Happy heavenly Father’s Day dad! Miss you, your humor, your wisdom, your gentleness. I learned so much from you, and not the least of which was to always have a creative project to work on!

Dad’s history

Dad’s family are Ukrainian and Dad, named Rostyslaw Kulish (but everyone called him Rusty for short) was born in 1926, in Pinsk, which at the time was in Poland and now is in Belarus. He and his siblings were raised in the small city of Dubno, which is about 100 km northeast of Lviv in Western Ukraine. Dad’s father worked as a train conductor in Dubno, which was a rail hub, and this enabled him to travel freely to many regions as he worked secretly to aid the cause for his beloved Ukraine. When work became scarcer, he found work as a choir conductor in one of the monasteries. As a result, Dad had a strong musical upbringing, learning all the church liturgies in Church Slavonic, playing violin then the trumpet and grew up speaking Literary Ukrainian as well as Russian.

When Hitler marched his military into Soviet occupied territories in 1941, seemingly to “free” the people, his soldiers were at first welcomed and seen as their liberators. Germany’s victory didn’t look promising, so the leadership had decided that workers in occupied areas would be used for Germany’s benefit. The German military set up fencing in a field near the railyard in Dubno, where soldiers went house to house and building to building, rounding up young, able bodied people, and Dad was working as a clerk when the soldiers took him to that field. Dad’s Mother came by to bring a cardboard suitcase for each of her children and told the soldiers to “Take good care of my children (her two youngest), as they are precious to me”. In her heart she was sending them to something better than what they had been enduring for many years.

The view of the German military as liberators quickly changed when the brutal treatment of the detainees, who were packed into freight cars without food or sanitary facilities, soon became known in Ukraine. The Nazi German term for them was Ostarbeiter “Eastern worker”, a designation for foreign slave workers taken from occupied Central and Eastern Europe to perform forced labor in Germany during World War II. Survival wasn’t guaranteed; many people died from the terrible conditions of the transit and later from the packed conditions in the barracks, the meagre food rations or perhaps having been shot by the soldiers for a minor offense. The women were also subjected to rape, which I learned from reading and not from anything any of the Ukrainian women specifically said, except to say “the Russians and the German soldiers were brutes, animals” so what happened to them stayed a secret.

My father and his older sister were taken from their home town by German soldiers when he was around 17, and having survived the brutal conditions of being transported from Dubno to a slave labor camp in German territory, they were put to work in a factory making bullets for the German war effort. He learned to speak fluent German from those days, living depended on it.

Dad was able to survive because he was one of the men who cut off pieces of metal tubing they were transforming into bullets and he would surreptitiously put slim cuttings into his pocket to later scratch out Ukrainian embroidery or Easter egg designs to create beautiful rings. He and a couple of enterprising men risked their lives to be able to trade them for cigarettes with the German soldiers guarding them.  

Thankfully the soldiers overlooked these thieving trespasses, for their girlfriends loved receiving the beautiful rings. Dad didn’t smoke, so he traded the cigarettes for extra food rations. Either one of these activities could have gotten him shot on the spot. I remember his telling stories of the men being marched alongside a railway track, from their barracks to the factory, and if there were some wheat or corn grains that had fallen on the ground from passing rail cars, he would pretend to tie his shoe to be able to scoop up a fistful or two to shove into his pockets. He said the constant fear of being shot lived in them day and night.

When the Allies came into German occupied areas and freed the slave labor camps and the death camps, the liberated prisoners were put into “Displaced Person” or DP camps. It was only much later they were free to go wherever they wished, but unfortunately returning home wasn’t a safe option as Ukraine wasn’t free, because while the German military retreated, the Soviets advanced in Ukraine and took it back.

My Aunt had met and fallen in love with a Canadian soldier who was stationed in Austria, and with Germany’s surrender, his unit was returning to Canada. Dad’s sister decided that she was going to follow her soldier to Toronto, while a number of liberated Ukrainians were going to various cities in Canada and the USA. Dad had made friends with some men who were going to try their luck in Montreal, and since he had nowhere else to go, he went there too. He learned to speak English by reading comics in the newspaper, and at first could only find work tarring roofs, but by going to night school, he became a draftsman. Living in Montreal also required him to learn some French, but by then, his multi lingual abilities no doubt helped him.

As with most survivors of war and trauma, they bottled up their terrible experiences, shoved the memories deep down inside of themselves and tried to live normal lives afterwards, marrying, having children, etc. Some struggled for the rest of their lives with PTSD, mental health and anger management issues, alcohol addictions, as well as various health issues created from their time of captivity and extreme deprivation.

Dad struggled to speak of those times and instead of drowning his pains in alcohol, he plunged himself into his music and into helping build musical endeavors in the Ukrainian community in Montreal, which ranged from holding community concerts and operettas, to creating a youth orchestra from the ground up and writing all the church liturgical music from memory.

No doubt because of what he had endured and witnessed, he became a staunch pacifist and would avoid altercations, finding refuge in writing and teaching music, repairing old vehicles or in doing handy-work around the house.

Dad contracted cancer and passed away around 34 years ago when my daughter was just a baby. I wish Dad had lived longer, there were so many times in my life I needed his gentle words. I don’t think we ever “get over” the death of a beloved parent, we just keep them in a special place our heart.

 ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥ ♥

Blessings!
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Tamara

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