With the recent passing on October 12 of Prof. Natalia Ishchuk Pazuniak, our American community lost one of the last experts in the field of the Ukrainian language and its history. She was also a pillar of the Ukrainian community in Philadelphia, and belonged to numerous organizations, continuing the tradition of her ancestors.
Through her maternal line, she was a descendant of the Polubotok, Myloradovych, Skoropadsky and Shulhyn old Ukrainian lines; it was her great-great aunt Yelysaveta Myloradovych who provided the funds for the Shevchenko Scientific Society, when it was established in 1873. This tradition of cultural and community activism greatly influenced Prof. Pazuniak’s life and choices.
She was born on February 24, 1922, in Kyiv, where the Shulhyns were among the leading families in the Ukrainian cultural and political life. The Ishchuk family soon moved to Rivne, and she completed the gymnasium there, and began the study of philology at Lviv University. Ms. Ishchuk was fortunate to be taught there by some of the best scholars in the field of Ukrainian and Slavic languages and linguistics. In Lviv, her professors included Roman Ingarden, Vasyl Simovych, Denys Lukiianovych.
While the events of World War II forced the family to flee to Western Europe, she was able to continue her studies after the war and obtained her diploma at the Ukrainian Free University in Munich. Among her professors there were Leonid Biletskyi, Yuriy Sheveliov, Yaroslav Rudnytskyi and Panteleimon Kovaliv.
In 1949, the family immigrated to the U.S. and settled in Philadelphia. There, Ms. Ishchuk soon married Roman Pazuniak and began her graduate studies at the University of Pennsylvania, with the linguistic historians and comparativists Alfred Senn and Antanas Salys. She specialized in Slavic languages and literatures, and earned an M.A., and then a Ph.D. in 1956. Her dissertation “The Vocative Case in the Ukrainian Language” reflected her deep interest in the history of the Ukrainian language and its typical characteristics.
Dr. Pazuniak taught Ukrainian language and literature at the University of Pennsylvania (1963-1983), Manor College (1956-1968), and Macquarie University in Australia (1984-1987). She was a full member of the Shevchenko Scientific Society, the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., and the Association of Ukrainian American University Professors.
Prof. Pazuniak’s graduate students at the University of Pennsylvania were cognizant of the respect that professors of other Slavic languages and Old Church Slavic showed towards her, in view of her extensive knowledge of the historical development of these languages. Her colleagues often asked Prof. Pazuniak to participate in their seminars and to contribute to their publications on linguistics.
Natalia Ishchuk Pazuniak in her graduation robes after receiving her Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania in 1956.
Her own book “Vybrani Studiyi” (Selected Studies, 2010) includes articles discussing such characteristics of the Ukrainian language, as the 12th century etymological development of vowel alternations/adjustments in positions of open and closed syllables (as in stil – stola, Kovaliv – Kovaleva). The author also discussed the irregular new trends when the diaspora speakers copied the recent practices of some Ukrainian speakers in Ukraine, who unknowingly followed the Russian language in terms of certain lexical and/or grammatical usage.
Dr. Pazuniak also lectured on and taught Ukrainian literature. She relied on the comparative approach to the subject, by considering specific Ukrainian literary works against the background of Western European trends and works. This methodology is reflected in her book “Lesia Ukrayinka: Ideya Svobody Ukrayiny u Spektri Svitovoyi Tsyvilizatstiyi (Lesia Ukrainka: The Idea of Ukraine’s Freedom on the Spectrum of the World Civilization, 2008). She also compiled and edited several publications, among them a collection of Ukrainka’s works translated into seven languages (1988).
In her private life, Dr. Pazuniak was a true Christian in her beliefs, as well as practices. She often donated her modest earnings to worthy causes, publications, and individuals. There were times during severe winter weather when homeless people needed housing; on extremely cold nights, social services would come and ask Dr. Pazuniak to help such needy Ukrainians. She would take in total strangers, rather than allow them to freeze outside. This was the response that her parents would have taken, as they had taken in Jewish families during the Holocaust.
On October 6, 1991, a Remembrance Presentation honored Raoul Wallenberg and Roman Ishchuk for sheltering Jews during the Holocaust; it was held by the Rider University Holocaust Genocide Center (in Lawrenceville, N.J.) and the Raoul Wallenberg Committee of New Jersey. Dr. Pazuniak (as well as her sister Maria Warwariw) testified at this presentation that her “father’s courage, fortitude and steadfastness in sustaining his Christian principles was one of the greatest lessons that he had taught us and all those who came in contact with him.”
Roman Ishchuk had sheltered several Jewish families in his own home, months at a time, while his two daughters helped to secretly prepare meals for a large number of people. It was both a personal risk (he was arrested and threatened with execution), as well as a risk to the lives of his whole family.
Dr. Pazuniak described how her Jewish dentist, Dr. Schuchman, who managed to escape being confined to the ghetto, turned to her for help. Since it was very risky to take more people to the Ishchuk home when her street was heavily patrolled, she took the dentist directly to a family friend, the poet and organizer of the Red Cross chapter in Ukraine, Dr. Kharytia Kononenko. The latter gladly opened her doors to a complete stranger. Dr. Schuchman survived, and after the war wrote a letter of thanks to the Ishchuk family. (Dr. Kononenko was not as fortunate; she continued her good works for a few more months, and in 1943, she was arrested and executed by the Nazis for helping members of the Ukrainian underground.)
While still in Rivne, Ms. Ishchuk participated in providing help to the Ukrainian resistance against the Nazis as well as the Soviets. While living in Philadelphia, she was an activist in several Ukrainian women’s organizations, serving on the editorial board of Our Life (published by the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America) for 30 years, and Ukrayinka u Sviti (the magazine of the World Federation of Ukrainian Women’s Organizations) for 20 years, as well as being active in the Ukrainian Gold Cross. Later she served as general secretary of the last Ukrainian government in exile until 1991, when Ukraine regained its independence.
Dr. Pazuniak followed in the footsteps of her ancestors, who for generations were stalwart supporters of Ukrainian culture and community, and personally participated in worthy undertakings. She will be remembered as a scholar and a community activist. She is survived by her sons Yuriy and Bohdan and their families, her grandchildren, great-grandson and niece.