Oral stories
- ID:
- 30080
- Description:
-
An interview with a native resident of the village Tovste, Zalishchyky district of Ternopil oblast. The woman graduated from accounting courses in Chortkiv and worked as a statistician in a hospital. The interviewee’s daughter was present during the interview and often joined the conversation, expanding on what her mother was saying and adding comments of her own. The interviewee often complained of her now poor memory. She told the history of her family. The father returned from work in the United States and had a large household in the village centre with a house lightning and plumbing, which was a rare thing at the time. The discussion of the pre-war life contains mainly the description of education at school, the first teacher, and fragmentary memories of the interethnic cohabitation, religious holidays of the Polish and Ukrainian population. The Soviet period of 1939 to 1941 is retained in the memory as the period of repressions and eviction of citizens to Siberia. The narrator briefly recalls everyday life during the German occupation, eviction for work, shootings of the Jews on the local cemetery, eviction of local Poles, and distribution of their property among the Ukrainians resettled from Poland. A separate conversation thread is concerned with the personal life of the woman, members of her family repressed by the Soviet government, relatives from the Ukrainian diaspora in Canada who came to visit the village.
Recorded in Tovste. The interviewer – Natalia Otrishchenko. - Collection:
- Social Anthropology of filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II
