“We emigrated, but when we arrived at the border, they sent us back from there, claiming that it was because daddy was Ukrainian. We have not gotten into Czechoslovakia. [And you were already onboard the train?] Yes, we were already in the train, all this. We had to go back. Because of daddy. [And you abandoned your house here?] All Czechs who were leaving the area have left everything behind, and they were being given new housing there. In Litoměřice, and everywhere where Germans had been before. The German Sudetenland. They were getting apartments there.”
“I completed the school in Dubno, which was a teachers’ institute, I became a teacher and they sent me to Police. And so I lived in Police for two years, I worked there. Then I got to Rovno [sometimes spelled Rivno as well – auth.’s note], I lived in Rovno. Then I married. Well, that’s about it.”
“I attended the school there, and so did my mom. She taught Czech, Polish, and I don’t know what other languages. She taught Czech well, and she taught Polish well, too, because she was able to read all books in Polish. She spoke Polish, too. One woman here was receiving letters from Poland, and she would always bring them to my mom and mom would read and translate them for her. My mom studied well.”
“I was born in Mirohošť in 1940. My dad worked in Dubno. [And your name is Nina Luc?] Nina Sidorkevič, my parents’ surname was Sidorkevič. Luc is the surname of my husband’s. My mom was born as Helena Cinertová. They [ancestors – auth.’s note] arrived here, there was a forest, and they cleared the forest and they built a little house here.”
“When the Czechs left, there were celebrations, too, but no longer so many of them. There were fewer people, but it didn’t matter, they were gathering together, playing cards, games, ‘tisíc,’ ‘durak,’ that’s how it was called in Russian. They were gathering together. Nina Bilijenková and her husband were coming here, Mrs. Kurásová was coming, and sometimes they were even arguing when they played the ‘thousand and one’ card game. They were merry. And for example, when they slaughtered a pig, there was a feast. And then, they went to a ‘dacha.’ That’s how it was.”
Nina Luc, née Sidorkevič, was born February 9, 1940 in the village Mirohošť in Volhynia in the then Soviet Union. Mirohošť was a Czech-Ukrainian village and the Sidorkevič family shared the same heritage. Nina’s father was Ukrainian and her mother was Czech. She had younger brother Josef. In 1947 when the re-emigration of Volhynian Czechs to Czechoslovakia was being prepared, the Sidorkevič family wished to leave as well. They were already at the Czechoslovak border, but due to her father’s nationality they were forbidden to re-emigrate to Czechoslovakia. Nina thus studied a ten-year school in Mirohošť and then she attended a teachers’ school in Dubno. She worked as a teacher in Police and later she taught in Rivno. She married an immigrant from Poland. At present she lives in Mirohošť and in Rivno.
