大象传媒

Wasyl's story is part of a collection recorded for a reminiscence project to celebrate the history of the Ukrainian community in Gloucester, and contributed to the 大象传媒 People's War with permission.

I was born in 1928 on a collective farm in Manstyrec, in the Lvov region of Western Ukraine. My family was very poor and the equipment we had to use was very old. I was the eldest of 4 brothers: there was Joseph, Nicholas, Semko and myself.

When the Germans came the village elder decided that the oldest sons rather than the fathers would go with the Germans, to make sure the remaining families would survive. I was just 14 years old when I left my homeland. I never saw my parents again. My father was taken shortly after me. My brothers were split up and each went to live with a different family, leaving my mother on her own to scrape a living from the farm.

I came to England after the war as a displaced person. I arrived in Winchcombe on 4th March 1948. My job was to clear ditches around a cemetery. I lived in an ex German prisoner-of-war camp near Sudeley Castle. In the camp were others of various nationalities, such as: Slavs, Poles, Latvians, and Lithuanians. We lived 10 to a hut.

About 25 of us were transferred to the Forest of Dean, to Broadwell near Coleford. After 18 months of farm work I was transferred to Elmbridge Court, I wasn鈥檛 there more than 2 months before I was transferred again, this time to Chippenham in Wiltshire; there again I was allocated farm work.

Eventually we were all disbanded from the camp (I can鈥檛 remember the date) and I was given industrial work near Bath.

After independence was declared in the Ukraine in 1991, I wrote to my family. I wasn鈥檛 sure of the address or whether the letter would get there. The last letter I鈥檇 had from my family was in 1942, when my mother had written that the Russians were very close and that it would probably be the last time she would be able to write.

I was delighted to find that, although my mother had passed away, my brothers were all still alive although living in quite distant places from where they had been born.

I met up with my brothers when I returned to the village in 1993. This was a wonderful and emotional time for all of us. I am still in touch with my family today.

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