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FRIENDS Айріс Акагоші у своєму городі, серед квітів Iris Akahoshi in her garden. Friendship provides for one of the most beautiful and gratifying experiences in our lives. The understand ing, trust and love shared by friends creates a remarka bly strong bond, one that nourishes faith and hope, insures support, instills self confidence and a new impe tus to the joy of life. The story of the friendship of poet Zinovij Krasiw- skyj in Ukraine and an American women, Iris Akahoshi in New York City, is a very touching journey through the scope of human emotion. He, an intellectual, a man deeply committed to justice and the love of his nation was, as thousands of other Ukrainians, deprived of his liberty by the Soviets and sentenced to do time in Siber ian labor camps, as well as to several years in an insane asylum on the charge of “anti-Soviet agitation and pro paganda.” She, an architect by profession, hailed from sunny California, was a woman of immense sensitivity, favored the creative arts, loved nature and animals and despaired at the plight of the poor and homeless. They met through letters. For ten years their friend ship nurtured a thin thread of hope for survival and kept the spark of human dignity alive and thriving. Iris Akohoshi was a member of Amnesty Interna tional in New York. From them she received Krasiw- skyj’s name. The organization encourages the writing of letters to prisoners of totalitarian regimes, thereby uplifting their morale and letting them know that the outside world has not forgotten them. For a whole year, every two weeks, Iris wrote a let ter or postcard to Zinovij Krasiwskyj. Her discourse was chatty — she wrote about her plants, her pet cats, about her everyday life, about her aspirations, her dreams. It wasn’t until a year later, in August 1978, that the first response arrived from Zenovij. The day that response arrived was like a holiday for the entire New York Amnesty group. In July of 1978 Krasiwskyj was released from a psy chiatric hospital where he was forcibly treated with drugs, which caused his cardiac problems and a bleed ing ulcer. The release, due to deteriorating health, was prior to the expiration of a 17 year sentence based on the charge of “anti-Soviet propaganda”. He was arrested in 1976 for membership in the Ukrainian National Front and contributing to its magazine. While in Vladimir Pri son, he was caught circulating his poems, was ruled “non-responsible” by a psychiatric commission and confined to insane asylums for several years. On August 1983 the Washington Post published a series of letters which Krasiwskyj and his second wife Olena wrote to Mrs. Akahoshi over the span of ten years. Following are some of them, as well as excerpts from some and they tell a story of survival. This first letter was just prior to his release from the hospital. 8/12/78 Dear Mrs. Irena: Your postcard made me very happy and I bless the moment when you “conceived” it. From the stomach ulcers, chronic gastritis and other numerous ills I feel weakened. I often have heart seizures. I have thrombophlebitis and in 1975, in the Smolensk hospital I had several heart attacks. Somewhere between 1953 and 1955, when I worked in a mine, I had several serious accidents which involved my head. My spine was damaged, and I still feel the aftereffects. I was declared an invalid of the second category. From Lvov I was transferred — or rather, they rid themselves there of a troublesome patient. But here in the rural backwoods it is quieter. I am 10 kilometers from my home. The woods that sur round the hospital are part of the Carpathian mountains, and these mountains are part of every cell of my body. For 19 years I dreamed about them and I am glad, in spite of the fact that I have to live in a “durdom" (home for the insane). This is what we call the psychiatric hospitals. Please write to my home address. This is where my sons live (the older is 16, the other — 13), as well as my ex-wife, who is at the present my offi cial guardian, as I am legally considered mentally ill, irresponsible for my actions and incapacited. ’’НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЖОВТЕНЬ 1987 25
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