Mykola Kostyshyn Микола Костишин

"I also remember you know... My sister Liuba, was one year old. And suddenly - she's gone! And there were some nurses. She was a very nice baby girl. And the nurses took her. As soon as we got out of the cell, they somehow took her away. And my mother shouts: “Liuba is gone! My kid is gone!” I was looking for my sister, and there was a basement, I remember... Oh, God... I rushed into that basement, but there was no light, and I hear: “Oh, oh, oh”, they were beating someone... They were torturing someone. Ohhh. And there was no light, there was a small light bulb, I tried to escape as quickly as I could. And we lived, so to speak, on the second floor, on that Peltevna street. And when everyone heard about it, “so here” - they say – “there are doctors” - he says – “nurses, doctors”, he says, they took the girl to their ward, well, he took my sister and were trying to bring her back. She was constantly having some troubles, she was very beautiful, you know, how usually women are - there is a cute child, and they took her in their arms and took her to their office. That's what I remember."

"Then they put a machine gun, I remember it vividly, they put it on the doorstep. Two soldiers were posted there so that we couldn't leave the house. So we couldn't leave the house or take anything with us. He says: “You will be relocated” - said the one who took us out. Well, I still remember how he wrote off, well, how he indicated whose cow it was, whether it was my grandmother's cow or ours, or our horse. And my grandma was already an elderly person. Then my mother, by accident, touched the ink, the one they used for writing, there were no pens at first. He had a big, thick folder, and something was written there. My mother by accident dropped the ink, and it stained everything, you know. And he was yelling at my mother, you know, he says: “I will evict you”, he says, “in Siberia, where polar bears live” - he says – “they will eat you”. That's what I remember. That's how it was. And what else did I want to say? Well, things that we had inside the house, when they were taking us away, things that we had inside the house, like some shirts or underwear, we didn't have much, so we were allowed to take them with us. And things that were outside the house, we couldn't take with us. They were listing everything, and my mother told them “The cow belongs to the grandma”, the cow belonged to my mother, but she registered as if it was owned by my grandma, she did the same with the horse, pigs, and chickens, and a rabbit, we had all of them, what can I say. She wrote everything down, saying: “It's not mine, it's grandmother's.” And he registered it. And when my mom spilled the ink on his papers, there were other last names on that list, when my mother spilled the ink on those documents."