We were starving there. My mother went to work in the kolkhoz, in the kolkhoz they gave her 200 grams of grain for a working day and it was miserable čorno nevidno. Do you understand? Then [we thought]: “We will flee here to [western] Ukraine. ”My godfather took me and then my mother and little sister came. There were three of us [siblings]. The sister was born in 1936. Mom came with her sister and then brother and sister came.
"I was born in Poland, the city of Tarnohorod, Tarnohorod. How to tell you? It was in 1939, I think, when I went to the first grade of Polish school. That was Poland. There was no Ukrainian school. In 1939, war came, Germany invaded Poland, and the Polish school was closed. I finished first grade, the Polish school was closed and the Germans were with us for five years. "
The Soviets had already appeared. The Soviets had already appeared and were doing everything there. Ukrainians and Poles were in Poland, Poles and Ukrainians, you understand? They did everything and the Ukrainians go [to the Soviets] and say: "We are beaten by the Poles, help us with the defense." Do you understand? They said: "This is not your place, here is Poland. We will take you to Ukraine. "
Už se objevili Sověti. Už se objevili Sověti a dělali tam všechno svoje. Ukrajinci i Poláci byli v Polsku, Poláci i Ukrajinci, rozumíš? Udělali všechno a Ukrajinci jdou [k Sovětům – pozn. autor] a říkají: „Nás bijí Poláci, pomožte nám s obranou.“ Rozumíš? Oni říkali: „Toto není vaše místo, tady je Polsko. My Vás odvezeme na Ukrajinu.“
Marija Adamivna Vartoščuk, née Melech, was born on 28 January 1931 in Tarnohorod (now Tarnogród) in the Lublin Voivodeship in eastern Poland. The Melech family was of Ukrainian nationality. In 1939, Marija Adamivna began attending a Polish school. In the same year, the Polish state invaded Nazi Germany, but as the Germans initially favored Ukrainian independence, Marija Adamivna began attending a Ukrainian school. In Tarnogród, she experienced the Nazi occupation (1941–1944) and the subsequent liberation by the Red Army. However, in 1945, Ukrainians from eastern Poland began to be relocated to the Ukrainian Soviet Republic in exchange for Poles from the western part of Ukraine, and the Melech family, like many other Ukrainian families, was taken to the southern part of present-day Ukraine. They reached the Odessa region, where they settled in the village after the former German colonists, but due to difficulties associated with the inhospitable environment and the post-war situation, she moved to western Ukraine to the village of Ploska in the Rivne region. Here they also met the Volhynian Bohemians, for whom members of the Melech family occasionally worked. Marija Adamivna worked on the farm and then trained as a seamstress. She moved from the village of Ploska to the nearby town of Dubno, where she also worked as a seamstress and where she got married. She still lives in the city of Dubno in the Rivne region of western Ukraine.
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