Мазуры - Людвиковка - Преступления ОУН-УПА
Добрый день
Не так давно одна знакомая из Франции попросила перевести статью с украинского на английский. Мой украинский хуже моего английского но тем не менее я взялся. Интерес вызвала сама статья. Она была опубликована в начале 90-х по видимому в газете "Прикарпатская Правда". Сегодня я опубликую перевод и сканы оригинала статьи. Гугл не дал никакой информации по данной теме. Так что думаю публикация этого материала нужна.
“The last night of "MAZURS” (tr. Mazur another name for Polish)
Translated from Ukrainian to English sj314.
"Don't call us by names"
Why write about this? Nobody needs to know since nobody has ever cared until now. You cannot resurrect the dead, and the living will not be happier knowing this. Half a century has passed since that fear night...
The wrinkled, sun-bronzed body of Ivan Mikhaylovych Grigogyichuk was covered in big drops of sweat. His wrinkles became deeper from internal overstrain. In front of me stood a short, round-shouldered old man in his seventies, with his tired eyes below gray, dense eyebrows. He was staring far away into the distance, as if he was going to look through the mountain of past years of the uneasy time of his youth.
After a long pause, he suddenly shook his head.
“No, no, no! I will tell you nothing. And you, shut your mouth -“, he turned to his wife who was standing nearby. And after sometime added philosophically :
“ - History is a wheel rolling down a mountain. You cannot turn it back. And endured evil deeds let leave with conscience of those who guilty in it. Don’t don’t try to change what happened in the past, but look forward because the wheel keeps rolling...”.
“ - But sometimes it’s also horrible to forget such things” - I interrupt my interlocutor -“This wheel has left a bloody trace on our distressed land. Millions have fallen under the hand of fascism, Stalinism or banderovshina (Ukrainian Insurgent Army lead by Stepan Bandera). The nation’s best people have been killed. Can we be silent about it? Is it fairly under relation to killed innocent? Who if not you, living evidence, will tell the tale of what happened? The truth needs to be told so that what happened to you does not repeat itself.
Because unfortunately, as we can see from our current situation, some of us have not learned from history. If you read the latest issues in the newspaper, or attend a political meeting and be surprised by freshly-baked" fighters for the nation’s happiness".
They pretend that they worry for national and cultural revival, when they just want to sow disorder and hatred between people. It cannot end well this way. While justly accusing Stalin’s terror, they are silent about the evil deeds of the Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army. Showing only half the truth is the same as telling a lie.
After listening carefully to everything, Ivan Mikhailovich took a deep sigh.
“ - I'm asking you only one thing - what you will hear from us you can write down, but don't call us by our names. We have children and it is not an easy time. No one knows what will happen tomorrow. We don’t worry about ourselves...”
I promised him and another interlocutor that I will not disclose their real names or addresses but will keep it only in my notebook.
Disorder and hatred
2 to 3 kilometres away from the village in Burshtina Galitskiy region, there is a small location which used to be a village in the past. Now it is overgrown with weeds which have wasted the ground where cattle grazed.
The old cherry tree which has fallen is all that’s left from Lyudvikivki. There was the basement of a sewing workshop but it was disassembled lately. There is another sign in bushes where you can find crosses and tombs.
What village was it and what happened? Citizens of nearby villages called it "Mazurs" -it’s real name is Lyudvikovka. Real names are rarely known. "Mazurs" is how it used to be called a long time ago.None of the old residents remember when. Maybe it came from Polish people who came to live there a long time ago (Mazur: synonym of Polish). Old and young residents of Ozeryan, Slobody, Korostovich, Kuryava can show you the location of this place.
Lyudvikovka was a village of average size -around 150 houses. Families consisted of 3 to 6 persons. It was inhabited by Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. Old residents claim that the villages livedpeacefully with each other.
“ -Men from Lyudvikovka were coming for our girls in Sloboda-“, remembers V.O. Trokhimchuk.”We were dating Polish girls. Sometimes we were fighting for girls. But life is life, and we had mixed families and children”.
Citizens of Lyudvikovka were specialised in agriculture, farming and chickens. But main their business was cloth manufacture. Residents of nearby villages brought yarn and took after ready made production. If you were poor you couldpay by working for "Mazur".
Until now many families have done things well made by citizens of Lyudvikovka.
In that village there was a Club (a place for common people to meet) 5 grade school, cloth factory. Someone died, someone was born - life was going on until 2nd February 1944. By the morning of next day only black ashes remainedinstead of the village. Smoke came from everywhere, from human and animal corpses. It was the end.
Who was responsible for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew night in Lyudvikovka? No, it wasn’t the fascists who had their head office in Rogatina. During that time the territory of Galickiy and Rogatinskiy region were under German occupation.
Around two months before that dreadful night,hundreds of UIA partisans passed through "Mazury" in the direction of Kuriva. People said that conflict had arisen between the Bandera's guerrillas and residents of Lyudvikovka. It ended up that someone from the village wounded a UIA fighter. So the UIA left the village but decided to come back later for revenge.
It’s not easy now to find someone alive who is willing to speak about what happened to "Mazury" on 2nd February. And it’s even harder to find eyewitnesses. But I was lucky. Good people helped me to find Grigorychuk’s family which lives close to "Mazur". Maria Vasilevna witnessed everything that had happened there herself. I also met someone who early in the morning of 3rd February came there to see the burned village.
So here we have a short story of those people.
"There was no salvation"
G.Ivanchenko: - “I was at a wedding in Kurov on that day. It’s 4-5km away from "Mazurs". When it became dark we heard distant shootings and a red glow arose above Lyudvikovka. Disturbed people gathered in the court, and I was worried that my native Sloboda was on fire. I was going to go home but a few fellows came from the forest and said - "Don't worry. It’s Mazurs".
The next day I came to see what happened in Lyudvikovka. It was horrible. Burned corpses of adults and children were scattered between ashes with corpses of cows and horses. It was a horrible stench. Fire took everything and only left the stone made school, steel cloth factory and the big black cross.
M. Kovalchuk: - “I had just turned 16. I clearly remember everything that happened”.
“I remember how armed guerillas were moving to Lyudvikovka. It could be seen from Sloboda. During that day people had a feeling that a horrible night was awaiting Lyudvikovka citizens. But nobody was talking about it - sometimes whispering on an occasional meeting and then walking away from each other.”
After the first shootings started, everyone from Sloboda came out of their houses. Lyudvikovka was grasped in bright red fire from all sides. We were calm. No one was going to run and help - we understood well what will happen after such an attempt. How long it took is hard to answer.
I Remember at one point the green light of a rocket snaked to the sky and the shootings stopped.
Next day it was heavily snowing,as if trying to hide traces of that terrifying night.
After some time Germans collected men from nearby villages to hide corpses. About 300 corpses were buried. How many were burned in fire nobody knows.
Some survived only thanks to a miracle. Among them were people who had left the village before. Someone on the morning of 2nd February was visiting their relatives in nearby villages. A few managed to across ring. Somebody was saved in a pit. Those saved were sent to Poland by the Germans. Some went to Poland itself.
M. Grigoriychuk: - “Rumours that Poles will take their revenge circulated for a few months. We were expecting them to come and slaughter us. Many people were talking about it”.
The day before 2nd February my aunt (my mother’s native sister) came from a nearby village "People are talking about bad things" shesaid. "Come to live with me".But my mother said that we will stay with my father in Lyudvikovka till the end. She loved him a lot despite the fact that she was Ukrainian and he was Polish.
On 2nd February our village got news that we were surrounded by armed groups of Banderovcy (S.Bandera guerillas). Panic had begun. Some were hiding in pits, some in basements, somewhere people prepared to fight. By night the village was surrounded. Those trying to escape were killed. Side houses started burning. Laments, cries, curses, shootings - all were mixed around. Really scorching heat - no salvation.
Our hut was near the church. Some power pushed me to run out of that heat. My older brother took Mama in his hands and ran throughthe church. Mother was protesting because she didn’t want to leave my father. He was wounded by bullet. I don’t remember how I ran out of the village under all those bullets whistling around me. I made the sign of the cross and whispered a prayer. How I came out of the village and reached my relatives I don’t remember. Since then I have never been at the place where our house stood and my father died. I can’t - it’s too much pain for my heart. Since that time I have never attended a funeral ceremony - I can’t take it. Doctors said it is from the experience of fear. Maybe they are right. I pray the Lord that it may never happen again.
B. Fed'kin.
Location
Mazuryis located 2-3 km from Burshtyn :
Не так давно одна знакомая из Франции попросила перевести статью с украинского на английский. Мой украинский хуже моего английского но тем не менее я взялся. Интерес вызвала сама статья. Она была опубликована в начале 90-х по видимому в газете "Прикарпатская Правда". Сегодня я опубликую перевод и сканы оригинала статьи. Гугл не дал никакой информации по данной теме. Так что думаю публикация этого материала нужна.
“The last night of "MAZURS” (tr. Mazur another name for Polish)
Translated from Ukrainian to English sj314.
"Don't call us by names"
Why write about this? Nobody needs to know since nobody has ever cared until now. You cannot resurrect the dead, and the living will not be happier knowing this. Half a century has passed since that fear night...
The wrinkled, sun-bronzed body of Ivan Mikhaylovych Grigogyichuk was covered in big drops of sweat. His wrinkles became deeper from internal overstrain. In front of me stood a short, round-shouldered old man in his seventies, with his tired eyes below gray, dense eyebrows. He was staring far away into the distance, as if he was going to look through the mountain of past years of the uneasy time of his youth.
After a long pause, he suddenly shook his head.
“No, no, no! I will tell you nothing. And you, shut your mouth -“, he turned to his wife who was standing nearby. And after sometime added philosophically :
“ - History is a wheel rolling down a mountain. You cannot turn it back. And endured evil deeds let leave with conscience of those who guilty in it. Don’t don’t try to change what happened in the past, but look forward because the wheel keeps rolling...”.
“ - But sometimes it’s also horrible to forget such things” - I interrupt my interlocutor -“This wheel has left a bloody trace on our distressed land. Millions have fallen under the hand of fascism, Stalinism or banderovshina (Ukrainian Insurgent Army lead by Stepan Bandera). The nation’s best people have been killed. Can we be silent about it? Is it fairly under relation to killed innocent? Who if not you, living evidence, will tell the tale of what happened? The truth needs to be told so that what happened to you does not repeat itself.
Because unfortunately, as we can see from our current situation, some of us have not learned from history. If you read the latest issues in the newspaper, or attend a political meeting and be surprised by freshly-baked" fighters for the nation’s happiness".
They pretend that they worry for national and cultural revival, when they just want to sow disorder and hatred between people. It cannot end well this way. While justly accusing Stalin’s terror, they are silent about the evil deeds of the Ukrainian_Insurgent_Army. Showing only half the truth is the same as telling a lie.
After listening carefully to everything, Ivan Mikhailovich took a deep sigh.
“ - I'm asking you only one thing - what you will hear from us you can write down, but don't call us by our names. We have children and it is not an easy time. No one knows what will happen tomorrow. We don’t worry about ourselves...”
I promised him and another interlocutor that I will not disclose their real names or addresses but will keep it only in my notebook.
Disorder and hatred
2 to 3 kilometres away from the village in Burshtina Galitskiy region, there is a small location which used to be a village in the past. Now it is overgrown with weeds which have wasted the ground where cattle grazed.
The old cherry tree which has fallen is all that’s left from Lyudvikivki. There was the basement of a sewing workshop but it was disassembled lately. There is another sign in bushes where you can find crosses and tombs.
What village was it and what happened? Citizens of nearby villages called it "Mazurs" -it’s real name is Lyudvikovka. Real names are rarely known. "Mazurs" is how it used to be called a long time ago.None of the old residents remember when. Maybe it came from Polish people who came to live there a long time ago (Mazur: synonym of Polish). Old and young residents of Ozeryan, Slobody, Korostovich, Kuryava can show you the location of this place.
Lyudvikovka was a village of average size -around 150 houses. Families consisted of 3 to 6 persons. It was inhabited by Poles, Ukrainians, and Jews. Old residents claim that the villages livedpeacefully with each other.
“ -Men from Lyudvikovka were coming for our girls in Sloboda-“, remembers V.O. Trokhimchuk.”We were dating Polish girls. Sometimes we were fighting for girls. But life is life, and we had mixed families and children”.
Citizens of Lyudvikovka were specialised in agriculture, farming and chickens. But main their business was cloth manufacture. Residents of nearby villages brought yarn and took after ready made production. If you were poor you couldpay by working for "Mazur".
Until now many families have done things well made by citizens of Lyudvikovka.
In that village there was a Club (a place for common people to meet) 5 grade school, cloth factory. Someone died, someone was born - life was going on until 2nd February 1944. By the morning of next day only black ashes remainedinstead of the village. Smoke came from everywhere, from human and animal corpses. It was the end.
Who was responsible for the Massacre of St. Bartholomew night in Lyudvikovka? No, it wasn’t the fascists who had their head office in Rogatina. During that time the territory of Galickiy and Rogatinskiy region were under German occupation.
Around two months before that dreadful night,hundreds of UIA partisans passed through "Mazury" in the direction of Kuriva. People said that conflict had arisen between the Bandera's guerrillas and residents of Lyudvikovka. It ended up that someone from the village wounded a UIA fighter. So the UIA left the village but decided to come back later for revenge.
It’s not easy now to find someone alive who is willing to speak about what happened to "Mazury" on 2nd February. And it’s even harder to find eyewitnesses. But I was lucky. Good people helped me to find Grigorychuk’s family which lives close to "Mazur". Maria Vasilevna witnessed everything that had happened there herself. I also met someone who early in the morning of 3rd February came there to see the burned village.
So here we have a short story of those people.
"There was no salvation"
G.Ivanchenko: - “I was at a wedding in Kurov on that day. It’s 4-5km away from "Mazurs". When it became dark we heard distant shootings and a red glow arose above Lyudvikovka. Disturbed people gathered in the court, and I was worried that my native Sloboda was on fire. I was going to go home but a few fellows came from the forest and said - "Don't worry. It’s Mazurs".
The next day I came to see what happened in Lyudvikovka. It was horrible. Burned corpses of adults and children were scattered between ashes with corpses of cows and horses. It was a horrible stench. Fire took everything and only left the stone made school, steel cloth factory and the big black cross.
M. Kovalchuk: - “I had just turned 16. I clearly remember everything that happened”.
“I remember how armed guerillas were moving to Lyudvikovka. It could be seen from Sloboda. During that day people had a feeling that a horrible night was awaiting Lyudvikovka citizens. But nobody was talking about it - sometimes whispering on an occasional meeting and then walking away from each other.”
After the first shootings started, everyone from Sloboda came out of their houses. Lyudvikovka was grasped in bright red fire from all sides. We were calm. No one was going to run and help - we understood well what will happen after such an attempt. How long it took is hard to answer.
I Remember at one point the green light of a rocket snaked to the sky and the shootings stopped.
Next day it was heavily snowing,as if trying to hide traces of that terrifying night.
After some time Germans collected men from nearby villages to hide corpses. About 300 corpses were buried. How many were burned in fire nobody knows.
Some survived only thanks to a miracle. Among them were people who had left the village before. Someone on the morning of 2nd February was visiting their relatives in nearby villages. A few managed to across ring. Somebody was saved in a pit. Those saved were sent to Poland by the Germans. Some went to Poland itself.
M. Grigoriychuk: - “Rumours that Poles will take their revenge circulated for a few months. We were expecting them to come and slaughter us. Many people were talking about it”.
The day before 2nd February my aunt (my mother’s native sister) came from a nearby village "People are talking about bad things" shesaid. "Come to live with me".But my mother said that we will stay with my father in Lyudvikovka till the end. She loved him a lot despite the fact that she was Ukrainian and he was Polish.
On 2nd February our village got news that we were surrounded by armed groups of Banderovcy (S.Bandera guerillas). Panic had begun. Some were hiding in pits, some in basements, somewhere people prepared to fight. By night the village was surrounded. Those trying to escape were killed. Side houses started burning. Laments, cries, curses, shootings - all were mixed around. Really scorching heat - no salvation.
Our hut was near the church. Some power pushed me to run out of that heat. My older brother took Mama in his hands and ran throughthe church. Mother was protesting because she didn’t want to leave my father. He was wounded by bullet. I don’t remember how I ran out of the village under all those bullets whistling around me. I made the sign of the cross and whispered a prayer. How I came out of the village and reached my relatives I don’t remember. Since then I have never been at the place where our house stood and my father died. I can’t - it’s too much pain for my heart. Since that time I have never attended a funeral ceremony - I can’t take it. Doctors said it is from the experience of fear. Maybe they are right. I pray the Lord that it may never happen again.
B. Fed'kin.
Location
Mazuryis located 2-3 km from Burshtyn :