Tag #155294 - Interview #94498 (Evadiy Rubalskiy)

April 1923 was dramatic for our family. In Pavoloch some gangsters brutally killed chairman of the executive committee called Ispolkom [13] – Varich, his wife, son and brother. The Soviet authorities sent an GPU [14] punitive unit to Pavoloch. The unit surrounded the town, gathered all people in the square and captured three hostages, who were wealthy and respected people in the town: Chernukha, an Ukrainian man, Leskowski, a Polish man, and my father. At first they captured another Jewish man, but then decided to replace him with my father. They said they were going to kill the wealthy bourgeois before anybody else. The hostages were accused of taking no action to prevent the murder of the Varich family. It didn’t even occur to them that the village was big and the hostages lived on the other end of it and did not know about the attack on the Varich family. There was no investigation or trial. The hostages were sentenced to death and executed. I remember that my father asked permission to say farewell to my mother and me. I remember how the crowd handed me from one another above their heads to where my father was. I understood there was something terrible going on, but I did not know what it was about. Then the hostages were executed. Few hours later an order to keep the hostages alive was received from Kharkov [before 1934 Kharkov was the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, in 1934 the Government of the USSR decided to move the capital to Kiev. All governmental structures moved to Kiev as well], but it was too late. In 1990 all three hostages were rehabilitated. Their relatives were notified that they had been shot illegally. I don’t remember how my father looked or how he dressed. I don’t even remember his face. Mama had my father’s photo before the Great Patriotic War, but I did not find any after I returned from the front. All I remember about my father is the feeling of reliability and strength that I had, when my father was with us.