Bodies lowered from 15th floor, taken out in van under fire. Memories of funeral home workers from besieged Chernihiv

During 38 days of active hostilities, Chernihiv communal company "Spetssluzhba 00-34" transported 537 bodies to morgues. In peacetime, this figure was up to 200 dead per month. Between curfews, workers drove a GAZelle van around the city under fire almost without rest and picked up the dead. Out of four teams, only two were working. We met with one of them to talk about their experiences and look behind the scenes of their work.

"Some of them lived here permanently, while others spent the nights during the shifts that lasted several days"

A white GAZelle with the inscription "Spetssluzhba 00-34" ('Special Service 00-34') is parked in a cozy courtyard in the center of Chernihiv. Around are old medical buildings of the XIX - early XX century. They have not seen repairs, doctors and patients for a long time. Now the premises are occupied by various organizations. One of them is "Spetssluzhba 00-34", which is a part of the utility enterprise "Spetskombinat", which deals with burials in Chernihiv.

The building of the special service has two entrances: "clean" and "dirty". The second one is used when the team returns from the morgue after a call. Here, in a small corridor, there is a shower, toilet, sink and changing room. Only after all the hygiene procedures, the workers enter the "clean" premises. There you can relax, talk, have lunch.

During the active hostilities in Chernihiv Oblast, the dining room decorated with paintings served as both a bedroom and a shelter. Back then it was only 3-4 degrees Celsius, so the workers slept in hats and under several blankets. They organized safety, life and work independently, because they had no instructions on how to act during the war.

"At the end of the working day on February 24, I was wondering what to do? Should I go home? But people would leave. So I stayed here with my husband until the end of the blockade for 38 days. He works here as a dispatcher. There were also other employees: some also lived here permanently, and some spent the night during the shifts that lasted several days," says the head of the special service Marianna Vasylkivska.

The team consists of a driver, two employees of funeral services (they are called "ritualists", but in fact they are loaders) and a dispatcher. They were on duty for two days, and drivers for four.

In peacetime, the dispatcher receives a call from a relative of the deceased or the police. He records the call in a paper log: who called, at what time, the address of the call, the name of the brigade dispatcher, the cause of death (if known). Then informs the crew about the call. The driver and the "ritualists" put on their working uniforms — camouflage overalls and gloves, if necessary, masks and respirators — and drive out in response to the call.

But after the invasion, this order has changed...

"Sometimes we came to a gas station and found 5-6 dead people in our GAZelle"

Since the landline was not working, Marianna Vasylkivska shared her number and the phone numbers of the dispatchers with the police, the territorial defense and other services. Sometimes people brought notes with addresses where they needed to pick up the dead — to checkpoints, morgues, hospitals.

"When people called us, the main thing was to write down the address before the connection was interrupted. Surname and other personal data were found out on the spot. The guys in the van also filled in a notebook: who was being taken away and from where," explains the head of the special service.

Every evening, by candlelight, Marianna rewrote all the collected data in a working journal.

"Sometimes we would stop at a gas station, and we would find five-six dead people in our GAZelle. Two of them were put on one stretcher. Because there were a lot of bodies, and we could work only until curfew. And we were saving gasoline," the driver Volodymyr Kozlov recalls.

He has been working in the "00-34" since 2009. He still uses paper maps, which came in handy when the Internet did not work and there was no GPS signal.

Before the full-scale war, Volodymyr considered the most striking case in his practice to be the accident that occurred in December 2021, 18 kilometers from Chernihiv. Then 10 people died due to the collision of a truck and a minibus. But the war showed that this is not the limit — during the hostilities in Chernihiv Oblast, up to 30 dead people had to be transported per shift.

"The most difficult thing morally was to transport the bodies of the military"

The most difficult thing was to see the fallen soldiers. The "00-34" transported their bodies from one morgue to another.

"These are mostly young guys. Often without arms or legs. I feel sorry for them... They are the cream of the nation. It was morally hard to look at them," Volodymyr says and looks away...

He personally saw those who shelled Chernihiv. He lives on the outskirts of the city. And just a few kilometers away from him is a village that was under occupation. In mid-March, enemy sabotage and reconnaissance groups literally walked through the man's garden. A couple of neighbors were captured, interrogated and then released.

"We teach newcomers how to lift the body properly in order not to break their backs"

Mykola Sharyi has been in the special service since 2003. His wife Svitlana worked here as a dispatcher for several years. Over the years in the "Spetssluzhba 00-34" he has seen everything. He collected from the asphalt the body of a man who had been run over by several trucks. He took out corpses that were already decomposing. Once — even a mummy: the body had been lying in the house for a year. They also transported "floaters" — that is the working slang for drowned people. However, assisting to him, it is impossible to get used to the deaths of children. Over 20 years, there have been about 10 of them...

"We teach each other the nuances of work. When I just came, my colleague told me that a burnt newspaper helps to fight the corpse smell. I don't like to wear masks, gas masks... He also explained how to properly remove a body from the bathroom so as not to douse yourself," Mykola says.

But the most important thing that colleagues pass on to each other in their stories is how to properly lift the dead so as not to break their backs. This knowledge came in handy while working in the blockaded Chernihiv, when elevators were not working and the dead had to be carried down the stairs from the 8th or 15th floors.

"Elderly threw themselves out of the windows from despair"

Vadym Luhyna is a newcomer in this brigade: he has been working for only a year and a half. He says he just carries bodies like a load. He does not look at them and tries not to think how people died. Otherwise, it is impossible to withstand this work.

Most of all he remembers suicides. There were a lot of them during the "military" duty. According to Vadym, before, mostly people with addictions killed themselves: alcoholism, drug addiction, gambling. But in February-March, suicides among pensioners became more frequent: they threw themselves out of windows from despair.

"People had no medicines. And it hurts the elderly, so they could not stand the stress, uncertainty, physical suffering. One old lady even jumped out of the hospital window," Vadym recalls.

"We came to find a dead old lady, and there were shells exploding 50 meters away"

"Sometimes guys just leave in the morning, and sirens are howling, there's shooting all around. They can not get through. We are worried here, our hands are shaking. And they come smiling, joking... I say: 'Where were you? Were you hiding in a bomb shelter?' They laugh: 'Why, were there explosions? You can't hear in the van'," Marianna recalls with tears.

The load on the team was very heavy. Until now, the workers have never faced so many dead people. Sometimes it was necessary to transfer 20-30 dead people before the curfew, the bodies could weigh up to 100 kilograms...

The brigade went only to the controlled territories and where there was no fighting. It was not always possible to get to the outskirts of Chernihiv: because of the danger, the territorial defense did not let them go there. Then the locals on wheelbarrows took the dead to the central streets, from where they were already taken by "ritualists".

"I remember, they brought the deceased to the morgue. And there an old man came, said that his spouse had died, asked to take him from Oleksandrivka (the outskirts of Chernihiv, which was regularly shelled by Russians with artillery and mortars — ed. But the old man promised to take us through the yards. We arrived, and there were shells exploding 50 meters away. It was horrendous. We threw that old lady into the car and quickly got out of there," Mykola recalls.

As for the bodies that could not be reached, dispatchers recommended to bury or take them to a barn or balcony... The data was recorded. And after the de-blockade of the city and the liberation of the region, the team collected the dead for another month.

The place where the shed with the dead was located was identified by a birch tree

In the village of Novoselivka near Chernihiv, it took a long time to find the shed where the relatives took the stepfather killed by the debris before leaving.

"The stepdaughter of the deceased called and told us where the house was located. We arrived — and there were ruins all around. She sends me a photo. We look, and there is no fence, no house... Then I noticed a birch divided in three, like in the photo. That's how we found out where the house was. Miraculously, the barn with the dead man survived," Marianna Vasylkivska recalls.

The bodies buried by relatives or neighbors were exhumed by the team members themselves. This should have been done by representatives of the "Spetskombinat", but they were busy with mass burials of military and civilians in temporary cemeteries.

"Spetssluzhba 00-34" has already returned to normal operation. After the experience, the ties in the team became closer, almost family-like. Everyone knows almost everything about colleagues — so much has been discussed during the shifts under fire. These people recall their experiences with tears and jokes. There is no humor in their profession. And above all, they dream that what happened will not happen again...

The text was prepared by the platform Memorial, which tells the stories of civilians killed by Russia and fallen Ukrainian soldiers. To report data on Ukraine's losses, fill out the forms: for fallen military and civilian victims.

Author: Natalia Naydiuk