FACES AND PLACES: Five lives, five countries (04/02/00)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

Five lives, five countries

Eugenia Sakevich Dallas is a survivor. Few people, let alone Americans, can match her journey, a trek that encompasses five lifetimes in five difference countries.

Her first life began in Ukraine, in the village of Kamiana Balka in 1925; she was the youngest of six Sakevich children. In her memoir, "One Woman, Five Lives, Five Countries," Eugenia recalls her earliest years as joyful. Her father owned some land and built the family house from the ground up. There were celebrations after each harvest, and the winter was spent indoors reading and playing with friends and family. One of Eugenia's most enduring memories is of riding in a sleigh over the soft, white snow cuddled warmly in her mother's huge coat and fur blanket.

By 1928, one sister, Natalia, married, and three brothers left home, Gabriel to a military academy, Grisha to Kyiv to study art, and Jasha to a mine in the Urals. Remaining were Eugenia, her brother Mykola, and her parents.

Eugenia's first life was savagely destroyed by Stalin's collectivization campaign. Mr. Sakevich, a successful farmer, refused to turn over his property to the Bolsheviks. Predictably, he was labeled "an enemy of the people," a "bourgeois landowner," a "kurlul." He was arrested during the winter of 1929-1930.

"The party people who appeared in Kamiana Balka were from distant places," writes Eugenia. "They didn't know farmers or farming. Party members from Russia, Georgia, Armenia or Belarus were sent to Ukraine ... That system meant great numbers of people didn't know what was happening in their home countries, and also that the Bolshevik functionaries and party militia had no attachment to the people they policed."

Her father returned after a few months, but was no longer the same man. He was re-arrested in 1931, never to be seen again, and the Sakeviches were kicked out of their house. Grisha was able to get Mykola into an orphanage, while Eugenia and her mother fled to another village. Since he was the son of a "kurkul," Grisha was forced out of the military academy.

Although, the harvest of 1931 was good, the Bolsheviks expropriated everything. "Stalin's militiamen guarded grain silos and stuffed their faces while peasants began starving," she writes. Soon after scavenging in a field for leftover potatoes, Eugenia's mother was arrested, charged with stealing from the state, and sentenced to three years of hard labor in the Baikal region of Siberia. Eugenia, then 5 years old, went to live with her married sister Natalia.

In 1933 brother Grisha was involved in a student protest at the university. He and the other students were arrested and sentenced to three years of hard labor building a canal north of Leningrad. He eventually returned, but in the interim Natalia and Gabriel had died. "Within six years," Eugenia recalls, "I lost my parents, a sister and a brother." With no one to care for her, Eugenia was sent to an orphanage near Kryvyi Rih. Grisha, her beloved brother and one-time guardian, later died of malnutrition.

Eugenia's second life began in 1942 when she was loaded onto a box car and shipped to Austria to work as a slave laborer in a Nazi munitions factory. For the first time she was in the West, where the other workers, especially the French, seemed "kinder, softer, more civilized." At the time, however, it really didn't matter. Seven-day work weeks and constant bomb attacks left her "too numb to feel fear or excitement or anything else that might be expected. I simply didn't care where I was," she recalls.

Eugenia escaped the Soviet "liberation army" and, following a set of fortuitous events, found herself in Italy when the war ended. Although still fearful of being forcibly repatriated to Soviet Ukraine, her third life was relatively stable for the first time in years. She obtained false papers that identified her as Irma Simsolo, a Iranian woman from Tehran.

Eugenia quickly learned to speak Italian (she already spoke German) and her life began to change for the better. Soon she was employed, first as a house maid, then a chorus girl and finally as a highly successful model in Milan, where she spent the next six years.

As good as life was, however, Eugenia was determined to come to the United States, an unrequited dream of her brother Grisha. She approached the International Refugee Organization (IRO) in Rome, and in August 1954, she boarded a ship for New York. America was the setting for Eugenia's fourth life. "The day I set foot in the U.S.A. was a true 'birth of freedom' for me," she believes. Thanks to friends in Italy she was able to explore professional contacts in the United States, and in time she was modeling again. Later, upon the recommendation of a friend, she vacationed in Los Angeles and developed more contacts. On the way back to New York she was asked to stop in Dallas to visit the Nieman Marcus store. Her good fortune continued and soon she was working as a model in Texas. There she met Charlie, whom she later married.

Charlie and Eugenia became the parents of a son, Gene. Unfortunately, Charlie turned out to be an alcoholic, and the marriage didn't last. Eugenia's divorce was the first of a number of setbacks. Gene became a drug addict in high school and Eugenia had her first heart attack.

Desperately trying to save her son, she enrolled him in a school in Switzerland, where his habit only worsened. Wanting to be near her boy, she moved to Geneva, where she resumed her modeling career. Later she met Stewart Dallas, a Scotsman from Glasgow.

Life number five for Eugenia began in Scotland. I could tell you what happened next, but I won't. Buy her book and discover the rest of the story for yourself. Hint: She returned to Ukraine, found her remaining siblings and is presently helping her homeland rise from the abyss. Gene, meanwhile, kicked his drug habit and became a successful businessman.

Her signed memoir can be purchased from Eugenia Dallas, 6702 Hillpark Drive, Hollywood, CA 90068 ($16.95 plus $2.25 shipping and handling). Once you read her book you'll agree with me that Eugenia's life has all the makings of a great Hollywood film. Think of it, Eugenia Sakevich Dallas survived the Great Famine, the Nazi occupation, forced repatriation and America's drug culture, while living in five different countries and managing a highly successful career.

Ukraine in modern times is an epic that has yet to be told. It consists of millions of individual life stories, most of which, unfortunately, are lost forever. It is for this reason that we need to support people who are filling in the gaps with amazingly heroic narratives of terror, peril and triumph.

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected]

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