we packed to go home. We arrived in Jarosław, but they did not allow us to go further because the Russians had already created the border. On the other side was now Russia, this side was Poland. ´There will be New Lands (ziemie odzyskane, literally: Re-gained Lands) in the West. Go there!´ In 1945, after the war was over, everyone began to move westwards, in the direction of the New Lands. My mother went with Krok, Zbych and Bordiuk from Rzeszów to the West. For a whole month we heard nothing from her, not even a sign of life! Then Krok and Zbych came and brought a card written by my mother: ´Come to the municipality of Otmuchów. I will wait for you and start a farm.´ To Rzeszów we came by a narrow gauge railway, and in Rzeszów at the station, oh my god, so many people. You couldn´t move forward, or backwards. Everywhere people. People who were standing in front of the rail cars, were holding the doors. They were also climbing up onto the tops of the cars and sitting there. Only to go! Then we arrived. Otmuchów! Otmuchów! So we left the train and went into town. It was destroyed as well, everywhere ruins and ashes.“

"I began attending school when I was a 6 year old girl. The school was in Skrychołowy. I remember the woman who was bringing me to school – she was something like a housemaid, or a servant in our household. I remember that she was the one who was carrying my satchel, not me. (My father’s parents were very rich, but they died early. I do not know these grandparents; I never meet them.) It was a Polish school and the teacher was a relative of the Salecki family. It was a school for everyone, not just for Poles. There were just few of us Poles, the rest were Ukrainians. But again, it was a Polish school and the teacher was a Pole. We all played together, there was no: “You are a Pole, you are a Ukrainian”. We even talked in Ukrainian, as there was a majority of Ukrainian children. However, at home we spoke only Polish. My grandfather Salecki, the father of my father, was a squire. My father always claimed that he was directly descended from the provincial nobility. His father owned five villages. Every Sunday we were very elegantly dressed by my mother; we always had very nice dresses, our mom and dad too. They had their own carriage with red wheels. The Ukrainians called us „paniata“ (children of noblemen)."

„When we came here there where still Germans living here. There was a repatriation office which distributed German farms to all those who came here. No one had brought anything with them; a result of five years of war and five years of escaping from the bandits in Volhynia. Later, a rule was published which allowed people, who wanted to leave to Germany, to take their belongings with them. But, for example, furniture was not taken, the same with cows or horses. I remember watching the Germans leave, which was done in two phases. The Poles were staying, but also some Germans stayed. The procedure was that those who wanted to stay had to accepted Polish citizenship, send their children to Polish schools and had to work here in Poland. There was no discrimination. It was propably in 1946 that the school for children of XZ age was founded. When they opened this school I had already finished seven classes. Children learned the Polish language very quickly. Of course with some mistakes, and with certain limitations. As for me, as someone from Volhynia, I had also problems with the Polish language, I was speaking with an eastern dialect. Everyone was laughing at how I pronounced the Ł. They said: ´How are you talking?´“

"In 1939 there were Russians in Volhynia. They even built a gate with Stalin's portrait, so that all would sign up for collective farming ... so that the land would be used jointly. The poorer ones agreed to enter this community, but the farmers did not like this idea. The soil there was –and still is – very good, the so-called 'black land'. No one wanted to enter this “Stalin”, so for this reason they were transported to Russia, ´to the polar bears´, as the saying went, to Siberia. My parents were also marked for transportation to Russia. My father did not want to enter a collective farm; he said categorically that he would not do it. I somehow also remember that there was a guy who told my father: ´You will come and ask us on your knees for us to take you.´ Well, but at that time the whole family was already marked to be sent to Russia, to the polar bears. ´We will send you to the polar bears.´ It was not only the Poles who were deported, the Ukrainians were as well because they did not want to turn over their land and work on a collective farm. I remember that my mother baked bread, dried it, and stored it in bags so that we could take it with us. In this way we prepared ourselves for the deportation to the ´polar bears´. But than it happened as it happened ... in the beginning the Russians were here, but by 1940, or even by September 1939, the Germans were here. Some people might have thought that was a good thing - that the Germans came because they had had enough of the Russians. The Russians had sent everyone to Siberia and started collective farming."

„My parents did not have the feeling that they would be here for good. My father always said: ´There will come a day when we will go home.´ But there was Ukraine, the border... in other words, I would like to have a look, but I have had so much trauma. I think to myself...no one remains there whom I know. I don´t know why, but I can´t. I am a woman from the East, from Volhynia, even though I have been living here since 1945.“