Categories: Confessional and international relations, Fedor Karpeka

I wanted to ask you about the local landowner, about his estate. What do you remember about it?

Well, what I still remember... Why my stepmother… My father… when my mother died, my father was still alive. So my mother went there to launder the clothes, linen, or «bieliznu» in Polish. Well. So I used to go there very often, I used to go there. And after the Sov…the Russians came here they organized a poorshouse.

And when were you in this estate, where did you go in, in what rooms? What do you remember?

But I … I wasn’t there, in these rooms a lot. The place where she worked. There was ... I was moving around… I was older at that time… my stepmother worked there. So sometimes they gave me some food, sometimes they took me to the canteen. There was a canteen, everything. So well… It was a poorshouse, ok, if need something else, just ask me.

Ok. Could you please describe what the estate looked like at that time? Now a lot of it is ran wild or destroyed.

No. The estate was built-up with necessary buildings. The circle … there… when you were going from there … Everything belonged to the landowner. And the land, the land is open now. The land are not Polish, they didn’t run wild with the Polish greenery. Aside from the forest. And now there is everything, everything is kept there. You see this land, it is much better and even everything is growing there better. You see.

Erm... did the forest belong to the landowner?

Yes, to the landowner.

Could you go to the forest?

You could go with a permission. At that time it was different… not like nowadays, if the wood was wizened or there was felled wood they divided it… between the people, we cut it. Father was still alive then, so he cut too. You never can tell. Sometimes if the wood was better we went on tiptoe there. The whole forest was on file and foresters watched it and controllers went around. Everything could happen, and now everything has become strict, and here it was Padrechcha and it was forbidden. Like at the old times. It was strict.

Researcher: Олег Коляго, старший преподаватель, ГрГУ им. Я. Купалы