Libuše Kubinová

* 1927

  • “We had them in our house, too! But the Bandera’s men were good. Those who did not harm them, those who allowed them to take a pig from the pigsty – the Bandera’s men needed to eat, too – were liked by them. But those who resisted… When they came to us they knocked on the door and said in Ukrainian: ‘Otvor dveri!’ (open the door) and they immediately moved in and began staying with us. One of the men carried a whole pig’s rump on his back, and they threw it onto the table and ordered my mom in Ukrainian to prepare it. We had a meat grinder and we thus quickly ground the meat and mom made a meatloaf for them, and oh, how they loved it!”

  • “We had a basement with a door outside, the kind they have in Slovakia. We also used it as a shelter for us. There was an air raid on the neighbouring village. It was called Pjeň and it was a prosperous village as well. They had a school, too; later we started going to that school. So there was the school, two shops, the ‘cerkev,’ as they called the church… the church also got burnt down. They had a mill to make flour. Germans attacked the village with their planes. We were down there in the morning and father noticed it and he immediately ordered us: ‘Hurry to the basement!’ We had not even eaten our breakfast, and we rushed down the stairs to the basement.”

  • “They arrested many people; they searched for them. They separated women from men – children stayed with their moms and men were in another place. My cousin and one of my uncles were among the men – they were burnt to death in the church. In the Ukrainian church. It was the Ukrainian Malín, but our Czech Malín was across from it, you had to pass by when you went to the fields. They had fields there, and beautiful groves; they had everything. Groves, flowers, gardens! They had everything there. It was a lovely village. There was a mill, and there were two doctors, one in the hospital and one private doctor. The Russian doctor was very skilled. His name was Oberťuk. The other one who worked in the hospital was also good. There was a dairy, and the firemen had their own brass band. They had everything in Malín; they had a butcher’s shop that was selling meat. They had everything. It was a village, but it was almost like a small town. One woman, Miluška Činková, has saved her life. She ran to a cowshed to hide while they were already setting the village on fire, and she and one Ukrainian woman managed to squeeze through a small window. They saved themselves and they hid somewhere in raspberry bushes. She was lying there and as she said, the German man must have seen her, because he was pacing around and he saw her lying there But he left her alone. Miluška thus saved herself.”

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    Broumov, 21.05.2015

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I still miss the place, even now when I think of it!

Libuše Kubínová
Libuše Kubínová
zdroj: Marie Iljašenko

  Libuše Kubinová, née Krámská, comes from Český Malín in the Volhynia region. Her parents owned a farm there and her father also had additional income from shoemaking work. The family was doing well, but since Libuše‘s father had two other brothers, his family had to move from Malín to nearby Zborov. Moving out of Malín has probably saved their lives. Libuše remembers Malín vividly, especially her going to school and local religious festivals and processions. Her father stressed the importance of proper education, and she enjoyed going to the local school, where classes were in Polish, but a Czech teacher was present as well. The Krámský family spoke only in Czech at home, but all of them were able to communicate in Polish and Ukrainian as well, and Libuše‘s father was also proficient in Russian. The World War Two broke out when the family was already living in Zborov. They prospered and they did not suffer from poverty, but they subsequently had to feed the soldiers of all the three armies: the German army, the Soviet army, and the Ukrainian UPA, as well as the partisans who were operating in the region. The family survived the air raids on nearby village Pjeň hidden in the basement. From the window they later saw the soldiers who would go to burn down the village Český Malín on July 13, 1943. Her father‘s two brothers with their families and his sister have died in the massacre. Libuše‘s cousin and several of her girlfriends from the village managed to save their lives under dramatic circumstances. Libuše did not return to school after the war as she was helping her parents on their farm instead. In 1947 the entire Krámský family relocated to Czechoslovakia together with many other Czechs from Volhynia. The journey took one week and they brought with them a horse, two cows, pigs, nine hens and a rooster. At first they stayed in Broumov, then in Otovice and eventually they settled in Rožmitál. Libuše married and had children, and she and her husband worked in the fields. She now lives in Broumov again and she has six grandchildren. She has visited Malín three times since their moving to Czechoslovakia and she has never forgotten the place of her childhood. Her greatest desire is to be able to see Malín one more time.