On January 27, 1945, Auschwitz was liberated when tanks of the First Ukrainian Front broke through the enclosures.
Twenty-year-old Ihor Pobirchenko was the first to confront the horror perpetrated by the Nazis. Atop a tank, he saw humans hanging from the barbed-wire enclosure. They were alive, but barely: the fence was not electrified. The tanks rolled in.
Recently, Russia’s Foreign Affairs Minister Sergei Lavrov lashed into his Polish counterpart, Grzegorz Schetyna, for daring to dispel the popular World War II myth, that the Russians, not the Ukrainian division liberated Auschwitz, Warsaw and Berlin. It is still Russia’s practice to take credit for Soviet achievements, denying those of some 100 million non-Russians of the former USSR. This is in evidence today as Vladimir Putin wages spiteful wars with neighbors in a manner reminiscent of Soviet times.
My father spent nearly two years in Auschwitz for opposing the German Reich’s occupation of Ukraine. Over a million Ukrainians were incarcerated. I was brought up on his stories about those historic times.
He avoided the Gestapo for over a year, hiding, among other places, in the Redemptorist seminary where he had studied. This bit of family history was revealed by fellow seminarian, the metropolitan of the Ukrainian Catholic Church of Canada, at my father’s funeral.
When the Gestapo finally branded him with the Auschwitz concentration camp number, he had to endure the “welcome” line. That meant running the gauntlet with hundreds of “katsetnyky” (prisoners), as they were beaten with batons. This experience was shared by other katsetnyky who came to live in Winnipeg, including Dr. Michael Marunchak, the Rev. Semen Izyk, Stefan Petelytsky and Theodor Chimko. Some had health issues for life.
Anyone who fell was dragged off and punished; anyone who abstained got the same. Too often shots followed such “infractions.” Fear and terror ruled. The camp’s commandant had decreed: You are nothing; I am the law. Too often, corpses of those who were unable to deal with the sadism and sought a quick merciful end hung on the electrified enclosures. My father lost many friends in the mills of death, as the concentration camps were called.
He survived, living for nearly 50 years in Winnipeg, devoting his life to crossing Canada in the interest of his community.
Newspapers, churches, credit unions, children’s summer camps, the now $30 million Taras Shevchenko Foundation, establishment of the World Congress of Free Ukrainians attest to some of his achievements. He was particularly proud of the creation of the World League of Ukrainian Political Prisoners that battled international bureaucracy for the right to state that some 1 million Ukrainians who lived under Polish or Soviet rule had been incarcerated in the Nazi camps. He knew Canada from coast to coast, and loved it for its peace and security, the rule of law, even-handed politics and the helpful decency of a policeman. He hoped that Ukraine would “one day be more like Canada.”
Had he lived, he would see today’s terror in Ukraine as a repeat of history. He would equate Mr. Putin’s satanic determination to subjugate Ukraine to Hitler’s and, following the war, to Stalin’s. Father would be proud, so proud, of the courageous stand of the volunteer battalions holding the front in Ukraine. “I told you,” I can hear him say, “Ukrainians will never give up fighting for their country.”
YouTube videos show Russia operating in Luhansk and Donetsk, using children and women as human shields, destroying homes, burning, killing, mutilating. They are not for gentle eyes. Even more frightening in its ramifications is the negation of the “never again” promise made to humanity by Russia when the war ended, and over and over again in other international agreements and recent ceasefires.
My father would be incredulous that NATO is unable to find a solution to this trampling of international law and democracy on its doorstep. He would question why America has stopped short of punishing Russia from spreading global chaos. He would have a message for his Canadian government too: You have been a great friend to Ukraine, but now it’s time to call Mr. Putin on his actions.
Mr. Pobirchenko, the youth on the tank in 1945, became a well-known jurist in Ukraine. When last interviewed, at age 88, he was covered with medals and awards, including a U.S. medal for heroism. In soft Ukrainian, he said he joined the army to defend his native land from an aggressor. Today, his offspring, those of his comrades and my father’s are doing the same. My father has good reason to be proud.