University of Richmond students visit Lviv's Ukrainian Catholic University (07/20/03)

University of Richmond students visit Lviv's Ukrainian Catholic University

by Iryna Babych and Matthew Matuszak

LVIV - Five students from the University of Richmond in Virginia visited the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv in May. They were led by Prof. Walt Stevenson, a teacher of classical studies at Richmond and a visiting professor at the Lviv Theological Academy (now UCU) and Lviv State University in 1997-1998.

Their trip was part of a course devoted to the ethnic roots of the drastic change that Lviv suffered from 1939 to 1945, Prof. Stevenson explained. "We are also studying the Polish underground, NKVD, Gestapo, Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky with the Studites, and Ukrainian resistance, in addition to the Holocaust," he added.

One of the students, Przemeslaw Polaski, is a native of Warsaw who is interested in Polish resistance movements under the Soviets and the Nazis in Lviv. The rest are non-Slavic Americans who got enthusiastic about the topic, including African American Lesley Byrd, who researched the phenomenon of minority ethnic groups passing in mainstream culture.

First-year student Lauren Skiles is probably the most deeply interested in the topic, Prof. Stevenson noted. "Her goal is to become a professor of Eastern European studies, and she's already taking Russian and German language classes. She's writing on the role of the NKVD and Stalinist policy in inciting anti-Semitism in World War II Lviv. Her paper includes an in-depth account of the great Ukrainian Famine as a precursor to Stalin's plan for western Ukraine," Prof. Stevenson explained.

The students in this group were in Lviv from May 15-20 and 24-28. They visited the UCU a number of times and stayed at the university's dormitory. One highlight of their visit to the university was inspecting the archive of the Institute of Church History, which is documenting and recording the underground history of the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church in the 20th century. A lengthy discussion with vice-rector Myroslav Marynovych, also director of UCU's Institute of Religion and Society, was another high point.

One of their guides was American Mark Strauss, who, according to Prof. Stevenson was a 9-year-old assimilated (Polish) Jew when the Soviets invaded his home town of Lwow (Lviv). He survived both Soviet and Nazi atrocities thanks to the kindness of a Polish woman whose grandchildren still live in Lviv and who are now his good friends. Prof. Strauss gave the group a tour of his old neighborhood, located near Lviv's Lychakivskyi Market.

Their second guide was Yuli Sterenberh, another native Leopolitan. Mr. Sterenberh escaped the Nazi invasion of Lviv with his family in 1941 and returned after the war. He has lived in Lviv ever since and has amassed a huge archive of documents on ethnic relations in Lviv in the 20th century. Prof. Sterenberh showed the group the former Jewish ghetto bounded by Vulytsia Chornovolia, which was all but destroyed except for three buildings, and the site of a Nazi concentration camp near the Jewish part of the Yanivsky Cemetery.

Lviv's Polish cemetery and the wooden churches and historical buildings in Shevchenko Grove (Shevchenkivskyi Hai) also were part of the tour.

The group traveled on May 21-23 to Kyiv, where they saw the mass grave at Babyn Yar, the sobors of St. Michael, St. Cyril and St. Sophia, and the Kyivan Monastery of the Caves (Pecherska Lavra).

In preparation for their trip to Ukraine, the students participated in what Prof. Stevenson described as "a very successful conference" held at the University of Richmond on April 5: "Lemberg, Lvov, Lviv, 1939-1946." Prof. Stevenson noted that at the conference "one of the Holocaust historians surprisingly finished his talk with an ode to Father Omelian Kovch, who saved 600 Jews, was tortured by the Gestapo and spent the last couple years of his life in Majdanek, where he was eventually gassed." Blessed Kovch was one of the Ukrainian martyrs beatified by Pope John Paul II on June 27, 2001.

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