Ukraine
Documents reveal information on Ukrainian heroes of the French Resistance
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TORONTO – Former Hamilton Spectator photographer Leon Hloba, 88, died in Dundas, Ontario, back on December 31, 2012. When his surviving sister Zhenia Maslany opened his safety deposit box, she found documents that confirmed some of the stories about her brother during World War II. He had not talked about that time, but the documents prove that he led a group of Ukrainian soldiers to mutiny against their German overseers and then to become part of the French Resistance. Ms. Maslany, with her niece Nadia Klein, brought the documents to the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center (UCRDC) – whose archives hold a lot of material relating to Ukrainians in the second world war – on November 20, 2013, so that their significance could be deciphered. The story began in 1942, in German-occupied Ukraine.