On August 2, 1920, our little place [Divin] was liberated by the Soviet Army from the Belapoles, but not for long.

The Belapoles named this Warsaw victory (Cud nad Wisla, e.g. Wonder at Vistula [River]). They believed this victory against the Red Army was due to the intervention of God’s divinity and strength. {51} A big part of Western Belarus with all of its cities and villages, with the border past the city of Luninetz, once again turned out to be in Poland.

With the fall of 1920 came a restoration of rule for the Polish masters on our land. In the fall of 1921, for the first time, the Poles, in Western Belarus and Ukraine installed a law of universal war conscription for settlements of non-Polish origin. Until that time, only the Poles were recruited into the army, without fail. All others, only if they wished to do so. On the basis of this law, in November 1921, young people born between 1899 and 1900 were conscripted to the army. That is, among the population of recruits, two years of recruits were called for duty in all of the branches of the Polish forces.

In April of 1922, the Polish forces again announced a draft. This time, people born in 1901 were taken to the army. After this, drafts of recruits were held annually.

In the same year, another major occurrence happened in the life of Divin. The Polish forces sent their people, the so-called Osadniks [ \settlers, retired soldiers and officers of the Polish Army, members of their families, as well as civilian Poles, displaced by wars]. They allotted them land from the estates of Divin-Pavlinov, in the amount of 30 – 40 hectares per Osadnik.

This land was considered government land and was located primarily on estates of the previous landowner. The previous manager of the state was named Chernov, and did not have enough time to sell the land to peasants. At that time, in 1914, the First World War began and the land was abandoned by its former owner, but now these lands fell into the hands of the Polish colonizers.

This land, saturated with sweat and blood and irrigated with the tears of our ancestors is left for the perpetual use of Polish legionnaire-osadniks. Many of our Diviners either had no land or very small plots. For this reason they began working on the lands of the new owners. Once again they became farmhands.

In the summer of 1922, one of the arriving Poles, with the last name Kovalski Roch, built a steam-powered mill in Divin. It brought him enormous profits and a rapid enrichment.

At this time, trade days, or fairs, were employed in Divin. They took place twice a month: the 4^th and 17^th of every month. If the date happened to fall on a Saturday or a Sunday, the fair would be rescheduled to the following Monday. The trade of large, horned livestock and other farm animals took place at the fair. With the sale of cattle, the Divin fairs took first place in all of Poland.

The Poles employed their own administrative name of the territory – a Gmina, or municipality. Divin was the Gmina center, where the head authority was the Vojt along with a clerk and three of his assistants. The components of Divin’s Gmina included those same settlements that were included in Tsarist Russia; Lipovo-Or, Zaorye, Kletishya, Osa, Borisovka, as well as Habovich and Ruhovich. Every village or town was considered a distinct community. This was called a gromada. Each of the communities elected rural elders (soltys). Divin was divided into three gromadas with three soltyses:

• 1 Gromada – all of the Jewish settlers; {52}
• 2 Gromada – the inhabitants of the Ratensk, Kobryn, Brest streets and the closest hamlet;
• 3 Gromada – the inhabitants of the Povitsk Street and its hamlets

Each Gromada had its own gathering place, meetings in which the soltys or representative of the municipality was always present. The whole of Divin’s municipality was part of the Poleski Voivodship [Province].

Under Poland, the municipal authority was located in Divin, along with a police department, led by a commander and four police officers. In addition, there was a post office agency, which accepted and paid out savings deposits. Two people worked there; the head of the office and a postman.

In Divin there was one seven-year school in operation. Classes there were only taught in Polish.

There were also two government doctors; a medical doctor and a veterinarian. The work of both doctors consisted of writing out prescriptions. People who received prescriptions had to go to the pharmacy. The pharmacy was owned by a private individual. The medications were very expensive. The veterinarian doctor sometimes personally attended to animals, but people were deprived of this assistance. A visit to the doctor was free for a villager. However, the cost of prescribed medications was often too expensive for the majority of people; they had nothing to pay with. This is why many Diviners could not use the services of the doctor.

Even more difficult was the situation in which a surgeon was urgently needed. There was a practicing surgeon in the hospital in Kobryn. Treatment and care cost five złoty per day in the hospital. You needed to have transport to reach the place. Any operation required additional charges. The means of most of Divin’s residents were not adequate enough for this. This is why the sick rarely went to Kobryn. Sometimes they went too late, and their condition turned out to be hopeless.