Deportations from the Region of Chernivci (Ukraine) and Edinets District (Moldova)

furnishing Bandera’s gangs with food and other supplies. They didn’t recognize this.

From Chernivtsy they were sent to the “transit point” in Lviv, where other 15 thousand prisoners were. This “transit point” was situated near the castle hill in Lviv. There were 15 buildings, where the huddled inmates were waiting the departure to the camps. The inmates were mainly of origin from Galitsia, Volyn, Bukovina, Transkarpatiya and some from the East of Ukraine. There were also Russians, especially the arrested former soldiers of the Soviet Army. In that concentration camp were gathered all the prisoners from the surrounding prisons of the West of Ukraine and from this point they were delivered to different parts of the Soviet Union. There was also his brother Ananiy, his cousin Hryhoriy, with whom he never separated until the first echelon arrived.

We were brought to a railway station, where a freight train waited for us. Near the train walked the troops. On the roof of the train was installed a telephone wire. In every wagon hung metal niches. They brought us to the wagon, read the names from some roster and loaded us inside. When the wagon was filled with people, the door closed and it became dark. It was at the end of August 1948. The train stopped very often and let other trains to pass. It stopped also by night. The Convoy checked the wagons in the stations – if existed the holes or not, if someone wanted to leave. After three weeks, they arrived to a new transit point – Krasnoyarsk. They were reloaded and deployed to the field, until they reached in a huge camp. The soldiers ordered to stop before the gates and there they held the procedure of accessing to the camp. Regardless of the Siberian weather, they were divided into groups by ten people, their clothes were taken out (they remained nude) and lay besides. The soldiers approached and checked them, their clothes. In that time, when they were nude, the soldiers huddled them with the command “Come on. Faster”, inside the camp. This transit point was much bigger, than the camp in Lviv. To this place arrived echelons from the whole Soviet Empire – from Ukraine, Belarus, the Baltic States and the Middle Asia, and evidently he met the representatives of many nationalities.

The camp was divided into few zones fenced with wire. In one zone lived 137