FACES AND PLACES: It's DP, not PTSD. Remember? (06/11/06)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

It's DP, not PTSD. Remember?

I always admired my in-laws, Michael and Olympia Waskiw. They were DPs, displaced persons, refugees from the "workers' paradise" once known as the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics.

They were from the Berezhany area of western Ukraine. They had lived under the Soviets for a brief period, long enough to become intimately familiar with the Soviet "soft touch."

Michael was a school principal; Olympia was a teacher in his school. They were Ukrainian patriots and intellectuals and, as such, a danger to Soviet rule. On the eve of the German retreat from Berezhany, Michael inadvertently overheard some old-line Communists preparing for the Soviet "liberation." They were preparing a list of people that needed to be "dealt with." Michael's name was on the list. That was all he needed to hear. He went home, roused his family, and the next day they left, on foot, heading west. Lesia was 3 years old. They continued on, living for a time in Bratislava, finally ending up in a displaced persons camp in Berchtesgaden in the Bavarian Alps.

On the way they hitched rides on railroad box cars, trucks and buses. Lesia remembers hugging a tree and her doll, Halusia, as Soviet planes strafed the train they had been on. In Germany, the family endured American air raids. Olympia gave birth to Myron, Lesia's brother, during one particular air raid. The newborn was wrapped and handed to Olympia as the German doctor and assisting nurses ran to the air raid shelter. She took the baby, got off the delivery table and walked down four flights of stairs to safety.

In the displaced persons camps where they lived for almost four years, Michael taught in the provisional school established for Ukrainian youth, while Olympia took care of the children.

I heard bits and pieces of this story from Lesia and from her parents. I questioned Michael and Olympia about their journey but they preferred to talk about other things.

Did their experiences scar them for life? I never thought so. Lesia's father arrived in the United States at age 50, ignorant of the language, with no employment prospects. A man who I swear never weighed more than 110 pounds, he eventually went to work in a perfume factory performing manual labor for 25 years. He learned to drive a car and surprised the family one day by driving home in his newly purchased used Dodge. Did he complain? Was he angry or morose about the cards dealt him by fate? On the contrary, he often mentioned how lucky he was to be in America. His concern was more with relatives he left behind.

Olympia became a teacher in a Ukrainian Catholic school, where she worked for many years. She and Lesia sang in the choir. Olympia was active in the Ukrainian National Women's League of America.

The Waskiws were able to send both their children to college, and eventually built a home and retired to Kerhonkson, N.Y., near Soyuzivka, where Lesia and I, and our boys, spent many an enjoyable summer vacation. Mr. Waskiw was the local UNA branch secretary.

All of this came to mind as I was reading about Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) in "One Nation Under Therapy: How the Helping Culture is Eroding Self-Reliance" by Christina Hoff Sommers and Sally Satel. If anyone should have suffered from PTSD, I thought, it was certainly the Waskiws, who had endured Polish discrimination, as well as Nazi and Soviet terror; they left their whole life behind - family, friends, profession, possessions - to walk, run, ride, some 1,000 miles through foreign countries to sit in a displaced persons camp not knowing, from day to day, what lay ahead. They were originally scheduled to emigrate to Brazil, but Myron became sick so they stayed behind. Later, Lesia's aunt, affectionately called "Teta Lala" by family, managed to emigrate to the United States a few months before the rest of the family and became their sponsor.

As I read the Sommers/Satel book, I learned that PTSD began as the Vietnam Syndrome. In 1972, it was assumed that all Vietnam veterans suffered from it. Those who didn't have symptoms were told they were repressing their feelings and would suffer grave consequences years later. By the 1980s, the federal government ordered studies and PTSD was born. Today, a veteran fully disabled by PTSD collects $2,100 per month. Although only 15 percent of Vietnam vets served in combat, some 50 percent were diagnosed with PTSD.

Today, write the authors, numerous longitudinal studies have determined that the Vietnam Syndrome was greatly exaggerated. Some vets did suffer trauma but many of this group had serious mental and emotional problems prior to military service.

There was a time when following every catastrophe - Columbine, Oklahoma City, 9/11 - it was assumed that PTSD would kick in sooner or later. And the advice to victims was always the same: "share your feelings, don't hold back, let it all out, do it now or suffer worse symptoms later on."

Although some people undoubtedly do suffer from PTSD, the numbers are nowhere near those predicted earlier by mental health professionals. Therapists now believe that dwelling on one's trauma in prolonged therapy sessions actually postpones healing and makes it difficult to move on. Three cheers for common sense!

It has also been learned that traumatized people who have support systems to rely on - family, friends, religious beliefs - as well as something to live for, usually recover. They'll never forget what happened, of course, but they've moved on.

And that explains why the Waskiws - and thousands of other Ukrainians who endured horrors that most of us can only imagine - survived intact, stronger for the experience. Their ordeal was shared with others just like them, and there was a support system they could count on. Pathos doesn't always lead to pathology. Nor is all suffering meaningless.

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

| Home Page |