Seventy years ago, on November 23, 1947, the Chicago Tribune Press Service’s correspondent Hal Foust, reported about a 21-year-old Ukrainian partisan fighter named Olga, who with a small troop of seven male fighters had recently surrendered to the U.S. authorities in the occupied zone of Germany. She did not want to identify herself further because her relatives in Ukraine would be likely enslaved or killed by the Reds because of her deeds.
“Her five-foot figure may lack that ‘new look’ but it has the old-fashioned charm of sturdy capabilities. Olga, the daughter of the Kozaks, is an unwilling citizen of Russia, detained by the United States occupation army for possible repatriation. If sent back home, executed as a rebel probably would be her fate. She has been a combatant in the little-publicized guerrilla fighting behind the Iron Curtain which she and her thousands of co-belligerent describe as their war for Ukraine independence from the Kremlin,” Mr. Foust wrote.
Comparing Olga to Molly Pitcher of the American Revolution, Mr. Foust noted how – despite Olga having seen more fighting than Molly Pitcher – Olga would unlikely be remembered in history for two reasons. “First, her cause is facing defeat by the combined troops of Russia, Poland and Czechoslovakia. Secondly, there are thousands of female rebels – or women patriots, depending upon the viewpoint – fighting the Red armies in Ukraine.”
Olga explained her beginnings in the resistance against the Soviets, “I enlisted in the partisan army as a nurse in 1945, because Bolshevism is ruining my country, which suffered so much from the Germans and from the Russians during the war. Ukraine fights for its independence, to free itself from Bolshevism, forced labor, hunger and police terrorism.” Olga then recounted that she carried a pistol and had experience firing an automatic pistol. “Red Polish forces attacking our partisan hospital in the Polish Ukraine last January. Three of our girls were killed in that fight, but we saved the hospital. I was not in one of the women’s infantry companies but I fought again in saving a first aid station from an attack which cost the lives of four girls.”
“Of course,“ she added, “I was in many small skirmishes. Guerrilla warfare is like that. We had a brush with Bolshevik soldiers near the Polish-Czech border, one of our men being killed, when we were sent on this mission to Germany.”
At the same time as Olga and her unit crossed into Germany, a larger band of 112 Ukrainian partisans had also entered Germany with the same goal – to bring news of the Ukrainian rebellion against the Soviets from behind the Iron Curtain.
Olga was asked if she wanted to go to America, she said, “I would love to go to America – after I finish helping Ukraine win its independence.” She was asked if she had a sweetheart in the army, and replied, “No. When there is one woman soldier with 126 men soldiers she cannot pick one as a lover and remain friends with all.”
Source: “Sturdy Olga, 21, tells of fight to free Ukraine, slips through Iron Curtain into U.S. zone,” by Hal Faust (Chicago Tribune Press Service), The Ukrainian Weekly, December 8, 1947.