Day of Memory and Reconciliation: The Story of a Ukrainian Family that Survived WWII

My most sincere congratulations to each and every one of you on V-Day! Those who paid their price for victory and peace in WWII – and those who are doing the same today! – always have my enormous respect and gratitude.

If I may, I'd like to share something relevant with you on this special day.

One of my great-grandfathers (on my mum's side of the family), Ivan, was drafted into the Red Army and declared missing in action (most likely killed) during the Nazi invasion in autumn 1941; he never saw his daughter, my grandmother (born in 1942). 

Another great-grandfather, Stepan, was a major figure in a kolkhoz in Poltava Oblast [a kolkhoz, or collective farm, was a typical Soviet cooperative agricultural enterprise operated on state-owned land by peasants from a number of households – ed.]. When the Nazis invaded Ukraine, the Communist Party officials left him in charge of the local partisan movement. To be honest, there were not enough people or assets even to start this movement... Stepan was executed by the Nazis as a Communist in autumn 1942; he might have survived had it not been for another greedy Communist who gave him away.

My Granny, Hanna – the same one who never saw her father – once told me that her Mum would hide her, still a baby at the time, under the bench in their house, telling her: "If a bomb falls on us, it will kill me first." 

On another occasion, my grandmother told me another story from her Mum: a German soldier came to someone else’s yard in their village and saw a woman holding a child in her arms. The soldier approached the woman and carefully took the child from her arms. The shocked lady did not resist, but the German never actually hurt any of them. He hugged the child, let it go and said, crying (the way the villagers interpreted his words): "I have my own child, just like this one, waiting for me at home"…

A cousin of my grandfather's on the same side of my family, Semen Ponomarenko, was an Ostarbeiter. He was born in 1924, and as of May 2023, he is still alive (God bless him!). A humble man with sharp eyesight – he was a hunter – he told me his story: in October 1942, a polizei [member of the police that the Nazis recruited from local collaborationists in the occupied territories – ed.] came to their house and told him to pack his things. Semen was taken to the nearby railway station, where they put him and other "recruited" people on a train to Germany. He lived at a local farmer’s house in the city of Schramberg (Baden-Württemberg) and worked at a porcelain workshop, painting the newly made cups. There, he met Tetyana, a fellow Ukrainian and his wife-to-be. In April 1945, the French liberated Schramberg, and after a while, Semen managed to return to Ukraine. He found Tetyana again and married her. Sadly, Tetyana passed away in the early 2000s. Today, their grandchildren, Vlad and Liza, live in Germany.

The Nazis were a nightmare, of course, but the Communists weren’t any better – even worse in some ways. Soviet officials put my dad's father, Mykola, behind bars and sent him to a labour camp in Kolyma, Russia's north – just because he had been a POW. 

Grandpa Mykola was drafted into the army when the USSR started the Winter War with Finland. The Soviets lost that war, and I’m glad because I really hate that regime for what it did to my family; but it's too much grief when you start thinking how many lives were lost – all for Stalin's ridiculous ambitions.

In 1940, Mykola was re-deployed to Estonia and then to Poland. When the Nazis invaded the USSR in 1941, his unit retreated to Belarus; that’s where he was captured. In 1945, when he was free again, the Soviets prosecuted Mykola as an "enemy of the people" and, like I said, sent him to Kolyma. He was a veterinary doctor, so he worked as a reindeer herder there. 

After sixteen years far from home – two years of combat action, almost four years in German captivity and ten years in a labour camp – he finally returned to Ukraine in autumn 1955. Most unfortunately, I never had a chance to even see him, let alone talk to him; he died long before I was born.

That being said, war is never a nice thing. But nothing lasts forever, and neither will this war in Ukraine. So, wherever you all live, wherever you all come from – may none of your countries and nations ever have to find themselves at war again. 

I hope that one day, this proud country, this David who is fighting Goliath, will eventually have its very own hard-fought V-Day. A day of re-unions, endless hugs and kisses, conversations, stories told and heard, laughter and tears – a day none of us would ever dare to forget. 

Glory to Ukraine! Glory to the heroes! And – peace to each and every one of you.