Sweet Lands of Liberty
I’m the son of Ukrainians who escaped the approaching Red army in WWII. My story is actually quite common among my generation of Ukrainian Americans — hundreds of thousands of us have each simultaneously lived in two different, but very similar, countries.
My heart has always been American. My soul, Ukrainian.
My grandparents fled war-ravaged Ukraine in the 1940’s. Ukraine didn’t just fight in WWII — it fought two wars at once: one against Hitler, the other against Stalin. Either army would crush you. Both would devastate.
My mother’s parents each left their villages to escape the Russian Army: my grandfather so as not to be conscripted. My grandmother, so as not to be raped. They, like many other ‘untermenschen’ were captured by the Nazis and forced to repair planes and tanks in slave labor camps, where they met. My mother was born shortly after VE Day in Augsburg, outside Munich.
My father’s parents, professionals in the cultural haven of Lviv, left with their infant son. My grandfather, Demian, after whom I was named, was a philologist, fluent in 11 languages. But he was also a soldier in the Ukrainian Insurgent Army and therefore on the Red Army’s most wanted list. He got as far as Vienna where he was captured by the ‘liberating’ Russians. It would take 19 years for my father and grandmother to learn his fate.
Both families were fortunate to be in the US zones of Germany after the war, where hundreds of thousands of Ukrainian refugees successfully begged for asylum rather than be forced to return to by-then Soviet Ukraine, controlled by a regime that exacted retroactive revenge on those who dared support an independent Ukraine. The US quartered these refugees in ‘displaced persons’ camps, converted from German army forts, in picturesque Bavarian villages like Mittendwald and Berchtesgaden.
They lived in those makeshift camps for five years, establishing schools, churches, sports clubs, choirs, newspapers and the Ukrainian scouts. They even tried to formally send Ukraine-in-Exile competitors to the 1948 Olympics. Those years in the DP camps were formative for my parents’ generation and when the US finally let them immigrate in 1949, they brought with them thriving organizations, determined to preserve Ukrainian culture, language, heritage and traditions to their new homes in the United States.
These immigrants knew that the Soviet Union was hell-bent on eradicating all things Ukrainian. Much like today’s Russia does not acknowledge Ukrainian statehood or even history, the Soviets made it a crime to display the Ukrainian symbol or flag. Careers were sidelined or halted if one did not abandon the Ukrainian language in favor of Russian.
For those immigrants who reached free countries around the world, it was an existential and moral imperative to preserve every little detail of being Ukrainian. They reasoned that they may be the last people to speak the language and keep its traditions…
Decades later, I was born into this Ukrainian diaspora in the US. In those early years, everyone and everything in my life was Ukrainian. The food we ate, the songs we sang, the church we attended, the way we celebrated holidays. I knew there was another language — I called it “from Ukrainian” to indicate it was foreign — but I didn’t speak a word of it until kindergarten.
Like others of my generation, I went to Ukrainian school on Saturdays, Ukrainian scout meetings during the school year and Ukrainian scout camps in summers. I would meet my wife at one of those camps when we were both junior counselors, doing our part to instill our heritage in the next generation. Our own children, now young adults, have followed suit — each of them is a fluent Ukrainian scoutmaster. Fully American, deeply Ukrainian.
My generation of Ukrainian Americans was steeped in tales of legendary Ukrainians fighting Russians through the ages. We learned of Ukrainian knights defending their lands from Muscovite invaders and countless seemingly larger-than-life figures. Seeing how President Zelenskyy has heroically galvanized the world to the Ukrainian cause — “I need ammunition, not a ride” — those tales of brave Ukrainian heroes don’t seem so far-fetched anymore.
We learned how the Kozaks formed the world’s first constitutional democracy in 1712 — twenty years before George Washington was born — only to be subjugated by Moscow. We memorized the names, dates and locations of the battles Ukrainians won and lost. We learned the patriotic call “Slava Ukraini!” (Glory to Ukraine!) and its thunderous response — Heroyam Slava! (Glory to the Heroes!). We would not forget our roots.
My mother’s parents were the proudest Americans I’ve every known. They celebrated their citizenship-naturalization days the way most people celebrate their birthdays. They both worked every Fourth of July — without pay — as a way of giving back to this wonderful country that gave them and their families a home. The country that let them be Ukrainian.
Partially because of all that we have here in America, my generation of Ukrainian Americans suffers from a collective case of survivor guilt. Our grandparents escaped to a free country but many relatives did not. We think about that a lot. On good days, it energizes us to volunteer and give back. On bad days it drives us to tears.
As a child, Ukraine was always mystical — that land we could only dream about. The look in my grandparents’ eyes when they talked about Ukraine was mesmerizing. Their voices softened and warmed, their gaze sharpened, their smiles widened. Like Tolkien’s Middle Earth, Ukraine was woven in the lore of a glorious past and — if we have anything to do with it — a glorious future. But, like the elves in that fanciful tale, there was always a deep sadness about Ukraine, because the stories were always about the Ukraine that will be, not the Ukraine that is.
But in 1991 the dream came true: Ukraine declared independence and shortly thereafter the Soviet Union collapsed. The first time I was in Ukraine was magical: the fairy-tales gave way to an even more amazing reality. It had streets and cafés and bars and laughter and tourists and concerts and… life. I heard the Ukrainian language on the streets — how many suffered so we could speak it openly? I saw the Ukrainian symbol on buildings and the Ukrainian flag everywhere. I met friends and family I had only heard about. I was in awe. Uncontrollably, I sobbed. I’ve been back every year since (except for Covid and now the war).
My father was in his early twenties when he finally learned that his father was alive, but sentenced to Siberia for over 20 years. When he was finally allowed to return to Ukraine in the 1970's, he was forbidden from doing any of the things he loved: sing in the choir he once directed, live in Lviv, teach. This linguist who was terrible with numbers was even assigned a punitive new job — accountant.
Somehow, my grandfather was granted a visa to visit us in 1989. Watching my father meet his father for the first time since he was two years old was the most beautiful and most heart-wrenching thing I’ve ever seen. To this day, I fall apart thinking about my grandfather speaking with his own son about the experiences he silently wished he could have been there to share. The saddest question I’ve every heard: “tell me son, who taught you how to fish?”
If there is one constant in Ukrainian history, it is this: War with Muscovy. As young Ukrainian scouts in the 1980’s we were taught, by a decorated Vietnam-veteran US Army Ranger Colonel, how to accurately lob a grenade. He explained that we should be prepared in case any of us is in Ukraine the next time Moscow invades. At least two of the guys from that camp have lived in Kyiv for the past 20 years, witnessing this war firsthand. Years ago, family in Ukraine told me they had hidden stashes of vintage WWII weapons in bunkers ‘for the next time Russia invades.’ Some things simply do not change.
Today’s war is this generation’s turn to fight off the Russians just like their grandparents and great-grandparents before them. We all knew it would come, we just didn’t know when. We had hoped the post-WWII economic ties and resultant Pax-Europa would last. Now we hope we’re not too late to save a country and maybe even Europe itself.
I’ve heard the Ukrainian resistance to Putin’s advance compared to that of the scrappy Americans of 1776. That’s an apt analogy in some ways, but England’s army was an ocean away and a powerful France entered the war on America’s side.
When this war started 8 years ago with the annexation of Crimea, my then 17-year old asked me if I was going to Ukraine to fight. “No,” I lied to him, “I’m too old.” He then asked “can I go?” Again, I lied, “No, you’re too young.” If an almost third-generation American can feel the call to defend an ancestral home 5,000 miles away and 78 years after his great-grandparents left, is it any wonder that so many Ukrainians who actually live there have picked up arms to defend their home and their hard won freedom? If someone invaded the US, wouldn’t we all do the same?
As Westerners, there’s lots each of us can do to help Ukrainians and Ukraine win this war. Please join in the fight so we don’t have another generation of refugees whose grandchildren can write a similar story decades from now.
