Iryna Stankevych (Byrka) Ірина Станкевич (Бирка)

I was waiting for my mother, my mother was kissing horses and cows good-bye and we didn't pack, it was twenty minutes to 2 am, and at 2 that was it... It didn't matter then whether we packed on not - they just put you on a cart and take you away in a compulsory way. As a child, I remember that the neighbors went outside because they respected my parents, they threw us loaves of bread… and I will always remember their candies... I struggle to recall the color... somewhat... blue… They were simple little pillow-candies... That's what I remember... I also remembered the train car very well... Since our last name consists of first letters of the alphabet, we slept on the floor. There was also a ratish (a wooden or metal pole that іs used to lock doors and prevent them from being opened by animals or strong wind - translator's note). I don't have a good understanding of what ratish means, but my mom used to say this word... When they opened the ratish the noise was so loud and even small children were visible sitting in the train car. And I also remember very well... we were lying on the floor, in fact, at the entrance... it was so crowded that if one person wanted to turn, a dozen on one side and on the other had to turn with her, because it was impossible otherwise...We were lying, you know, like in the poem that I'd learned at school: "Horses and people mixed together in a bunch (poem Borodino by M. Lermontov - translator's note)", I was learning Russian and I always drew this parallel line of our big group there. There were young people, children, girls - such beauties and also boys, men, older and senior people. In the middle, there was one and only closestool, pardon me for this word, the closestool... and later when I saw other similar objects, even after a long time... They make it on a different shape now… but back then trash bins looked similar... Soviet trash bins looked like that, they always reminded me of that closestool...

And another terrible fact, I think you will record it... Obliquely, along the opposite wall - the second row was lying on the floor. And there was a woman with us, recently delivered woman, two weeks after birth, with a tiny baby... why I remembered that, because I took that baby for a living doll... She swaddled the baby... and I folded my arms like that and she put the baby in my arms, and I played with her, it seemed to me that it was a doll. One morning I woke up and for some reason people in the train car gathered around that woman, crying and making a sign of cross, and sprinkling water on the baby. And then they tear the board off the floor and throw my doll away...

I still remember another case there... I asked for an egg, I asked how it tastes, buy it please. Let's go, Irtsia, - she says. Buy her one, - someone says. - I don't have money for that... - Dad will earn some. But I didn't have a dad. And the woman who recommended my mother to her master, she said that my mother was a trustworthy woman, she cut a piece of turkey and pretended it slipped on the floor, right into the sand. It was very dusty in the summer. She says to my mother: "Take it". My mom picks it up and gives it back to her. The woman answers - "Oh, just throw it to the dogs, but to the good dog". And she went to wash it. That's how it was.

It is very insulting to this day, when I enrolled in first grade, the teacher asked me: "What's your last name?", Mom said - "Byrka" - What? (in Russian) Mom repeated again... -Your last name will be Byrko. Because every khokhol (Ukes) last name ends with an "o" I became Byrko… - Your name? -Irtsia -What's that? That's how my mom called me, I was the youngest, I was born when she was already older. - Well, this is a very khokhol - like name, your name will be Vera. I was Vera for ten years, Vera Byrko.