“Kraiany”

 

Walter Kish


I was at the funeral of an old family friend, Walter Lech, last week.He was 87 when he finally succumbed to cancer, the last of a select group of Ukrainian immigrants who had played a significant role in the life of my parents and indirectly my own as well.
To my father, he was a “kraian”, someone who came from the same village in Ukraine as he did.This village was called Sokolivka, a medium sized rural settlement of some thousand souls between Brody and Busk about 75 kilometers east of Lviv.I have been there many times, and aside from its residents, there is nothing particularly distinctive about it.It is rather flat fertile countryside, with some wooded areas, and a branch of the StyrRiver running through its eastern boundaries.At the north end, there is a large pond where the local fishermen like to congregate, though catching fish is more of a theoretical than a real possibility.
Starting in the 1920’s when the area was still part of Poland and continuing through to the wave of post war DP immigrants, Sokolivka saw a fair number of its sons and a few of its daughters find their way to Canada.Some like my father, came by choice during the 1920’s, and some like his “kraiany” Walter Lech and WasylSirskyj were veterans of various official and unofficial Ukrainian fighting forces, who were forced to flee during the Second World War by the approach of the unstoppable forces of the Red Army.In any case, some dozen or so of these “Sokoliviany” eventually settled down in Southern Ontario where they sought each other out and became part of what can only be described as an extended family.

Being a “kraian” was indeed like being part of the family.In the absence of parents, brothers, sister, uncles and aunts who had either perished during the war, or were trapped behind the Iron Curtain, “kraiany” became surrogate family.They were a strong psychological bridge to the life, culture, history and family left behind, and fulfilled an important emotional and spiritual need for those displaced from home and family by economic or political circumstances.

They would gather together often to reminisce about the lives and the loved ones they left behind.They would debate about both the past and the future of their mother country, their “RidniyKrai”.They would share with each other all the news and gossip they would get from the carefully worded letters received from relatives left behind in Sokolivka.

As a youngster, I would sit in the background and absorb both the content of their banter as well as the spirit and emotion.It seemed to me that their world was centered on this little “selo” or village called Sokolivka.Although they had completely new lives, futures and families here in Canada, something important became frozen in time when they were forced to leave Sokolivka.Something remained unfulfilled, some wound was left unhealed, some hole was left in their soul that could never be filled.

Towards the end of his life, my father was able to return once more to the village where he was born and raised.Although I was not there with him, I am told that it was a deeply moving and emotional experience for him.I asked him about his impressions of it when he returned, and he told me that it had not really changed much in the more than fifty years that had passed since he left it as a young man.The house where he had been born in was still standing, looking pretty much the same as when he had left it.He was happy that fate had granted him the opportunity to visit it again.Yet, though he wouldn’t admit it, I also sensed a certain disappointment, a melancholy he could not understand.Although he didn’t realize it at the time, the village may not have changed, but he had.

And now they are all gone – Walter Lech was the last of them – Kish, Sirskyj,

Shach, Zrobok, Lewko, Hawrysz, Tychowecki, Dendiuk and undoubtedly several more that I have forgotten, have all passed on into another undoubtedly more peaceful existence. Their many descendants live on, but that close circle of “kraiany” is no more.While they were alive, Sokolivka existed not only as a village in western Ukraine, but as a hope and a dream in the minds of those that had been forced to leave it behind.