OBITUARY: Wasyl Kardash, 79, music ensemble director, nationalist (05/19/02)

OBITUARY: Wasyl Kardash, 79, music ensemble director, nationalist

by Olya Odynsky-Grod

TORONTO - Wasyl Kardash, founder and director of several Ukrainian Canadian church choirs, choral ensembles and bands, and member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalist and Holocaust Survivor died on March 26. He was 79

He taught several generations, myself among them, by example focusing on the life-affirming importance of hard work and perseverance. In Canada he organized and led several Ukrainian Canadian church choirs, choral ensembles and bands - Prometheus, Avanguard, Levada, Baturyn - whose names reflected the indomitable spirit he associated with the Ukrainian struggle for independence.

He was a firm but fair taskmaster. Out of earshot we fondly called him "Mister Three Foot Six." But while small in stature, his was a big spirit, not burdened by horrors to which many had succumbed. As I think back on his life, I realize how his unconcealed joy in bringing music to others, over decades, was both a tribute to those who perished and a lesson for the living. Maestro Kardash taught us that music outlasts the horrors that were perpetrated.

Born on January 22, 1923, in Novosilka in the Ternopil region of western Ukraine, young Wasyl showed such an early and remarkable talent for music. He had an opportunity to study and train either in Italy or Russia. The second world war cut short these prospects. Committed to freedom for Ukraine, he joined the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists. The Gestapo arrested him, along with his brother and father, on August 26, 1943. After brutal interrogations, all three were transported to Auschwitz. Wasyl was tattooed with No.155108; his brother, Mikhailo, No.155107, his father, Ivan, No.155106. His mother, Tekla, never saw them again. She died young and alone in Ukraine in 1950.

Slave labor awaited the Kardash men in the Nazi concentration camps of Mauthausen, Melk and Ebensee. Worked nearly to death and starving, weighing only 36 kilos, Wasyl Kardash was liberated by the Americans, literally pulled from a bundle of bodies, some dead, some dying, on Ukrainian Easter Sunday, May 6, 1945. Some might regard his personal resurrection on the most joyful day of the Christian calendar as a coincidence. But for this deeply religious man it was near-miraculous proof that he had been spared for a purpose; to make music that would bring his students and those around him a little closer to the eternal.

Neither his brother nor father ever fully recovered from the Nazi tortures. Mr. Kardash cared for them as best he could, to the end of their lives. A political exile, one among millions of Ukrainian displaced persons in post-war Europe, he found temporary shelter in a refugee camp, in Augsburg, Germany. Emigrat-ing to Vancouver in 1948, he moved on to Winnipeg, where he met the woman who in 1956 would become his wife, Larysa Khomenko. She became a lifelong, loving companion with whom he had two children, Virlana and Adrian.

Like most DPs, Mr. Kardash worked at many jobs, from being a bus-boy in Vancouver to an aircraft mechanic, doing whatever was needed for his family. Concurrently, he also began setting up choirs and marching bands for the Ukrainian Youth Association (SYM), making music until his 78th year. He also earned a master's degree in Slavic studies.

Among Ukrainians, those who have passed away are remembered 40 days after burial. And so, on Sunday, May 5, 57 years since he was freed from a Nazi hell, when I sat down with my family to celebrate Ukrainian Easter, we remembered Wasyl Kardash's liberation by singing the traditional Easter hymn, "Khrystos Voskres" - Christ is Risen - knowing that that neither the maestro's nation nor his music will die, thanks to men of true stature like him.

Olya Odynsky-Grod was a member of the Baturyn Marching Band and Dibrova Ladies Choir in Toronto.

| Home Page |