We were not allowed to re-migrate to Czechoslovakia
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Iryna Kalja, née Klaper, was born on 1 January 1942 in the village of Zaborol near Luck in Volhynia. She came from a mixed ethnic family, her father Ivan was of Russian nationality, her mother Anežka Czech, but she also has German ancestors in her family tree. Daddy had to enlist in the Red Army in 1941 and during the fighting with the Wehrmacht he was wounded and captured in the town of Novohrad-Volynskyj. He spent the next years in a concentration camp and by a lucky chance managed to escape. In 1946 he returned to Zaboril and the following year the whole family planned to reemigrate to Czechoslovakia. However, they did not succeed in doing so, because my father had previously been summoned to the NKVD and his statements were apparently considered to be a manifestation of a hostile attitude towards the Soviet Union. Father was subsequently imprisoned in a Soviet labour camp in Mongolia and after his sentence ended he went to the Caucasus where he later died. Mother divorced in 1965 and left for Czechoslovakia. Iryna Kalja worked in a hospital for the disabled and after 1993 she often came to the Czech Republic. In 2013 she was living in the village of Zaborol near Luck.
