Oral stories
- ID:
- 30069
- Description:
-
An interview with a native resident of the village Osivtsi of Buchach district in Ternopil oblast. The interviewee’s daughter was present during the conversation, occasionally joined it, asking additional questions to her father and expanding on what he was saying. It was obvious that the man didn’t want to give many details of what he saw and survived; he mentioned he had already “told too much.” The narrator recalled working on the farm, the Polish landlord of the village, his participation in the “Polish war”, his wife and daughters who were arrested and sent to Siberia, a school organized in their manor, which was later disassembled. The man talked about the establishment of the Soviet government in 1939 and the reaction to this of the local population. In 1942, there was a big fire in the village, and part of the houses, a Roman and a Greek Catholic church buildings burnt to ashes. The interviewee shared his memories of the Jewish villagers, their occupations and traditions, peculiar stereotypes, a ghetto in Buchach, the fate of Jews’ property and households, the stories of hiding Jews, one rescued girl who never revealed her origins even when she grew up. When asked about the Ukrainian-Polish opposition in the village, the narrator expressed his assumptions but demonstrated that he didn’t want to dig deeper into that topic. A separate conversation thread is serving in the Soviet army. He was mobilized in 1944, which he described in much detail; he returned to the village in 1948.
Recorded in Osivtsi. The interviewer – Marta Havryshko. - Collection:
- Social Anthropology of filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II
