Iryna Volodymyrivna Potapova

* 1940

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We wanted to go back to Poland, to our homes

Iryna Volodymyrivna Potapova, year 1960
Iryna Volodymyrivna Potapova, year 1960
photo: Archiv Iryny Volodymyrivny Potapove

Iryna Volodymyrivna Potapova was born on April 28, 1940 in the Lubartów District in the Lublin Region in eastern Poland (then the General Government). In 1942, Father Volodymyr Ivanovich was transported to the Buchenwald concentration camp and subsequently to Dachau, where he died in February 1945. Iryna Volodymyrivna, together with her mother and siblings, then went to the Odesa region to southern Ukraine in 1945 as part of an ethnic exchange between Poland and the Soviet Union. However, due to unfavorable conditions, the whole family decided to go back to Poland, but due to closed borders they had to stay in Ukraine. They settled in Račín in the Rivne Region and then in the town of Dubno. After school, Iryna Volodymyrivna worked in a bank, after studying at the University of Uzhhorod and in Lviv, as a teacher in the villages of Molodavo, Račín and Majdan, but also in Dubno. She currently lives in Dubno, in the Rivne Region of the western Ukraine.