My mother and father met and got married there, in the Kamianets-Podilskyi region [now the Khmelnytskyi region], when they were young and beautiful. At the time, my father was 25, and my mother was 23 [a slip of the tongue, she was 20], a five-year difference. My father was working then… You asked, so I’ll answer, as a smuggler. Imagine the year 1920, when they got married. He was very active, very successful. This [Soviet–Polish] border, he despised it. To him, it didn’t exist. Because he was born when it didn’t yet exist, and then it suddenly appeared [in 1921]. He conducted raids very successfully. The fame of the handsome and successful smuggler, of course, charmed my mother.
I was baptized that same year [in 1944] at the Church of Saint Peter on Havanna Street, in Odesa. And in childhood, encounters with the church were especially frequent. It was a place of gathering for Poles in general, our fairly large family. It was a place where I… I still remember the excitement evoked by that service, the solemn procession, all of it, it was there. When at Easter, the “Christ is risen” greetings began, everyone congratulated one another, hugged, and I took part in it too, although I was very young, well, at different [ages], at 10, at 14 years old. — Did you go only to church, or was there catechism at the church as well? — Only to church, just to those services. Well, I lived in Peresyp, which is far. But still, the church was everything. Polish speech, service in the name of Jesus Christ. That’s where we felt… Like on an island, we were the only people, us Poles. In that moment, we paid no attention to what was around us.
For a long time, there was a sports hall of the Avanhard DSO [voluntary sports society] at the site of the cathedral [of the Dormition of the Blessed Virgin Mary] on Katerynynska [Street]. I used to train there. Who would just give that back, how’s that possible? How? Well, that’s how. [Odesa’s first mayor in independent Ukraine, Eduard] Hurvits just took it and gave it back. And that was that. My thanks to Mr. Eduard. And then the restoration began. My God… All of that had to be cleared out, all the mess they had made. And then it had to be restored. We took part in restoring that cathedral. Later, when the time came, there was a wonderful priest, Father Andrzej, who made great efforts to restore… because the state of the Church of Saint Peter on Havanna had become dilapidated. We took part in that too. And [head of the Odesa branch of the Union of Poles in Ukraine] Tadeusz Zalutskyi beat his chest, saying, “I won’t allow it…” There were plans to install stained glass windows, as it should be. We chipped in, and it was done.
I was never a member of the Communist Party, and probably never could have been. My God, how we hated that regime! What it did to us. Even though we already lived in the city. Our relatives still lived there, in the Kamianets-Podilskyi region, later called the Proskuriv [Khmelnytskyi] region. You should’ve seen my father’s sisters, who constantly came to visit — this place was a kind of haven for them. They came to my father for help, for the market, and this, that, and the other. I can’t forget the hands of those women — huge, calloused, blistered. It’s horrifying. It’s just impossible to describe. So our attitude toward the authorities was very justified and very correct, I would say. I remember the year [19]53, when that tyrant died. It was March 5th, the birthday of my beloved sister Vladyslava. As usual, all the city relatives gathered. They lived on Nezhynska and on Soborka [Soborna Square], and they came to our place. Well, and the neighbors, too. The apartment was small, but there were many people. When the joyful news was announced, everyone applauded — or nearly applauded. We bolted the shutters — thankfully, we had very good wooden shutters on the windows. There was this feeling that we had been born again, that tomorrow would finally bring the bright future we had been waiting for. Tomorrow, there were other communists, and whatever they did, God will judge them, but we remember and we will not forgive.
Frants Illich Beletskyi… Four daughters and the only son — he was the family’s hope, the parents’ pride. And suddenly, when he was a victim of the repressions in 1937, he was a cabinetmaker in Odesa’s ship repair yard. A man completely far from politics. But they found him. They came to his home with a search, and what did they find? A prayer book, a książka [book] in Polish, songs in Polish. He loved singing in the Polish choir. He knew the songs. When I found out these details as an adult, I’m not surprised that Vanda [Frants’s daughter] is so talented. She absorbed it all. Because in [19]38, when he was killed, in [19]37, when he was arrested, she was eight or nine years old. But my God, what a talented person she [Vanda] is. We [the Polish community in Odesa] know this, but it’s important to understand that this came from her father. She performed very successfully with the folk ensemble Yatran in Kirovohrad. And later with us [in the Polish choir of Odesa]. She knew all the piosenki [songs] by heart and led everything. — Did the Poles who lived with you in Peresyp, your neighbors, help each other during NKVD raids and such? — They did. For example, they wanted to repress my father. And the car would appear. Seventh Peresyp Street and the turn onto Second Peresyp Street, where we lived. And just before the turn, the vehicle would turn off its lights, that voronok [NKVD van] was heading to our house. I don’t know how, but my father had already been warned, he had already jumped over the back fence into the neighbors’ yard. They arrived, and he wasn’t there. Well, they went to get someone else. That’s how people helped each other.
“Impossible to forget”: how an Odesa Pole preserves the memory of repressions
Stanislav Dobrovolskyy, 1980
photo: Personal archive of Stanislav Dobrovolskyy
photo: Personal archive of Stanislav Dobrovolskyy
Download image
Stanislav Dobrovolskyy is of Polish descent. He was born on July 17, 1944, in Odesa. In 1937, his parents were repressed, but they preserved their identity. In the postwar years, the Dobrovolskyy family continued attending the Odesa church where the city’s Polish community gathered. Stanislav Dobrovolskyy helped his cousin learn the truth about her repressed father. He completed his compulsory military service in the Soviet army but declined an officer’s career. He studied at the Odesa Technological Institute of the Refrigeration Industry and the Odesa Institute of Marine Engineers. He worked at the Black Sea Shipping Company and was involved in supplying Soviet military aid to Ethiopia. He was not a dissident, but during Perestroika, he joined the Odesa branch of the Union of Poles in Ukraine. For over 20 years, he has served on the board of this organization. Despite his advanced age and Polish roots, Stanislav Dobrovolskyy did not leave Ukraine after the start of the full-scale invasion and continues to care for the Polish union to this day.