Taking History Personally

By Volodymyr Kish

Most of you who read this column regularly know that I am fascinated by history.  This is not just intellectual curiosity at play here, as I firmly believe that our ability as human beings to manage our affairs on any level, be it personal or global and everything in between, depends greatly on our understanding of how we got here. I also believe that most of our failures as a society are due to the fact that few people take the trouble to understand history and learn the appropriate lessons from it.

Part of the problem stems from the fact that most people do not appreciate what history is.  They think it consists only of what is formally taught as “history” by the school system – i.e. a compilation of dates, events and famous personages that have graced the long march of the centuries and millennia since our ancestors crawled out of their pre-historic caves. That is certainly an element of history, but a rather superficial one. For history to be truly understood, appreciated and be of any practical value, it must be experienced on a personal level.

What does that mean? I will give you an example.  Those of you who are familiar with Ukrainian history over the past century, know that during World War II several million Ukrainians were sent into forced labour in Germany.  I can quote you precise statistics and refer to numerous texts that outline the economic, sociological and demographic impacts of this policy as well as the subsequent effect on post war refugee immigration.  There is no shortage of academic historical material on this.  But of what importance is that to me personally?

By contrast, I can tell you that two of those “Ostarbeiter” forced into servitude in Germany were my mother and my uncle.  Their personal recollections of the trials and tribulations they faced during those years, their struggle to survive, their narrative of how they managed to immigrate and find their way into Canada, the immense impact that the experience had on their lives - that personal history had a tremendous influence on my understanding of what it meant to be Ukrainian, and helped shaped much of my future interest and involvement in all things Ukrainian.

Similarly, I am sure most Ukrainians are by now familiar with the basic facts surrounding the Holodomor genocide of Ukrainians during Stalin’s infamous collectivization campaign of the early 1930s.  We know some five to ten million Ukrainians perished during that infamous period of time.  But quoting such statistics can’t begin to make the same impression as knowing that Kateryna Makarenko, a child of barely four years, died of hunger on July 9, 1933 in the village of Pershotravneve in Poltava oblast.  Another victim was Volodymyr Absit, who, seeing no other way out of the horrors of the Holodomor, hung himself on November 26, 1933 in the city of Zhitomyr.  It is when you put a face, a name, and a personal story on an event that it becomes something more than an abstract statistic.  It becomes real, it becomes something we can personally relate to as human beings.

This is why personal history is so important.  I have spent the past several decades since my parents passed away trying to find out everything I can about their early lives and experiences.  Unfortunately, while they were still alive and still blessed with good memories, I took far too little interest in the details of what they had lived through before they got to Canada, and I now regret this omission deeply. 

It is a sad fact that when we are young, we care only for the present and the future, and think little of the past.  It is only after we have experienced life and built up a little history of our own that we begin to appreciate the scope and importance of history to both our own lives and to the societies and communities within which we live.  Sadly, by the time we reach this state of wisdom, those folks who could most help us understand our connection to this history, namely our parents and those of their generation, are mostly gone.

That is why I strongly encourage everyone who has been on this planet for at least four or five decades, to take the time to set down the details of their lives on paper, or whatever media they are comfortable with, so that  their experiences can become part of the collective history of their families, their communities and their nations.  Every person’s story is unique and every person’s story is valuable.  I believe it is vitally important that each person, as they approach the end of their lives, write a personal autobiography of what they have seen and experienced, regardless of what they may think of the significance of their lives.  Each of these stories is like a vital thread in a large historical tapestry that collectively defines who we were and who we are.