Володимир Шарко

It was precisely on June 1. I do not know in what way, but we found ourselves in train, on freight train wagon, and drove away… We crossed the border in Chop. I remember the plate "Chop" and we drove through that place to Hungary. Then we drove through Hungary, through Budapest and arrived to Austria. Then we were detained in a refugee camp in Schtrasshoff. We were there maybe a month or two, and later we were released ... Father sought for help somewhere, he had some connections. We first lived in Vienna circle, and then in Vienna, and there I went to the third grade. It was the Ukrainian Gymnasium in Vienna, and many, in fact, many of my fellows from Lviv studied there.

About the 1st of September, I remember, my father heard [humming motors] and said: "Eh, airplanes are flying – I wonder what kind of aircrafts are they?" We went outside - and indeed there were airplanes (and at that time airplans above Lviv was a rarity). And we looked at them - he wanted to see, and then he said: "There are signs, there are signs on the plane!" Plane was flying low enough so that you could see something. Father said: "This is a German plane, there is a swastika!" And I look closer and said, "That's not a swastika!" "Well, this square symbol – it is the swastika!" That was a sign of the German Luftwaffe that is a cross ... Cross, but with four corners. And this sign was on the wings of the plane. It was, in fact, the Germans - we knew that they were Germans. The Germans came close to the city and stayed there. For a few days nobody knew what's going on, and we thought that Germans had come to the city, but they stayed outside of Lviv, and a few days later the Red Army came and then the soviet occupation began.

The Soviets came to Vienna. Relatives left sooner, I can’t remember which month, outside Vienna, and stayed there in some Austrian village, and my sister and I went further to school. And then we also went from Vienna ... we got in the difficult way on one of the last trains that were taking families away, and above all - the German army officers and others militaries. These trains were full, and we somehow got permission to get a train ticket for me and my sister ... What I remember - I popped her to the door in order to climb in, and it was too difficult to push through. But we got on the train, and there I was told – I spoke German quite well – that I got a certificate, I was told: «Diese kleine Ausländer» (“This little foreigners”).

September 1st was either Saturday or Sunday. I know that on Monday next week I had my school to begin again – I was going to the second grade of elementary school. Here in Lviv there was a Native school named after the Prince Leo. Those few days there wasn’t any school, nothing (I do not remember for how long), and the first thing that the Soviets did - they said: your first grade was insufficient, you’re going back to the first grade. So I went for the second time to the first class. Again we started to learn the same things, to read and to write.