Ella Lukatskaya

(Wywiady dostępne są w językach angielskim i ukraińskim. Prosimy o wyrozumiałość.)

Kiev, Ukraine
Interview conducted in 2002 by Tatyana Chaika

My mother Shendel (Sophia) Smertenko. Photo made in 1920s in Kiev.

Haya-Ita Smertenko, my grandmother and my mother’s mother, and I. Photo made in 1938 in Kiev.

My father Aizik Lukatskiy perished in Deember 1941. Photo made in 1922 in Kiev.

Rosalia (Rachel) Smertenko, my aunt, my mother’s sister. Photo made in Kiev in 1915.

Max Smertenko, my Uncle, my mother’s brother and Ilia, his son, my cousin. Photo made in Kiev in 1910.

Ella Lukatskaya’s cousin Ilia Smertenko. This photos was taken in Waal

Ilia (Elchik) Shkolnik, my cousin, the son of Rosa, my mother’s sister, and Hanna, my cousin. Photo made in Kiev in 1919.

Born in 1938, Mrs. Lukatskaya was just a toddler when the Great Patriotic War broke out and only has dim memories of the period before the war. Her father was mobilized to the army on the first days of the war and she recalls that when he came to say good-bye to his family she was screaming and crying: “I loved my father dearly and I must have had an inkling that he was leaving forever.” Her father was a radio operator and perished in late 1941, while she, her mother and older sister left Kiev for Turkmenia (today Turkmenistan).

In vivid details the interviewee describes the harsh conditions at the collective farm, where they lived and worked. Upon the liberation of Kiev they returned home in spring 1944 and eked out a meager existence, her mother mending shabby clothes that they sold in exchange for food at the market. Upon graduation from Kiev Polytechnic University, Mrs. Lukatskaya worked as a radio engineer and teacher of information science, and founded a family. Her moving account is accompanied by 11 photos.

Learn more about Ella Lukatskaya here on the Centropa website.