I Remember Mama

By Lesya Jones

My mother Valentyna was born on February 10, 1909 of a Ukrainian father, Luka Panasiuk, and an aristocratic Russian mother, Maria Nezhalova, in Moscow.

When I was a teenager, my mother used to chide me for my untidy space and somewhat slovenly habits, On such occasions I would invariably blame my Russian heritage. Forgive me Mama!

My mother’s life story is unique but at the same it is, with variations, that of a very courageous Ukrainian woman who survived Stalin, Hitler, merciless Allied bombing, DP camps and hardships in The Promised Land.

In paying tribute to my mother, I am also honouring all those intrepid Ukrainian women — survivors of a ravaged century. They are part of our history and their experiences should be recorded for posterity.

Surviving Stalin

Some historians argue that Kazakhstan is proof that Stalin did not target Ukrainians in his 1933 genocidal famine.

My mother and father are eyewitnesses to Ukrainian losses in Kazakhstan. My father, a skilled mining engineer was dispatched to Kazakhstan to oversee and inspect the mines. When my parents arrived, they found emaciated Ukrainians who had been exiled to slave labour in the mines.

One afternoon, my mother heard a noise in the kitchen and went to investigate. She found a stranger, grabbing with his bare hands, a piece of meat from a boiling pot. Seeing her, he rushed out. My mother ran after him imploring, assuring that she would ease his agony, give more meat ... but to no avail. He was not a native! One bitterly cold morning, my mother opened the door to find a skeletal frozen body on the doorstep, not that of a native!

I hope now that at least some Soviet archives are more accessible so that our scholars and historians will take a closer look at Ukrainian losses in Kazakhstan.

Surviving Hitler

Caught between Stalin and Hitler, my mother, a resolute woman, persuaded my father to head West. And so with another Ukrainian family, a cow to feed us, a cart and a horse to draw us children, we began our perilous journey. With God’s Providence and my mother’s incredible courage and ingenuity we prevailed.

One day, a very young German commanding officer ordered us to halt, aiming his rifle at the men, “Don’t you know that the penalty for owning a horse is execution?” he shouted. My mother stepped forward, and in her impeccable German and authoritative voice ordered: “Put down your rifle young man!” And he did so automatically as if obeying his own mother. After she explained our predicament, pointing out that our’s was not exactly a war horse, he let us go. After the war, I thought about him, praying that, unlike the thousands German POW youths, he did not perish in Eisenhower’s internment death camps.

Surviving Allied Bombing

The recent devastation in Iraq brings back terrifying memories of Allied bombing. When we made it to Germany and the bombing became more intense, my mother devised an unsuccessful scheme to get us children in a shelter. She instructed my sister Oksana to hold a friend’s baby and knock on doors. “Nur fuer Deutsche,” we were told, although we could see that the shelters were half empty. And so we were exposed to death raining from the sky. Still, we were lucky for we never made to Dresden, where mostly refugees like us perished.

Survivng Dp Camps

The relatively few Ukrainians from Eastern Ukraine who managed to make it to the West, we were treated with suspicion. I vividly recall Russians entering our camp in the American zone to hunt for our boys who ran for their lives to escape repatriation. I recall my mother drilling me about our alleged whereabouts and birthplace in Western Ukraine. Much later, after the tortuous screenings, being kicked out of the DP camp and eventually reinstated, my mother interpreted for me the bitter-sweet comedy “Kapeliukh abo repatriiatsiia” - A Hat or Repatriation.

Surviving In The Promised Land

As other families dispersed to find a new life in Canada, the US, Great Britain, Argentina ... we were stuck in a DP camp in Landshut. Thanks to my mother’s best friend, a widow Maria Kenig, we were successfully sponsored by the Ukrainian American Catholic Action [Committee] and arrived in Philadelphia on February 20, 1950. For some time, we shared Mrs. Kenig’s one room with her daughters Lida and Irka.

My mother, like so many of our women in her situation, found work in a sweat shop where she toiled for many years sewing and eventually making tolerable wages doing “piece work.”. Sadly, she was left without a pension because the garment factory where she worked closed just prior to her retirement. My father tried very hard but was not able to master the English language. However, he did find suitable work drafting and later doing consulting for the Piasecki Aircraft Company.

It’s a pity that my mother did not get an opportunity to work professionally. She had an extraordinary gift for languages. She learned German while expecting me, and picked up others on our way to the West. As a young woman, she was especially effective as a math instructor. Her colleagues in the technicum , and even the principal, used to listen at the door where she was teaching to learn her secret for holding the rowdy youths’ attention.

As soon as word got around Philadelphia that my mother was fluent in English, requests for help with interpreting became overwhelming. A pragmatic woman, she limited herself mostly to helping those whom she considered most needy, namely the sick, with trips to hospitals, dentists, ophthalmologists ... She continued to apply her special gift almost to the end of her life.

The last time I visited my mother in the hospital, ill with cancer, I became despondent when I found her bed empty. Down the corridor, she was walking slowly with intravenous tubing attached to her arm. Apparently, she had been on a call to translate for a gravely ill Ukrainian patient.

My personal memories of my mother are somewhat frivolous. She fulfilled my every dream of sartorial splendor. Her shimmering gowns of taffeta, silk, velvet and chiffon still hang in my closets, arranged chronologically. In fits of nostalgia, I open the doors to touch them and recall the very moments of their creation and initiation. Thank you Mama!

My mother died of cancer on June 23, 2002. She rests next to her beloved husband, Panas, in South Bound Brook, New Jersey, in good company, among the Diaspora’s brightest and the best. My mother came to love America. She was a productive and model citizen, politically savvy to the very end. May American soil weigh lightly upon her.