Любомир Полюга

-…in the next room Oksana cried all the time. I have already known my Oksana because I called her as Oksana. They beat her, tortured her. She was screaming, crying awfully. And in this atmosphere he interrogated me. Finally he took the revolver and aimed at me. I heard a shot. -Where was he aiming? -He aimed at t my eyes, my head. I heard a shot and saw a smoke from the revolver, but I was still standing. You know I had such a wild feeling at that moment. I thought, is it possible that a dead person continues standing for some time? I saw him laughing. “Are you frightened?” The interrogator said that I was lucky that that day there was a name-day of his son and he didn’t want to sin on that day. But he promised to kill me tomorrow. He said to me to think about that until the next day. And Oksana, who was in the next room, stopped crying and screaming after the shot. These were their methods of blackmail.

-It was very awful. Usually it happened at night. The soldiers came. The soldiers and party members together with the army began the arrests. They had come to some house, some family and ordered them to... gather their things immediately. They had half an hour to collect everything that they could take. Almost certainly only what they could take by hand. This is the way they were taken. Families were deported together. Cars waited outside, or cart if it happened in a village. Then they were transported to transit centers, where people were loaded into so called “cattle wagons” that were closed with bars. Then they were deported. They were deported in terrible conditions. -Was anybody from your family or friends was deported in that time? -Not during the first deportation. During the first wave of deportations nobody from my family was deported apart from my uncle. The rest were deported during the second wave. Among our family 16 people were arrested.

"Yes, the Nazis were shooting as well, and terrorizing the same. They were also shooting many people after denunciation. The difference was that the Nazis did not abuse the people much, they shot quickly unlike the Bolsheviks. Certainly we cannot compare, except for the prisons they used. Because they were against the OUN, against Ukraine. They were against everything Ukrainian, they considered Ukrainians their enemies..."

-The Cinema showed all the events taking place in the Soviet Union. Moreover, everything was shown with a patriotic, Bolshevik spirit… There were performances. There was a press service as well, but all Soviet. In the press everything Soviet was beautiful, but everything Ukrainian was ridiculed. Everything Ukrainian should be destroyed. -What salaries were in that time? How did people live? -Salaries were small. They were so small. There were huge queues in the stores. There were no products in the stores. The trade was such. - Were there shortages? -What? -Were there shortages at that time? - Yes, absolutely. The shortages were absolutely everywhere. Some things were totally unattainable. It was possibly to buy some of them at the street markets. But in the stores and shops there was almost nothing. In the stores were only long lines for what was given. Sometimes they gave a bit of sugar, sometimes flour or something else. -Where did the products disappear? -The products… If the products were not replenished, they ended quickly – but reserves existed in some places.