Oral stories
- ID:
- 33600
- Description:
-
An interview with a native and permanent resident of the village Barysh, now Buchach district of Ternopil oblast. The interviewee’s daughter was present and constantly joined the conversation, rephrasing the questions, expanding on what her mother told, and adding comments of her own. Because of the age, the narrator often complained of the already poor memory. The interview started with the detailed history of the interviewee’s family. The woman also told about the family of Jews who lived nearby, their occupations, their children going to school together with her daughter. During the occupation, she was hiding the head of this family for some time (she started to live in his house since then). The narrator witnessed the shooting of a group of Jews who were hiding in the woods; they were escorted near her house. A separate conversation thread is the massacre of local Poles by Ukrainian nationalist underground, their burial in the cemetery, hiding the saved Poles in the houses of Ukrainian villagers, aggravated mutual hostility. The woman also recalled the Polish landowner, owner of the manor, who was repressed by the Soviet government and whose property was first taken by the local population and then used for the collective farm needs. Towards the end of the war, Ukrainians resettled from Poland inhabited the houses of the deceased and evicted Poles. The woman tells about the arrangements they made, their relationships with the local population, as well as about the post-war life of the village as such.
Recorded in Barash. The interviewer – Marta Havryshko. - Collection:
- Social Anthropology of filling the Void: Poland and Ukraine after World War II
