Vladimyr Stepanovich Olenich was born in 1924 in the village of Peregrimka, Jaslo district, Krakow region, His wife, Justina Stepanova Olenich, was born in 1932, also in the village of Peregrimka. Her father was Stepan Lukjanovich Telep, born 1888 and her mother was Maria Jakovna Shostak, born 1901. Both parents were from Peregrimka.

It was just after the end of the second world war, in May of 1945, that we were evicted from the village of Peregrimka in Poland and forced to move to Ukraine. First, Russian delegates came and tried to persuade us to move. They said that Poles would remain in Poland, but Ukrainians (Lemkos) had to go to the Soviet Union because that was one of the terms of an agreement reached by Poland and Ukraine. They told us that vacant homes and farmsteads awaited us there. They said that we would be able to live in abundance and plenty, that life would be good in the Soviet Union.

Some of the villagers wanted to go, others wanted to stay. But they threatened those that didn't want to go, saying that they would be sent to Siberia. That scared the people and they felt they had no choice.

The delegates told us that we had a choice of going to the Donetz region or to the Voroshlovgradsky region. We decided to go to Donetz because it was a more industrially developed area. They ordered us to get ready in three days.

They told us that we would only need to take the cows, the horses and some clothes. Everything else awaited us in Ukraine - homes, farms...

The delegates handed out "evacuation lists" to each individual family. On each list they itemized the home, buildings, sheds, farm animals, yes, every possession, even the wells, that were being left behind.

They took us to the railway station on wagons, put us on box cars, both the people and animals and took us to Donetz. In one box car they put four families.

There were four families that managed to stay in Poland. They had run off into the forest and hid among the columns of escaping Germans and then after awhile they came back, but by then everybody else was gone.

The train took us to the train yard at Karan railway station in Donetz where we had to huddle together under the bare sky, in the rain, like gypsies for three weeks. It kept on raining. And they kept on sending us promises that they'd come get us some day soon. There were no trucks, they said, and no one could come get us.

In June the roads dried and they sent horse-drawn wagons to take us the 45 kilometers to the village at the collective farm, "Red Star". The leaders of the collective farm had anticipated that it would be necessary to provide housing for us newcomers. But there were no houses, so they had removed the sheep from the sheep sheds and they put two or three families of settlers into each shed. The head of the collective farm told us that through work we would soon have everything.

The people were very upset as they had never even dreamed that such utter poverty awaited them. It was good that we people from Poland had brought grain with us to be used as animal feed because it was something which we could eat, too, so we wouldn't starve. Even the local inhabitants came to us, asking for hand-outs, because they had nothing to eat. The collective farm took all the grain and there was nothing left for the people.

Once when some of us went to town past the railway station we saw a great mountain that was being guarded by soldiers. When we came closer we saw that it was a big hill of rotten grain that was giving off vapors when the sun hit it in the open air. But the people had been given none of it.

They took all this rotten grain and threw it into the sea. When it came time to sow, there was nothing to plant in the fields.

All the newcomers were forced to sign up as members of the collective farm. One woman did not want to sign up. So they forced her to walk barefoot through the snow to the town court office in order to register.

We worked on the collective farm without let-up to the point of utter exhaustion, but we didn't get any wages. Then I and many other the young people began to run away to work in the mines, but my parents thought it better to try to return to Poland.

In the Donetz region lived many families of displaced Kurkuls and they advised us to escape before we had been at the farm for more than two years. If we ran away after two years we could be put in prison.

My father tried to return to Poland, but he couldn't get past the border so he and my mother found some place to live here in Pustomyty in western Ukraine near the Polish border. They then began to send me letters saying that I should quit working in the mines and come back to them. There was no money to ride the train so people harnessed up horse and cows together and went all the way across Ukraine, almost on foot, to reach the west. The house my parents had found wasn't a house but rather a hut in which six families were living. People had their sleeping places everywhere, even up in the attic. We had to prepare our food out in the yard. But there was hardly any food.

After the harvest people went out in the fields to collect heads of grain left lying there. But if they were caught they were sentenced to two years in jail. So they went out at night.

When my father died there was restitution money for our house in Poland that was to be paid out according to the evacuation list. I went to the district court but they told me that it was too late, that I should have applied within the allotted time. So I went to the regional court but there they turned me down there, too. I went back to the district court one more time and told them that I would share half the money with them if they could help me get it. It just took two weeks before the money was in the bank and then I went back to the district court and gave them half the money. It was good that I was able to get at least half my money, otherwise I would have lost it all.

So we stayed in Pustomyty and began to build our house.