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1 8 WWW.UNWLA.ORG “НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЛИСТОПАД 2018 A Letter from Godmother Wira Dear Goddaughter, Thank you for Our Life , which I received yesterday afternoon. I glanced through it and found some ar- ticles that would be of interest to me. I love history, past and still in progress, especially as it is con- nected to the lives of real people. Leonid Poltava I also came across a poem by Leonid Pol - tava, which brought back memories of my youth. During World War II, many Uk - rainians “happened to be” in Ge rmany. S hortly after the capitulation of Germany, there was a “drift” of all kinds of people moving in every direction. Some were going to- ward their home countries, East or West. Others were escaping as the Soviet army approached. My family was living in Regensburg, in Ba- varia, at this time, ready to pack and leave at the same time all the armies were approaching. I be- lieve Regensburg was the last city to fall before the capitulation (without a fight). We welcomed the American army. Many people were pas sing through the area at this time, including Ukrainians, and they were the best source of news about people we wanted to find. And it was in this manner three Ukrainians drifted into our path and became part of our lives: Leonid Poltava, Leon y d Lyman, and Mykola Manoilo. They stayed with us for several weeks. Of the three, Manoila was not a very pleas- ant character; he basically came for the meals and someplace to sleep. “Lionia,” as we called him, did not make appointments; he suddenly appeared at our hom e for whatever occasion. He was generally serious, not a happy person. Poltava and Lyman were different. They became part of our family, and during the time we were together, we became good friends. Lyman was the son of a Ukrainian priest who was murdere d by communists in front of his wife and children. During the time he spent with us, he was quiet and didn’t say much. But when he did, he had a sharp and unexpected sense of hu- mor. Poltava was serious but friendly and always pleasant. He was of Swedish or igin, one of many descendants of Swedish survivors of the famous Battle of Poltava fought by Hetman Ivan Mazepa and his Swedish ally King Charles XII against Rus- sia’s Tsar Peter I. Reminders of those times still ex- ist in the area . . . in a village located between Kharkiv and Poltava are hills called “Shvedski Mo- hyly” (Swedish graves), and old ammunition and wagons from those times are still found in the Merlo River. Leon y d Lyman All of us were living through a tur- bulent time, uncer- tainty about the f u- ture, and danger. Among other things, Soviet soldiers (or KGB agents) were ab- ducting people they believed “belonged to them,” and many people were disappearing from houses, trains, and streets. The Soviets even had a list of people that they sub- mitted to the U.S. Army, demanding that the peo- ple on this list be “returned” to them. This policy was enforced for a time and was then stopped by order of General Eisenhower. When my family arrived in the USA, we found Leon y d Lyman in New York. My uncle, who lived in New York, and Lyman soon became good friends. Lyman also kept in touch with my sister Marichka’s family, and I saw him at Christmas din- ner at her home several times. I had no idea about the whereabouts of Le- onid Poltava, but often wondered what had be- come of him. My answer came when I visited my own family’s graves at the Ukrainian cemetery in South Bound Brook, New Jersey. Poltava’s tomb- stone was in the same area as the graves of my fam- ily members. And it was thus that I discovered that Leonid Poltava (a pseudonym; his real surname was Johanson or Janson) had come to the United States.
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