.

In the interwar and postwar periods (after all, the same as today in many cases), women had to persistently fight for their place on the cultural arena authored and directed by men. Women were treated as reflection of male stereotypes and desires. At the same time, it presented another temptation for women of an additional career "bonus" in the form of "allowances for the beauty" – provided a woman agreed to accept such role. For many women, another additional obstacle was also in their origin: interwar Poland and USSR – not to mention the Nazi Germany – were the states not quite minorities tolerant.

Stories of Lviv-based female writers mentioned during the walk are similar and different in many aspects. Zuzanna Ginczanka, Iryna Vilde, Rachel Auerbach, Milena Rudnytska, Katria Grynevycheva, Anna Kowalska, Halina Górska, Maria Strutynska, Debora Vogel, Olha Duchyminska, Daria Vikonska were of different ethnic origin (Polish, Ukrainian, Jewish), and wrote in different languages. Even though they mostly walked the same streets, their paths never crossed due to a relative isolation of different ethnic cultural milieus in the city. However, for each of them, Lviv was an important topos: some of them lived there for all of their lives, while for others, the city was a brief but bright episode.

There is another point that became a shared dramatic experience for all these female writers – the Second World War. Some of them failed to survive it but even the few survivors have not returned to Lviv to try to find their place in a new socialist realm. There are only two such women among the heroines of the walk – Iryna Vilde and Olha Duchyminska. However, they, too, even though they remained friends but found themselves on the opposite sides of Soviet repressive machine…

Iryna Vilde

Iryna Vilde is one of the brightest and most controversial personalities in Lviv and broader in Galician Ukrainian language literature of the 20th century. One of the most rebellious authors before the war, later Iryna Vilde fully merged within the Soviet cultural establishment and became (at least explicitly) an organic element of Communist ideological machine who still provokes opposite attitudes and causes polemics.

Iryna Vilde

Iryna Vilde (real name — Daryna Makohon) was born in 1907 in Chernivtsi. As a child, she first moved to Stanislaviv, and later to Lviv, due to her father’s conflict with Romanian authorities. In 1928, Iryna Vilde started the Slavic studies at Lviv University (back then — named after Jan Kazimierz). She was part of Ukrainian linguistic and ethnic minority at the University: according to a so called "numerus clausus", since Ukrainians could only constitute up to 15% of students.

Main building of Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. Source: Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe, 1-N-3177

Vilde studied at Lviv University until her fourth year, and later quit the studies. According to some sources, it was due to financial hardships, while others claim she was connected with the Ukrainian Military Organization. Next important city in her biography was Kolomyia where Vilde worked in a "Woman’s Fate" magazine, which was her first active engagement with the female emancipation movement.

At the same time, she was actively writing her texts: a collection of her novellas "Chimeric Heart" comes out, and a "Pinned Butterflies" novel. They immediately become well-noted events in Galician literary life. In 1935, Vilde was awarded with the second prize of the Ivan Franko Society of Writers and Journalists immediately causing heated debate. In fact, Vilde, unlike many other contemporary Ukrainian female writers, such as her counterpart authors Katria Grynevycheva, or Natalena Koroleva, intentionally never touched upon any historical patriotic topics, and advocated for the right of Ukrainian literature to respond to universal issues, and tell about a “human heart.”

What was Vilde writing about? About hardships a woman had to overcome in a patriarch community; about objectivation of a woman’s body that was often treated as "men’s property;" about "trading with" female virginity, and psychological and physical power of parents over daughters, of husbands over wives. Vilde revealed her vision of the role of Ukrainian literature in her interview with Mykhaylo Rudnytskyi in 1936. Interestingly enough, both Vilde and Rudnytskyi, once some of the most pro-European Ukrainian authors in the prewar Galicia, after the war stayed in Ukraine and consistently showed loyalty to Soviet ideology.

Natalia and Yarema Polotniuk, a daughter-in-law and a son of the writer, in the afterword to her reprint of the prewar novels (2007), wrote:

"Vilde, the same as other intelligentsia of the "second wave of emigration", could flee to the West in 1944: the writer was fluent in French and German, and also her mother’s relatives lived either in Austria or in the south of Germany." Her choice to stay in the Soviet Ukraine was explained by her daughter-in-law and her son by her "Roman-style" upbringing that she took from home, and that taught her to stay loyal to her homeland and "share the fate of her people."

The personality of Iryna Vilde’s first husband still causes some ambiguous attitude. He was Yevhen Polotniuk, a forestry engineer by background, who was delegated in 1941 to work in a Carpathian village of Mykulychyn hosting forest property of a metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi. Historical sources offer some seemingly controversial information. On the one hand, during the war Polotniuk is said to collaborate with Red partisans under Sydor Kovpak, while since 1939, he had been active in Ukrainian liberation movement, and even was invited to work in the government of Yaroslav Stetsko. All of the facts are true. The truth of the fact is that Polotniuk played an important role of a liaison between the two powers, as part of the “Storm” operation planned by Stalin that implied situational cooperation with the Ukrainian Insurgent Army to eliminate Germans as a common enemy. In 1943, he was arrested and shot by Gestapo, while the wife with a baby warned by the Wehrmacht soldiers managed to flee grabbing only the baby cloths, a typewriter, and a manuscript of the “Richynski Sisters” novel.

Caption on the reverse of a photo: "Yevhen Polotniuk, Iryna Vilde, and a little Yarema Polotniuk is peeking in. Sliyko (engineer) 1940."

.

Iryna Vilde fled from Mykulychyn to Lviv where she was first sheltered by a good friend, a writer Olha Duchyminska, at 10 Gołąba Street (presently - Verkhratskoho), to repay to Duchyminska many years after, when in 1958, the repressed and later rehabilitated Duchyminska was looking for a shelter in Lviv.

Building at 10, Verkhratskoho Street. Photo by Vasyl Rasevych

Back in the period when Yevhen Polotniuk worked with Soviet partisans, Iryna Vilde made friends with Sydor Kovpak, a long-time member of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine and a deputy of the Verkhovna Rada of the Soviet Union. His patronage certainly played an important role in Iryna Vilde’s career promotion in the Soviet times: she was a deputy of councils of almost all levels – from the city council of Lviv to the Supreme Council of the Ukrainian SSR, and a head of Lviv organization of the Union of Writers of Ukrainian SSR. She has multiple times been delegated with other authors to capitalist states (USA, Japan), which must have meant a non-insubstantial loyalty. Iryna Vilde had to make concessions to Soviet authorities also in her creative work: she had to add a love storyline to her novel “Richynski Sisters” for one of the female characters and a communist. She had to “pay back” for the publication of her novels (the latter, and the “Adult Children") with essays on the development of Soviet villages.

It is obvious that due to Kovpak, Iryna Vilde could get away with such impudent acts as letters to authorities to advocate for Ukrainian dissidents, or a church marriage with her second husband Ivan Drobyazko (in fact, Vilde was given an admonition and expelled from the Union board).

.

The latter fact is also unusual since Ivan Drobyazko was not only an engineer by profession, but also a KGB colonel by office. In marriage with Drobyazko (1950–1960), Vilde lived in an apartment at 33 Kryvonosa Street, and also together with her husband, they established a summer villa in the village of Dora near Yaremche. Her both homes hosted a bohemian company. Vilde is known as a good host and a soul of Lviv literary community.

Memorial tablet on the building at 33 Kryvonosa Street. Photo by Yaroslav Tymchyshyn

Another complicated story is related to Vilde’s younger son Maksym (from her first marriage). In addition to nationalist views, he was also prone to radicalism and obsessed with weapons and pyrotechnics. During his 2nd year of studies at Lviv University, he founded an organization "Black Arrow of Death," and later volunteered to go to militia in order to hand in an illegal pistol and offer his cooperation. Certainly, he was arrested and expelled from the Komsomol, and from the university. In order to have her son resumed, Iryna Vilde agreed to condemn activities of a dissident poet Ihor Kalynets, and submitted the respective article into the regional party newspaper.

.

The marriage with Ivan Drobyazko broke, due to the husband’s adultery, and Vilde moved to her new and last address at 2 Chumatska Street (Professors’ Colony). In the last years of her life, Iryna Vilde suffered the memory loss. She passed away in 1982, and was buried at Lychakiv cemetery.

In a house at Chumatska Street, there lives Nataliya Polotniuk, Iryna Vilde’s daughter-in-law, a founder of the Western Ukrainian Women’s Union named in honour of Iryna Vilde. House at 2 Chumatska Street – the last resort of Iryna Vilde. Photo by Myroslava Liakhovych

Rachel Auerbach

In the interwar period, at Lviv Jan Kazimierz University, there studied about 30% of female students. Another interesting fact is that among the ethnic groups, the largest share of women were Jewish. The fact can be explained by a higher rate of Jewish girls who attended secondary schools, since the common practice was to send girls to secular schools (mostly to private gymnasia, with the following straight road to the university) while boys were sent to conventional higher religious schools, the yeshiva.

Jewish students were mostly leftists in their views, they were active in public life, and established organizations and associations. In Lviv University, in the interwar period, there was a proactive Society of Jewish Philosophy Students. It was within this organization, that in the early 1920s, there met two talented Jewish poetesses, and students of philosophy and psychology: Rachel Auerbach and Debora Vogel.

A feminist, a writer, a critic, a translator Rachel Auerbach (Yiddish: Rokhl Auerbakh) was born in a village (presently – a town) Lanivtsi in Podilia. At home, Polish must have been spoken, but since her childhood years, she also has heard Yiddish that she loved for the rest of her life. Rachel Auerbach. The photo comes from the collection of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw

As a writer, she had her debut with Polish language poems in a "Chwila" Lviv based Jewish newspaper, but soon after she joined an ambitious project to revive Yiddish culture in Galicia, and became a great enthusiasm for that cause. She was entrusted to edit the Yiddish language culture and art magazine "Cusztajer" (Gift), even though a man was supposed to head it (he was David Kenigsberg). But it was Auerbach who managed to bring together a group of brilliant Lviv-based Jewish authors around the magazine: Debora Vogel, Rachel Korn. The magazine’s editorial board was located in Auerbach’s apartment in Pidzamche, at 1 Zborovskykh Street (presently – Donetska Street).

House in 1 Donetska Street, built in 1925-1927 for the workers of the City Cleaning Institution. Photo by Olha Zarechniuk

As an editor, she was a "difficult person" to deal with, highly demanding, hard-line, and open for public polemics. Her friend, a poet Mejlech Rawicz was describing her with his typical male condescension as a "quiet cat" who "loved to show her claws."

In her ardent polemic essays, she criticized a stereotype of a "muse" that presented a woman in culture and arts as a passive character. She rebelled against the widespread erotization of a woman’s body, and reducing her to a biological object only. She spoke ironically about her so-called "non-beauty" that eventually, in the time of German occupation, was for her an important element of "disguise" when she escaped from the Warsaw ghetto and was hiding in a zoo under the name Aniela Dobrucka.

In a letter to the above-mentioned Mejlech Rawicz, Auerbach was writing about her friend with whom they reached a conclusion that beauty harmed women ("it might possibly be better for a woman if she is not beautiful"). She claimed it lulled her inside, and failed to motivate for development and struggle. The friend is the above-mentioned writer and art critic Debora Vogel who enjoyed the reputation of one of the most knowledgeable women in the interwar Lviv.

Unlike Vogel, Auerbach had not defended her doctoral thesis (most probably due to financial reasons) and earned her living by her literary activities only: she was writing articles, feuilletons, social reports. She had to work hard since women were paid almost twice less than their male counterparts. Auerbach was disappointed about the provincial ambience in Lviv that kept resisting the attempts to "modernize the spirit." Thus, in 1933, she moved to Warsaw.

During the German occupation, she managed public kitchen in the Warsaw ghetto, and was member of an organization "Oneg Shabbat" (Joy of Shabbat) founded by Emanuel Ringelblum to document life and death of the ghetto population (she was one of the three organization members who managed to survive). After the war, she was doing the research of documents related to the Holocaust, and published two books thereon: "On the Fields of Treblinka" (Na polach Treblinki, 1947) and "Jewish Uprising" (Żydowskie powstanie, 1948).

Debora Vogel

A poetess, an art critic, and a philosopher was born in 1902, in a town of Burshtyn, in a well-respected family of Jewish intelligentsia. Debora Vogel’s great-grandfather, Avraham Nathan Suss, was a well-known Cabbalist; her uncle Jacob Ehrenpreis was a printer and a publisher; her father Anselm Vogel was a teacher, a headmaster at the school of the of Baron Hirsch Foundation. After the First World War, he was a patron of a Jewish orphanage at Pidzamche. Vogel family adhered to Zionist views. Since the young years (at the junior courses of Lviv University) she has been member of a Zionist organization "Ha’Shomer ha’Zair" (A Young Guard).

Portrait of Debora Vogel from the holdings of the Faculty of Philosophy and Sociology of Warsaw University published in a catalogue Montages. Debora Vogel and the New Legend of the City

Hebrew promoted by Zionists, unlike Yiddish that was considered a "degrading pidgin", was, however, the language of books, while in everyday life, Polish was widely spoken – the same was true of Debora Vogel’s family. Vogel also used Polish to write her first brief proze texts published in a Zionist Polish language magazine "New Young People" (Nowa młodzież). She was 19 at the time.

Vogel’s first Lviv address was an orphanage at the present day 8 Donetska Street. Her father was managing the institution, and also lived there with the family. While living there, Vogel was interested in contemporary psychological and pedagogical theories (post-Freudist theories for educating children). Later, she even gave public lectures on the topic. Young Debora studied in the 8th Real Gymnasium at Czarneckiego Street (presently it is Vynnychenka Street). She read a lot of philosophy, poetry, and history of art.

In 1919, Vogel became a student of Jan Kazimierz University in Lviv. As influenced by her friend Rachel Auerbach, she joined the environment of the Yiddish language and culture. She studied the language and started writing in it. Auerbach translated her early poems originally composed in Polish (later, Vogel translated them herself, further proofread by Auerbach). In the mid 1920s, she studied in Jagiellonian University in Krakow where she presented her doctoral thesis in philosophy (the topic of her research was about philosophy of art in Hegel and Kremer).

.

Later, upon her return to Lviv, Vogel published articles on contemporary art and reviews on works by Lviv Avant-Garde artists united in an "Artes" art group. She became one of the best connoisseurs in Galicia of Cubism, Constructivism, and Surrealism. She was proactively engaged in art debate taking place, among other venues, in a building of Jewish Trade Societies "Jad Charuzim" (11 Sholem Aleichema Street). Debora Vogel was a close friend with a brilliant author and painter Bruno Schultz. Two of them liked to walk along Lviv and talk about philosophy and art. Rachel Auerbach, a good friend of both of them, called the walks "real poetic philosophic symposions".

A poet Mejlech Rawicz, a notable personality in the Yiddish language environment of Lviv, wrote about Vogel:

"she entertained the company with her in-depth knowledge in the theory of arts. …Every word she pronounced had behind at least three books read. She speaks several languages, and each of them is as fluent as native, apart for the Mameloshn [i.e. Yiddish – O. S.] she speaks as one speaks a language you have studied thoroughly and learned each of its nuances."

Debora Vogel who made an incredible career for an Eastern European woman, was concerned about the phenomenon of "misleading emancipation": a woman who was finally released from home to a coffee place or a store still remained to be the implementation of male expectations. In her text "Soir de Paris" she wrote:

"women walk with incredibly thin waists. They seem to be cut out from the fashion magazine, and they cannot show up in life beyond the colored magazines."

After all, both Auerbach, and Vogel, were treated at the time as not feminine enough as they were "too" educated and big-brained ("mózgowce"). A woman with a doctorate in philosophy, according to Vogel, was a suspicious case for most of the society.

In Lviv, it was not easy to develop contemporary literature in Yiddish, or organize artistic or philosophic discussions in this language, as those who spoke it were mostly unprepared for complicated topics and aesthetic experiments, and vice versa. It was one of the reasons for Rachel Aurbach to move to Warsaw in 1933.

Instead, Vogel decided to stay. She consciously opted for existence in the relative provincial place, the same as Bruno Schultz, which she describes in her letter to him:

"it is good to be alone, it is very good to be more than alone – to be lonely, forlorn, abandoned to the will of homelessness. Then, you can see better."

At the same time, she travelled a lot: she went to Germany, France, Sweden, and was a member of New York Avant-Garde group of Yiddish language men of letters.

.

In 1931, Debora Vogel got married to a civil engineer Shulim Barenblutt; five years later, she had a son Asher. The family lived at 18 Lisna Street. The Barenblutt apartment was most probably on the second floor.

Lisna Street, 1930s. On the right, one can see a building where Debora Vogel lived.
From the collection of Natalia Otko, Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History

After the Second World War broke out, Vogel helped refugees from the occupied Poland; she was looking for shelters and food for them. A poet Aleksander Wat who came from Warsaw in a summer coat recollected that Vogel gave him her husband’s old fur coat he wore on his journey through the entire Russia.

In the years of the first Soviet occupation, she worked in school teaching literature. New reality did depress her, and she did not publish anything. Her refusal to collaborate with Soviet authorities deprived her of the opportunity to evacuate further into the USSR. Late in 1941, her husband, her mother, her six-year-old son, and her had to relocate into the ghetto.

In August, 1942, during the great anti-Jewish "liquidation action," the Barenblutts family, the same as other 15,000 persons, were killed. The bodies were discovered by Vogel’s friend from prewar times, an artist Henryk Streng (Marek Włodarski) who worked in a brigade cleaning the streets.

Immediately after the war, Vogel’s personal archives, piled in the heap of garbage in the basement of the building at Lisna Street, were burnt by new residents. We can only assume from the random mentions of Debora herself what they might have included: a volume of poems, essays in philosophy, reviews. Out of the entire literary legacy, only two books of verses came down to us, published during her life ("Figures of Days," 1930, and the "Mannequins," 1934), and a book of short experimental prose ("Acacias in Bloom. Montages," 1935).

Maria Strutynska

This Ukrainian writer, a journalist, and an activist for women’s rights in the interwar Galicia, is presently known, unfortunately, only to a small group of experts. She was born in 1897 in Dolyna, and studied in Ukrainian Underground University in Lviv. Maria Strutynska. From the holdings of Lviv Ivan Franko National Literary Memorial Museum

She was one of the most active advocates for Ukrainian female movement in Galicia, life and soul of the "Union of Ukrainian Women." She was editor of the magazine of this organization ("Ukrainian Woman"). She was one of the founders and most active contributors of the "Nova Khata" (New House) magazine, an outlet of Lviv Women’s Cooperative "Ukrainian Folk Art." This monthly magazine was called a "magazine for intelligent women," while the editor’s office was located at 18 Ruska Street. Maria Strutynska was one of the best connoisseurs of her time of Ivan Franko’s creative work; she wrote several articles about him, while in 1940, she was one of the first employees in the newly created Ivan Franko Museum in Lviv.

Franko House. Photo by Oleksandr Makhanets

On June, 22, 1941, on the day Nazi Germany attacked Soviet Union, along with thousands of other Lviv citizens, NKVD arrested her husband, a journalist Mykhaylo Strutynskyi. Soon after, he was shot down. Recollections of Maria Strutynska from that time are the most detailed and most valuable personal documents about the episode of early July when the public saw a dreadful picture of crimes in Lviv prisons.

Strutynska described the tortures inflicted on prisoners, as she visited the "Brygidky" prison dozens of times trying to pass some things over to her husband. She also mentions how NKVD officers treated families of the arrested persons who stayed outside: "After taking away the arrested person, the NKVD sealed off all rooms, leaving only one available. They sent to these rooms the NKVD officers with their families. They obviously occupied them fitted with the furniture, bedlinen, and everything available for the moment of arrest. All of this was considered to be their undeniable property. They also plundered us in our room, despite the fact that we always had it locked in."

The best known piece by Maria Strutynska (published under the pen-name of Vira Marska) is the novel "Storm Over Lviv." It was written on the basis of autobiographic materials. It is an interesting social political portrait of the prewar Lviv. Strutynska started writing the text back in 1944, while finished it already in Austria where she emigrated in the end of war.

Since 1949, she has lived in Philadelphia, USA. There, she passed away in 1984.

Halina Górska

Halina Górska street existed in Lviv until 1992, and later was re-named into Ivan Bahrianyi Street. What was there about the Polish speaking writer of Jewish origin, a radio-journalist, a public activist, and a human rights advocate that displeased Ukrainian democratic authorities?

Halina Górska (née Endelman), unlike most young intellectuals of her time, took a route not from the relative provincial place, which Lviv was at the time, to the capital, but vice versa. She was born in 1898 in Warsaw, in a family of assimilated Jews (her father was a well-known doctor). She studied in Belgium, where she did sociology and absorbed the socialist ideas popular among Jewish young people. There, she met her future husband, a socialist Marian Górski. At the turn of 1923 and 1924, she moved with him to Lviv. The Górski family lived at 10 Jacob Strzemię Street (presently – Mendeleyeva Street).

Along with Jan Brzoza and Anna and Jerzy Kowalski, she was member of Lviv branch of the "Suburbs" literary group (Przedmieście) – the circle of Polish language writers who treated literature as a tool for social change, and focused on social margins, the needy proletariat, and the unemployed. Halina Górska and other members of the "Suburbs" saw their key creative method in observation and in the live contact with the environment they wrote about. Therefore, they would often visit factories, orphanages, shelters, and followed the court trials over representatives of the social lower classes. Moreover, they saw their important task in building a dialogue with representatives of national minorities whose right for self-determination was mostly ignored by the authorities in the interwar Poland.

Fragment of the article "Children of the Streets" — review on the book by Halina Górska in a Lviv newspaper “Chwila” dated October, 25, 1934. Source: Libraria.ua

.

In 1930, a year after founding Lviv radio station, Halina Górska started working there. Lviv radio was hosted at the time at Stefan Batory Street (presently – Prince Roman), in a former tenement building under No. 6 – the present day location, too. Popularity of the prewar Lviv radio went far beyond the city and the region. In the size of the audience, it followed only the radio station in the capital. For example, a humor program "Funny Lviv Wave" in the 1930s was listened by about 6 mln. persons, that is about half of the urban population of Poland of the times.

House of Lviv Radio at 6 Prince Roman Street. Photo by Ihor Zhuk

As the author and a hostess of programs, Górska never stepped away from the principles of her social activism: her shows were about the life of the underprivileged classes. She emphasized the need for economic and social assistance. The shows that were highly popular gave rise to a charity initiative "Union of the Blue" (Związek Błękitnych) that focused on providing help to the needy.

In 1933, Górska, along with Karol Kuryliuk and Tadeusz Hollender founded an independent social political magazine "Signals" (Sygnałу). The editorial office was first located at 7 Zelena Street, while after 1937, during difficult times of more intense pressure from the radical nationalist groups in Poland, due to which conflict editor-in-chief Karol Kuryliuk almost lost his life, — it shifted to 12 Hauke-Bosak Street (presently – the Tiutiunnyk Brothers).

Halina Górska felt responsible for the future of society and thus wrote a lot for children and young audiences (such as the novel "Boys from the Streets of the City" (Chłopcy z ulic miasta), where she tried to break national stereotypes and prejudices often cultivated in children at homes). Her most famous two chapter story for adults "The Barrack On Fire" (Barak płonie) shows urban destitution shared by citizens of different ethnicities: in one poor townhouse in the suburbs, there live Polish, Ukrainian, and Jewish residents. Class divisions for Górska are much deeper than ethnic ones.

"Boys from the Streets of the City" published in 1947. Source: Biblioteka Narodowa/Polona

In 1940, Górska joined the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine. Despite her leftist views, she still was not supportive of attaching Western Ukraine to the USSR: according to a poet Aleksander Wat, in November, 1939, Górska was the only person who did not support a declaration of Polish writers who celebrated this act.

Because of her husband’s disease, when he was confined to bed, after Western Ukraine was occupied by Hitler’s Germany, Halina Górska failed to take the opportunity to evacuate further into the USSR. On September, 19, 1941, she was arrested, and on June, 4, next year, after 9 months of imprisonment, she was executed in Pasiky Lychakivski.

Today, the only element of Lviv urban space that keeps the memory of Halina Górska is a tablet on the memorial to Lviv ghetto installed in 2017 during the International PEN Congress.

Zuzanna Ginczanka

One of the most interesting personalities in Polish interwar poetry who still remains undervalued and understudied, despite the notable changes in the recent years. She was connected to Lviv by a short but dramatic episode of her life.

Portrait of Zuzanna Ginczanka at the exhibition "Only Happiness is Real Life" at the Center for Urban History.
Photo by Bohdan Yemets

She was born in a turbulent 1917, in Kyiv as Zuzanna (Shoshana) Polina Ginzburg. The language of communication at home was Russian (her parents were Jews who came from Russia). Soon after Zuzanna was born, her parents emigrated to Poland fleeing from the reverberation of the Russian Revolution, and landed in a provincial town of Rivne where Zuzanna’s grandmother Hanah lived (according to other sources, she was Klara) Sandberg, an owner of a spacious house and a pharmacy storage. There, they got divorced: the father who had acting ambitions went to pursue his career first to Berlin, and then to the USA; while her mother married to a Czech brewer and moved to a Spanish Pamplona. A strict grandmother took care of Zuzanna.

It was in Rivne that Zuzanna made an important choice: she decided to become a Polish poetess. She could easily choose Russian, Yiddish, or Hebrew, but she was captivated by Polish literature, and opted for Polish (even though in Zuzanna’s closest circle, the language was spoken only by her cousin).

She composed her first poems in Polish still as a ten-year-old girl. The pieces she wrote during her gymnasium years were rather bold, as they raised the topics of female sexuality and emancipation. Editors from magazines (as ambitious Zuzanna started actively sending her poems to different editorial boards since the 1930s) would often censor them later.

Pieces by a young Jewish woman were noticed by Julian Tuwim, the brightest figure in the then Polish poetry, and he decided to take patronage of Zuzanna. The patronage opened to the poetess the doors to most important literary magazines and milieus. In 1935, at the age of 17, she moved to Warsaw and started publishing her works in a prestigious "Wiadomościach Literackich" (Literary News), and worked with a satirical weekly "Szpilki". She became a popular personality among Warsaw literary bohemians, and got close with Witold Gombrowicz. In 1936, her only poetic lifetime collection "On Centaurs" (O centaurach) came out. Due to unparalleled and manifest Semitic beauty, she was called the "gazelle of Zion," and a "Sulamith." Unfortunately, the popularity had a reverse face, too, as in artistic circles objectivation of a woman was no less popular than elsewhere. Zuzanna would often become a target of sexist jokes. They were enhanced by abuse related to her Jewish origin (in the 1930s in Poland, ultra-rightist and anti-Semitic views have been spreading fast; which was much stronger in Warsaw than in the so-called "Kresy"). "I feel like a Negro," Zuzanna complained to her female friend.

In summer, 1939, Zuzanna went for vacation to Rivne, to her grandmother’s. She has never returned to Warsaw again. With the start of the first Soviet occupation of Western Ukraine, Zuzanna started feeling anxious and she felt like moving to a place where she was less known. Besides, living conditions were getting worse: her grandmother’s Hanah house was confiscated, and the former residents had to squeeze in one of the little rooms, possibly, in the outbuilding of the house.

In the late 1939, Ginczanka moved to Lviv.

According to Isolda Ketz, author of the only currently available fundamental biography of Ginczanka, having moved to the city, Zuzanna first settled down at 8а Jablonowski Street (presently – Shota Rustaveli Street). However, Zuzanna’s friend from Rivne Lusia Gelmont (Stauber) who also moved to Lviv, claimed otherwise in her recollections:

"When in June, 1941, Germans came, all Jews were taken away for slave labour […]. Zuzanna moved to my place at Jablonowski, others also stopped there […] Zuza usually slept in the bathroom, because she felt warmest there" (my highlights – O. S.).

Thus, if it is true, the question on where Ginczanka lived between 1939 and 1941 remains open.

However, there are two other certain facts related to this period. In 1940, Ginczanka, the same as many other Polish language Lviv-based writers or those who came to the city from the German occupied Poland, became a member of the Union of Soviet Writers of Ukraine. However, she consciously refused from her Soviet citizenship and lived with the so-called "Nansen" passport — ID card without citizenship). At that time, she translated into Polish Vladimir Mayakovskiy, Taras Shevchenko, Lesia Ukrayinka, and Pavlo Tychyna.

In the early 1940, Ginczanka married a custodian of Lviv Historical Museum, an art critic of Jewish origin Michał Weinzieher. Some of her acquaintances, such as the above-mentioned Lusia Stauber, were surprised to the fact of this marriage considering a dry and boring Weinzieher a bad match for a temperamental Zuzanna. The two steps, such as joining the Union of Writers, and getting married, must have had the same reason: Ginczanka needed some protection, some support in an alien city in uncertain times.

Apartment at Jablonowski Street where Ginczanka lived in the years of Nazi occupation was a spacious many room suite with different tenants. They included, among others, Karol Kuryliuk, an editor-in-chief, of "Signals," a leftist Lviv magazine.

Residential house at 8-8а Shota Rustaveli Street. Photo by Ihor Zhuk

In this apartment, Ginczanka had a dramatic episode: a landlady Zofia Chominowa reported to police on a lady of Jewish appearance who lived at her place. During the great "aktion" in summer, 1942, the convoy came after her three times in the same day, but Zuzanna managed to hide every time (last time, after a close call, she was taken out through the back stairs by a waiter who also lived in the same apartment). Ginczanka mentioned her traitor in a poem, the only poem that remained after the war, and possibly, the last poem she wrote. In a manuscript, it has a title the "Testament", and opens with the following lines:

Non omnis moriar – moje dumne włości,
Łąki moich obrusów, twierdze szaf niezłomnych,
Prześcieradła rozległe, drogocenna pościel
I suknie, jasne suknie pozostaną po mnie.
Nie zostawiłam tutaj żadnego dziedzica,
Niech więc rzeczy żydowskie twoja dłoń wyszpera,
Chominowo, lwowianko, dzielna żono szpicla,
Donosicielko chyża, matko folksdojczera.

Non omnis moriar – my proud estate,
Meadows of my tablecloths, the unbreakable fortresses of the wardrobes,
large bedsheets, precious bedclothes,
and the gowns, light dresses will stay after me,
Even though I do not leave any heir here,
May the Jewish things disgrace your hands,
Chominowa, Lviv lady, you, wily secret informantess,
Insidious scammeress, a Volksdeusche mother.
(Translation by Svitlana Bregman)

The poem’s manuscript was given to Lusia Stauber after the war in Ginczanka’s last Krakow apartment. The text was later attached as a piece of evidence to the court case against the traitor Zofia Chominowa who was convicted in 1948 for collaboration with the Nazi.

Soon after the third "visit" of police, Ginczanka decided to flee from the city. Despite certain possibilities to evacuate into the USSR she was entitled for due to her membership in a Soviet Union of Writers, Ginczanka failed to take them, but followed her husband to Krakow. Fake "Arian" documents were produced for her, the same as for her husband, by her lover, an artist Janusz Woźniakowski. It is known that the ID was issued to the name of Maria, while the last name was possibly the same as with her husband – Danilewicz. Such names were typical for assimilated Polish Armenians, and they were often used to have a Jewish owners of fake documents introduce themselves as Armenians.

Early in 1944, Janusz Woźniakowski who was member of resistance movement was detained in an outdoor round-up. They found on him a receipt from the laundry that indicated the address of apartment of Weinzieher and Ginczanka. Michał Weinzieher was arrested in spring, 1944. Ginczanka thoughtfully relocated to another address, at Mikolajska Street but Gestapo tracked her there. (According to one of the versions, the address was given away by Woźniakowski himself, according to another version – some of the neighbours informed on her).

After imprisonment and tortures in gestapo prisons, first in Montelupich, and later – at Czarnecki Street, Zuzanna Ginczanka was shot down at the premises of the Plaszow concentration camp. It took place in the beginning of May, 1944, shortly before the arrival of the Red Army. The exact day of death, unfortunately, remains unknown.

Katria Grynevcheva

Katria Grynevcheva represents a circle of Ukrainian female authors who shaped their literary talents under the influence of Western European states – Poland, England, Germany, a.o. Similar to Daria Vikonska, Katria Grynevcheva shifted to her native tongue in an adult age, while her first poetic pieces were composed in Polish.

Katria Grynevcheva. From the holdings of Lviv Ivan Franko National Literary Memorial Museum

Katria Grynevcheva (née – Banakh) was born in 1875 in Vynnyky near Lviv, in a family of an office clerk. When the girl was three, her parents moved to Krakow where she finished a Polish Teachers’ Seminary. During her studies, she met Artur Górski, one of the leading personalities of the Young Poland. She attended meetings of young Polish intelligentsia. According to the writer,

"…at one such meeting, I saw on the table, among a pile of Slavic and other magazines, a sheet written in weird characters. Górski asked: "Do you know the magazine?" giving it a thought, I answered: "Hebrew"! Górski was bewildred, and replied: "Not at all! It’s your "Dilo"!".

The meeting with Vasyl Stefanyk who highly valued the writing talent of a young author gave an impetus to the lady to study Ukrainian. Stefanyk asked Katria to join the inauguration event at the opening of the branch of "Prosvita" in Krakow and recite the "Stone-Breakers" by Ivan Franko. Grynevycheva was captivated by Franko’s works and longed to meet him.

The urge to return to her homeland made Kateryna Banakh give consent to her marriage with a teacher Osyp Grynevych, and the couple moved to Lviv. The writer recollected the three magic places in Lviv that resembled her of Krakow’s historical grandeur: The St George Hill with the impressive church, and a Greek-Catholic Parish of St George; the High Castle that gave a gorgeous view on the city and the surrounding valley with villages that used to place the troops of Bohdan Khmelnytskyi; and the third one – no river available.

St George Cathedral and the Mound of the Union of Lublin in the interwar period. Photo: Biblioteka Narodowa/Polona.pl

The couple settled down at 8 Bartosz Głowacki Street (presently — Yakiv Holovatskyi Street), on the second floor: three bed-rooms and a kitchen — entrance through the kitchen. Katria spoke Polish but she was persistently learning Ukrainian, even though kept having some problems with accents.

One day in autumn, during the walk at the St George Church, Osyp Grynevych pointed to his wife to Ivan Franko who was passing by. Katria remembered of a conversation she had with Vasyl Stefanyk when she confided: "When I come to Lviv after six months as a married woman — when I first meet Franko, I will kiss his hand for his "Lady Manipulator." Well, — Stefanyk replied — it would be a non-trivial greeting, and you, a Lviv lady, will introduce a new honoring habit for writers." However, Grynevycheva kept back her fervor and waited for a better opportunity to get to know Franko.

The first collection of works by Katria Grynevycheva "Legends and Short Stories" – includes stories about the life of children. The writer was well aware of children psychology and saw the conditions poor Galician children were raised in. In 1910-1912, she edited a children’s magazine "Dzvinok" (Bell).

Upon invitation of a Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytskyi, Grynevycheva, with her husband and children, went for summer vacations to his manors in Pidliute, in Boikivshchyna, in the Carpathians. However, Katria would rather go to Hutsul area, with its linguistic archaisms. The Metropolitan was interested not only in literary activities of Katria Grynevycheva, but also in her private life that was rather complicated at times.

Following her long time aspirations, before the First World War, she travelled through Brody to the Greater Ukraine. She travelled throughout Ukraine and met some prominent Ukrainian women such as Olena Pchilka, O’Connor Vilinska, Ludmyla Starytska-Cherniakhivska, Maria Zankovetska, a.o.

In Lviv, upon invitation of Ivan Franko, Katria Grynevycheva attended the Saturday meetings of the editorial staff of the Literary Research Journal. In his memories, her son Yaroslav described that his mother would always wear elegant style, had a trendy hair-do, and a hat that accentuated the soft oval of her face.

In spring, 1916, Katria learned that Ivan Franko got worse and she decided to go and visit him with her son Yaroslav. The villa where he lived at Poninskoho Street was neglected, the paths were grown over in weeds. He must have anticipated his near death already, and was searching for loneliness. The meeting with him was unpleasant, his words were biting. Franko was talking about the crooked fingers: he wished he stayed in Kryvorivnia where his spring-well was, and he would put them in there and would immediately feel better. Then, he noticed a large black ostrich feather on the writer’s hat. Eventually, he claimed that he would find it better to have his bucket in the room timely emptied, rather than celebrating a jubilee.

Franko asked her son Yaroslav Grynevych what he wanted to be in the future. "Never a writer, you’d better be a shoemaker" — he said in a stinging way. At parting, he put his crooked fingers into their hands. Six weeks after the visit, on May, 28, 1916, Ivan Franko passed away.

During the First World War, Katria Grynevycheva worked as a teacher in a barrack school of the Gmünd refugee camp (Austria) for deportees from Galicia. She wrote a collection of novellas about their destitute status – the "Invincible." Grynevycheva also recollected about a visit of the Metropolitan Andrey who came to the camp, when the camp administration organized a reception to honor him, and when he replied to the toasts of Austrian high officials: "Dear Gentlemen, I can see that in this camp, there is implemented a cause of Christian... love." At the same time, those who happened to sit closer to the Metropolitan claimed that the German word of "Liebe" (love) — sounded exactly as "Lüge" (lies).

After the war, she worked on historical novels "Six-Winger" and "Helmets in the Sun." The writer focused on key events in the life of Prince Roman Mstyslavych. Katria Grynevycheva had her individual writing style, with slightly archaized language enriched with the Old Rus vocabulary for which she would be criticized by her contemporaries. Yaroslav Grynevych recollected that once their house was visited by a Doctor Mykhaylo Rudnytskyi, who suggested to read and correct the language of a historical novel "Six-Winger". Grynevycheva was outraged by this offer and flatly rejected it.

Grynevycheva was acquainted with the prominent figures of culture, met them, and took an active part in a female movement of Galicia. Her house was often visited by a renowned Ukrainian painter Oleksa Novakivskyi and his wife. After her husband’s death, Katria Grynevycheva was offered to move to Vasyl Stefanyk’s but she rejected the invitation.

After Bolshevicks occupied Lviv, the only solution for Katria Grynevycheva was to escape because she was on the list of the "ill-fated" (she was told about that at the meeting of writers in Lviv by an old friend). For fear of search and arrest, most of valuable letters and notes were burnt down.

In January, 1940, she left for Germany, and later moved to Austria. She stayed in a displaced persons camp in Karlsfeld near Munich, in "Orlyk" in Bavarian Alps. She passed away in Berchtesgaden (Austria).

After the war, all works by Katria Grynevycheva were seized and destroyed, while her name has been forgotten for Ukrainian readers for many years.

Daria Vikonska

The portraits of a well-known Galician artist Oleksa Novakivskyi show a circle of close persons of an unparalleled writer Karolina Ivanna Fedorovych-Malytska (pen-name – Daria Vikonska): a portrait of a mother Zdenka Elisabeth Mayer von Wintod, a piano player and a performer from Vienna; a portrait of Daria Vikonska, a thoughtful lady in a white dress in a natural landscape — green plants, trees and grasses that highly inspired her and helped her resume her life vigor; a portrait of Mykola Malytskyi — a teacher and a civic and political activist, participant of national liberation fight, a proactive advocate for rights of Ukrainians in the interwar Poland, a strong-willed and vigorous man who was a stronghold and support to his wife Lina Malytska.

Lina Fedorovych was born in Bavaria where her mother was most probably on a tour as a pianist, or went to visit her native places. Lina’s father was a nobleman and a patron of art Volodyslav Fedorovych, a large landowner, a philanthropist, member of the House of Lords in Austro-Hungarian Monarchy, a good landlord of several large homesteads (one of them was called the “Window” (Vikno) and served as a pen-name for the writer).

The lady received her education in Germany, France, Britain, and Italy, but the father would always take her to the Vikno for vacations, and Karolina often travelled with him. Every summer, when the girl came to see the father in his manors, she found herself in a sort of a library: Volodyslav Fedorovych had a collection of 20,000 books, valuable paintings, and the early printed books.

She also visited her mother in Vienna from whom she took love and passion for music. In one of her essays entitled "Music," one reads:

Do you hear the play?
Seems like a mystical goblet that dissolved a secret of life, and pours onto us with sounds, and speaks to us…
It is the native, the most native language of us all – do you get it?
They play… the sounds take us beyond human conscience deep to the source of a grand secret of all being…
And the soul becomes a sort of an instrument with the strings vibrating sweet, tender, and painful… until it detaches from the body and flows freely in its own realm.
And there, we would probably find each other. You will be major, and I will be minor, you will laugh, and I will cry – but of happinness.

To teach Ukrainian to her daughter, Fedorovych invited a teacher of classic philology from Ternopil Gymnasium originating from Vikno, Mykola Malytskyi. With a natural flair for languages, she quickly mastered Slavic languages. Karolina successfully spoke and wrote in a nice style in Ukrainian; she learned Polish and Russian. Since the childhood years, Fedorovych’s daughter has been fluent in German, French, English, and Italian.

Karolina and Mykola Malytskyi fell in love with each other, and decided to get married. However, the girl’s father did not approve of her choice, and because of the daughter’s marriage, he left all his assets to his nephew: villages, and 5,000 morgs of land worth million zloty. Upon her father’s death, Karolina Malytska had to defend her rights in court, and she managed to win for herself a village of Shliakhtyntsi that Malytskis have owned since 1920, until the arrival of Soviet authorities in 1939. The Malytskis got on well with local paesants, and taught them how to properly organize their households, and helped arrange cultural and educational activities.

Daria Vikonska and Mykola Malytskyi in the early 1920s
Photo illustration from the book by Ihor Nabytovych Дерево життя літературного роду: Іван Федорович, Володислав Федорович, Дарія Віконська, Київ: Дух і Літера, 2018.

The Malytskis permanently lived in Shliakhtyntsi but Daria Vikonska was closely related to Lviv: since 1922, she was actively publishing her works on the pages of Galician magazines; she visited her friends, such as Oleksa Novakivskyi and Ivan Trush, and wrote some fundamental research works about them. Vikonska was fond of painting and music, she was well versed in the culture of Europe not only since the times she stayed in Eruopean capitals, but also during her long stay in a provincial village. According to Mrs Malytska herself, she kept track of the cultural life in the West due to magazines "The Time Literary Supplement," and "Les Nouvelles littéraires".

She published articles on artistic topics, colelctions of essays, a study about the novel by James Joyce "Ulysses" as he wanted to bring the character closer to Ukrainian readers. In the second half of the 1920s, she started writing collections of prose works "Paradise Apple". Mykhaylo Rudnytskyi aptly emphasized the peculiarity of the book in her review "Rare Debut":

"Paradise Apple" — is one of the infrequent literary happenings in our domain that takes us out of the close circle of old, mundane storylines and clichéd lyric phrases. It is a mature work deeply thought over and finetuned down to small nuances, integral in itself and with its own peculiar spirit.
These are, probably, by far the first philosophic poetic dialogues in our literature on general topics that have been widespread in the West for a long time, mostly popular in France.
…One of the most valuable signs of the book is a rarely broad perspective that can encompasses polarized positions from which the world can be viewed and have an opinion".

In 1928, Lina got ill, the disease undermined her vital forces and energy. The writer started going for regular treatment sessions. During her first stay in a resort town of Krynica-Zdrój, she met two important personalities for her life: Reverend Josafat Skruten and Sofia Jablonska. The first one became a dear friend, and a recipient of her letters where she revealed her inner feelings and shared her emotions, and events. Jablonska was an example of life inspiration. Unfortunately, no notes or diaries of Lina Malytska survived but due to letters to Rev. Skruten we can learn many interesting details of her daily life.

In 1932, the Malytskis visited Austria and Italy. The journey inspired Daria Vikonska to write a series of prose essays, letters, and coverages from the bienalle in Venice. In 1937, another dream trip took place to a city of her youth – to Paris.

Rise of the Bolshevicks fully destroyed the course of life of the Malytskis family.

In his reminiscences, Yevhen Malaniuk described the last week before the war broke out, and about his stay in Shliakhtyntsi.

We were sitting with Mr Mykola at the barn. He would give directions here and there, all engulfed into the "symphony of the harvest-work" — from dawn to late night. But we both knew that those could be the last days of the "quiet world"... That is why Mykola would interrupt his instructions (such as "tuck it in on the right!"), and suddenly turn to me and say:
— There is no power that could pull me away from this. Even if I am the last horse groom, or the last shepherd I will stay here, on this farmstead, after all I brought it back to life, I recreated it to the last stalk. It is not about my “property” any longer, it is about the sense of life, about what I created!
Several days after, I went back home. i.e. to Warsaw, and three days after my return the war was unleashed... It was only several months later that I received a letter from Mrs Lina, already from Vienna, where she informed that she failed to persuade him in the first month, but when she eventually succeeded and Mykola agreed to move out, and everything was ready to set out, he was arrested on that night. They did not even leave him as the “last horse groom” because the men like Mykola Malytskyi did not have any right to live, even not on his land.

Mykola Malytskyi was arrested and after investigation he was officially charged of being a large landlord, and exploited the hired labour, and was member of the Ukrainian nationalist party of Ukrainian National Democratic Association. There is no exact data on his death: according to some sources, he was killed during the Bolshevick’s retreat during the German offensive in 1941; according to other sources, he died in 1943 in exile.

Daria Vikonska moved to Vienna. However, in 1942, she went back to Galicia and lived in Lviv for two years. In 1944, as the front line was getting closer, in panic fear for the approaching Red Army, she went back to Vienna again. She committed a suicide by jumping out of the window of coffee place in Vienna, as she did not want to be caught by Soviet counter-intelligence. She has believed until the very end that her Mykola was alive and was going to return to her.

Works by Daria Vikonska are filled with love for God, with nature, and death. Their special significance probably lies in the fact that the writer managed to include into little lyric sketches a deep sense of the being that she experienced during her short life. Lina Malytska felt a close bond with the divine, the sacral, in each moment of her existence. In a fragment from the book by Peter Roseger “My Kingdom of Heaven” that she translated and put into her "Woman’s Fate", we can read the following:

Be kind, and then will you be happy. You cannot be escaping from yourself. Death where you might have decided to hide yourself is merely a hiding place for a short time. Soon, will it give you away again to start a new life. You will not avoid your destiny, and while you exist, you will suffer for as long as you eventually realize the truth; and then you will be fighting for such long until you reach the final goal: to become more worthy of God’s love.

Olha Duchyminska

Olha Duchyminska has been longing for Lviv since her early years. In her dreams, Lviv was a city with boosting life of culture, art, and science; a city where her friends and colleagues lived. "For me, Lviv was like a Pandora’s box, with all its treasures," – she used to say, even though she has been teaching for many years in village schools, and it was only after 1939 that Olha Duchyminska moved to work at the Museum of Ethnography and Arts and Crafts in Lviv.

Building of Shevchenko Scientific Society at 24 Vynnychenka Street. Here, in 1939, it was founded the Museum of Ethnogaphy and Arts and Crafts. Photo by Ihor Zhuk

She settled down at 10 Gołąba Street, on the third floor. It could have been in 1939, soon after she moved from Kolomyia to Lviv, or even later. In Lviv, in 1939-1949, Olha Duchyminska worked on minor positions in the Museum of Ethnography (24 Vynnychenka Street), that is why she could not have been given an apartment through support of this institution. She has not been a member of the Union of Soviet Writers, either. Most probably, the house owner assigned some living quarters to her. After all, in those times, it was a common practice to compact the housing voluntarily, in order to avoid forced settlement of unwanted house-mates coming from the East.

However, it was in Lviv, at Gołąba Street, that her life tragically disrupted into two parts. 56 years were left behind, the years that included a hard but happy childhood in a family of a Ukrainian Moscowphiliac man Rechetylovych and a Polish woman Bronisława Litwin; a not very happy marriage, loss of one of the two sons soon after his birth; work as a people’s teacher; the first published collection of poems "Tassel of Forget-me-Nots;" recognition as a writer and an activist of women’s movement in Galicia; friendship with well-known representatives of Ukrainian intelligentsia. She might have decided to move to Lviv after her second son Oleksa joined the Carpathian Sich troops in 1939, and was killed the same year.

During the German occupation, she sheltered Iryna Vilde whose husband was executed. Risking her life, she helped Jewish families, and after Germans retreated she refused to leave to the West with her daughter Oksana.

In 1945, her novel "Eti" came out. It is the first story on the Holocaust in Ukrainian literature. It was a short story about a woman who fled the Lviv ghetto set on fire to a village where her former teacher lived. The latter sent a young Jewish woman away twice, since Germans were already dislocated in the village. However, the third time, the teacher gave in and hosted her, and sheltered in a potato dugout. Eventually, upon arrival of Soviet army, she was rescued and left for Volyn in search of her family. The book was not favoured by new authorities, and the author was suggested to write a piece about how Ukrainian nationalists were killing Jews during the war, how they plundred and killed their own people. She refused.

In 1949, a 66-year-old Olha Duchyminska was arrested, allegedly, on charges of attempted assassination of Yaroslav Halan. The apartment at Gołąba Street was searched, and they confiscated all the valuables, such as the library and manuscripts of the writer. The investigation lasted for two years. In 1951, she was tried in a military tribunal. The sentence was 25 of camp imprisonment. She suffered much torture in Syberian special camps but she never lost her dignity. In prison, you could get incarcerated in a lockup for a piece of paper and a pencil. That is why the poems that Olha Duchyminska composed were learned by heart, and along with the released persons, they were getting outside, to the homeland.

In 1956, the case of Olha Duchyminska was reviewed. The term was reduced to 10 years. In 1958, a half-dead Olha Duchyminska got out of the camps. She was 75. She lonely lived for some time in Lviv. She did not have any place to peacefully live her final days. She quietly endured the regular ungrounded allegations of the media that were sticking various labels onto her.

In 1950, when in the camp, Duchyminska composed in her mind an autobiographic poem "Bohemia" where she described twenty representatives of Lviv creative intelligentsia community. One of the best collections of novellas by Duchyminska is a "Sad Christ."

Olha Dychyminska’s poetic legacy contains a poem that brings us back to her reminiscences on her Lviv period of life – "Sorrow":

СПОГАДИ (Туга)

Поїхав мій милий, з яким пережила звиш двісті гарячих я днів,
бачив мої сльози, чув мої зітхання і тисячі, тисячі слів!
Поїхав мій милий... бувало на добу два рази шле виклик мені,
я спішу до нього, з ним переживаю і темнії ночі і яснії дні!
Сядемо у парі, нашого куточка ніхто не займає і ніхто не йде,
а він мене просить: "Розказуй дівчино, розказуй усе".
Мов в церкві попові, йому сповідаюсь, з цілого свойого життя:
він слухає пильно... слова не уронить, і все мене пита і пита!
Або заговорить, палка його мова полум'ям паде у душу...
а я так хвилююсь, переживаю — він ніжно питає: Чому?
Зима, весна, літо уже проминуло, а нашим розмовам усе немає кінця,
а хлопець був гарний, розумний, культурний, думаєте, певно повів до вінця?
Думаєте певно, це був мій коханий, або мій любчик? Ой, ні!
Хлопець, з яким пережила всі дні ці і ночі, це був.. це був...

мій слідчий в тюрмі!

REMINISCENCES (SORROW)

My darling left, over two hundred passionate days did we share,
he saw my tears, he heard my sobbing, and thousands, thousands words he heard!
My darling left... sometimes, twice a day a note to me would he send,
I rushed to him, and together dark nights and bright days did we spend!
The two of us would sit together, and nobody bothered us in a secluded cosy place,
and he would ask me: "please, tell me, girl, tell me everything you can, for grace."
Like in a church, about all of my life, I confess:
he would listen carefully... not to miss a word, and kept asking for more!
Or, he would talk himself, and his words burn my soul...
and I am so agitated, so anxious — and he asks gently: Why?
Winter, spring, and summer passed away, but there is no end to our talks,
and the boy was handsome, well-brought, and you might think he took me down the aisle?
You might think it was my darling, or my lover? Not at all!
The boy I spent all of those days and nights with was... he was...

my interrogator in prison!
(Translation by Svitlana Bregman)

Reminiscences by Roman Horak include a record that Duchyminska’s apartment at Gołąba Street "was captured by the one who arrested her." The fact is hard to verify, even though the apartment was possibly divided into two flats, one of which had been inhabited by the investigator’s sister for many years on.

Upon her return from the exile, Olha Duchyminska suffered much harassment and insults, with no strong support from friends or acquaintances. She was banned to return to Lviv (even though, in autumn, 1959, she illegaly came to Lviv and lived at Iryna Vilde’s), thus, the writer was seeking for protection from her friends: in the end of her life, she settled with Myroslava Antonovych, Stepan Bandera’s cousin, who was taking care of her until her demise.

Milena Rudnytska

She was born in 1892 in Zboriv in Ternopil region. The Rudnytskyis family was very harmonious and happy. Ida Spiegel had a Jewish origin, while Ivan had an ancient Ukrainian blood, a lawyer by background. For Milena, the father was a model person, with love and peace prevailing in their family: "I adored my Daddy, we shared an extremely deep and heartfelt bond. When saying farewell to his family before his death, Daddy was grateful to Mum for being "the best woman for him" saying he was "very happy" with her."

After the death of Ivan Rudnytskyi in 1906, Ida became a support and an example to follow for Milena: "It was when the unparalleled qualities of my Mother fully manifested themselves, such as a pragmatic approach, realistic attitude, subtle feel for people, lack of sentimentality. In her hard struggle for existence, of her children and herself, my Mother passed the exam excellently." For Milena, her father’s death was a life-long trauma; in her memoirs, she wrote that even the 50 years that elapsed after his death failed to heal the wound.

In 1910, Milena enetered a faculty of Philosophy of Lviv University, upon graduation from a Juliusz Slowacki private women’s Polish gymnasium. She obtained a degree of a teacher in philosophy and mathematics. Later, she studied in Vienna. She wrote a thesis on "Mathematical Foundations of Renaissance Aesthetics" (however, Lviv Archives have a text of the thesis by Milena Rudnytska in Polish, on a different topic "The Study of Alberti Aesthetics").

In 1919, Milena Rudnytska married Pavlo Lysiak, a lawyer and a journalist and editor. Later, the couple separated, and Milena was raising their son Ivan on her own. Rudnytska believed that the obstacle for a woman to fully engage with public life was in the conflict of maternal duties and the need to earn a living. In her article, "Tragic Conflict," she emphasized that a woman will only be able to compete with a man when she is released from her house chores.

"Presently, intelligentsia women who stopped considering house chores as the only activity in their life, rather for ideological reasons, not the material ones, put up a flag for liberating women from the age-long chains."

In 1923, she received her second degree in pedagogy and didactics. She worked in a teachers’ seminary in Lviv, and later was also lecturing at higher teaching courses. In the late 1920s, she resigned from teaching work and dedicated herself to public and political activities.

She was a charismatic leader and head of a number of women’s movements and associations advocating for women’s rights and reform in education. She believed that women had to unite into organizations, and identify themselves with the nation. "A hard position that the People find themselves in provoked in wide circles of women an interest towards public affairs, and in "politics." They prompt us to think over Ukrainian reality and get deep into the causes and search for the roots of evil," - Rudnytska wrote in her essay "Woman and the Nation."

In 1928, she became head of the Union of Ukrainian Women and was a delegate of the Sejm of Poland from the Ukrainian National Democratic Union; advocated for improved education system for Ukrainians. She was the only woman in the Sejm, which caused multiple indigntation among other delegates.

An editor of the "Women’s Journal," the first official body of the Union of Ukrainian Women with the objective to inform readers on international women’s movement and laying the foundations for ideology of conscious feminist movement in Ukraine.

The most effective efforts of Milena Rudnytska were those on international arena. Rational approach and a logically justified structure added to her speeches special impact, she was skillful at using the facts. She was one of the three delegates to the League of Nations in January, 1931, pursuing to consider Poland’s breach of guarantees of ethnic minorities, such as terror and pacification. The second important cause was help to the starving Ukraine. Rudnytska was the deputy head of the Ukrainian Public Committee to Save Ukraine. With support of international women’s organizations and powerful Ukrainian political figures abroad, she managed to persuade the President of the League of Nations, Prime Minister and Foreign Minister of Norway, Johan Ludwig Mowinckel to bring the issue of providing aid to starving people in Soviet Ukraine forward for consideration of the Board of the League of Nations.

In her work "Fight for Truth About the Great Famine," Milena Rudnytska noted: "Twenty five years ago, in spring, 1933, mass famine in Ukraine organized by the Kremlin to break resistance of Ukrainian peasants against collectivization, and to tame the unbending Ukrainian nation, reached the apogee.… There are no doubts that the Great Famine was the largest disaster Ukraine suffered throughout its entire history. It was the largest in terms of the number of victims and the scale of human suffering."

Milena Rudnytska was a great publicist. She published her essays on political, feminist, cultural and educational topics in Ukrainian daily press, such as the "Dilo," and in specialized magazines.

In 1939, she moved to Kraków, and later to Berlin and further to Prague. She passed away in Munich, and her body was transported to Lviv in 1993.

Sofia Jablonska

Sofia Jablonska is definitely an exceptional personality among Galician women. When she was eighteen, she opened two cinemas in Ternopil. At twenty, she went by herself from her native land to Paris and became a reporter of a French film and information company, then went to Morocco, then to China via Port Said, Jibutti, Ceilon, Laos, Cambodia, Siam, Malaisia, Java, Bali, Tahiti, Australia, and New Zealand. She wrote captivating reports about her journeys, and managed to trace local culture and customs not as a foreigner but as one of the aboriginals, and built strong relations with residents based on openness, trust, and simplicity.

When impressed by Jablonska’s accounts, Olena Kysilevska, a public and political activist and editor, also went to Morocco, she discovered a different realm: filth, flies, starving children, and destitution. She wrote about it to Sofia in their friendly correspondence. Jablonska would often laugh at the thought of the pessimistic trip of Kysilevska.

Sofia Jablonska. Source: "Rodovid" publishing

As to special perception of the world, fearlessness and openness rather untypical for Galician nature, Sofia must have inherited them from her father who was a priest in a village of Hermaniv, and a member of Moscowphilliac party. During the First World War, he set out on a journey through Kyiv–Taganrog–Rostov to Novorossiysk. In 1921, shortly before the Soviet border closed off for a long time, the Jablonskis returned home. However, Sofia has already caught the experience which could not keep her stay within the quiet preset life. Many years after, Sofia Jablonska wrote that she already knew there was no any paradise prepared for her, but in order to catch moments of happiness you needed to keep on the go, to stay in motion, any motion, even when you remain on the spot.

Later, Sofia Jablonska wrote a moving "Book about the Father" that captivated readers in France. There, she told how weak she was a child, and how father twice saved her from death with his potions. He taught her to feel her body, to understand the herbs; how he taught her to be self-organized and self-disciplined. Sofia admired her father and supported him, as he was a failure – in his marriage life, in politics, in choosing the profession. She could understand it back as a child and was sometimes angry at him.

— Dad, what will stay after all the people you treated and healed; what will stay after your entire life, and your miraculous health improvements, and initiations?
— At least, you will stay. Zoyika.

Contemporaries described her as a frail black haired lady, with the features of a society woman. She came from her trips and told about them to Galician people; she visited her friends in the "Nova Khata" (New House) where her debut travel novel "Charm of Morocco" was published. She shared her impressions from a long-stay on the Bora Bora Island. Local residents hosted her and called Teura (Red Bird). Sofia Jablonska told that it was there that she realized that it was worth getting rid of ambitions and various reasons for discontent with yourself, and be happy. On the island, she learned and aplty used the "international dialect — gestures."

In my travels to different lands, never have I found paradise I was looking for. However, there were moments when I managed to grab some glimpses of earthly happiness that now means much more to me than imagined heavens.

In her homeland, she was taken in different ways: as a brave and talented lady who managed to build her career all by herself, who provoked concerns and gossip in moderate Galician community. Even more so that her essays were a frank, bold, unfettered and candid prose, and had a scandalous effect on intelligencia of the times. The effect was produced by the first book of essays — "Charm of Morocco" published in Lviv in 1932. Success of this debut book project among readers inspired her to produce more texts. In 1936, a collection of essays about her trip to China came out - "From the Land of Rice and Opium." The longest trip by Jablonska was described in a two volume documentary travelogue "Remote Horizons" published in Lviv in 1939. Books by Sofia Jablonska were illustrated with her own photos that aptly supplemented the described impressions, vidualizing everyday routines and culture of exotic lands and peoples. Galician critics in the 1930s highlighted high quality of the travel prose by the author. In his review for the first book, Mykhaylo Rudnytskyi praised the writer for an apt eye, her life optimism and a confident free style of narration. The following books were highly appreciated by Daria Vikonska and A. Skilskyi.

During her second visit, it was different. She came with her French husband and came by the cooperative "Ukrainian Folk Art" at Kościuszko Street. She seemed to have lost some of her charm. She became more real, even more so that her posture showed signs of motherhood.

Sofia has never expressed anything of emancipation position, while after getting married she fully immersed into the female house chores. In her reply to a questionnaire of the "Nova Khata" dated 1938, answering the question of how writers combined creative work with the everyday duties, Jablonska-Oudin frankly confessed that since she got married she had stopped writing. She was surprised to discover that "a sleeping spirit of a housewife woke up from somewhere."

"I cannot stand, I cannot, for example, see that after eight hours in the office "he" goes alone for a walk, or to a card club to kill the time! That way, I made a home for him that feels like avoiding after work because "the wife is writing there"!!!...".

And more: "trust me, being happy is the most important task for a woman. It reflects on her environment, on her eyes, on the way she walks. But you need to be able to be happy. You need to fight for it. Our happiness is risking so many troubles from all over. I might have found a way to live on the best of terms with all the troubles – I face them smiling, I challenge them, and it makes them run away, not me."

In Lviv, the reply letter by Sofia Jablonska caused indignantion with Iryna Vilde. She admitted she felt insulted as a writer and as a woman.

In the early 1950s, Jablonska had to face severe hardships. Her close friend Stepan Levynskyi died, then – her mother, and a beloved sister Olia. Algerian war took away her oldest son Bohdan-Michele. In 1955, her husband passed away.

A year before, the Oudins visited the Noirmoutier island. Her husband Jean so much liked one locality that he said he wished he could live there. Sofia remembered his words, and was buying little pieces of land, one by one. However, she moved to live on the island already without her husband.

Sofia Jablonska managed to keep her vigour and energy even in advanced years. She knew how to support herself with the herbs, she walked a lot, and did physical work, as well as was swimming in the sea from early spring till late in autumn. Every April, she set out to Switzerland, in winter, she went skiing and skating. In spring 1971, she decided to go to Paris. In the morning, a sea tide revealed the old road to the continent coming back from the Roman Empire times. It showed only twice a day, during low tide in mornings and evenings. Sofia was driving. She left vigorous and self-confident, and left in charge a loyal friend Marta and a favourite dog. But something happened to her… she hit the large truck. It was the end of her life.

Friends of Sofia Jablonska wrote in their memoirs about her that her life could not possibly end tragically. She was so dynamic in whatever she did: she passionately devoted herself to every activity, feeling, or idea.

Post-mortem, due to efforts of Marta Kalytowska, books by Sofia Jablonska were published abroad: "Two Weights — Two Measures" (1972), "Book About the Father" (1977), and the "Charm of Morocco" was translated into French (1973).

Anna Kowalska

Anna Chrzanowska (Kowalska) during her university years, 1922. Source: Archive of Cesara Havrys / Fotonova.pl

She was born and lived in Lviv. She graduated from the Romance philology at Jan Kazimierz University. In 1924, she married a professor Jerzy Kowalski. She was fond of travel – during several years she visited the largest cities in Europe. In 1946, her daughter Maria was born, nicknamed Tultsia. The writer was very close with her until the last days.

She worked with the "Suburbs" group and was member of the editors’ board of the magazine "Signals" located at 7 Zelena Street in 1933-1934.

Anna and Jerzy Kowalski in a Zalizna Voda park, 1925. Source: Archives of Cezary Gawryś / Fotonova.pl

During the war, the Kowalskis met a prominent Polish writer Maria Dąbrowska. After the death of her husband, Anna Kowalska moved to live to Dąbrowska’s to Warsaw. They developed a special love bond that would often result in conflict, especially about how to raise Kowalska’s daughter Tultsia. Dąbrovska believed that Anna was too indulgent to Tultsia. Anna wrote in her diary about the friend: "Even the largest love is not enough for her. She wants adoration. I will not be able to give it to anyone."

Dąbrowska felt a constant need for Anna as the inspiration for her writing work, while Anna was in the shadow of creative achievements of Dąbrowska. Maria Dąbrowska highly evaluated Kowalska’s autobiographic novel "On Rohatka" where Anna described her home city of Lviv.

Maria Dąbrowska and Anna Kowalska, Warsaw, 1951. Source: Archives of Cezary Gawryś / Fotonova.pl

In 1963, the two of them went together to Italy, Switzerland, and Paris, as well as visited Jerzy Giedroyc and Jerzy Stempowski. Kowalska was actively engaged in artistic life in Warsaw, and was a member of the PEN club. After her friend’s Dąbrowska demise, she was deeply bewildered by her friend’s will and testament where she has never been mentioned but it turned out later that Maria Dąbrovska entered Kowalska to be in charge of her artistic legacy.

A key role in Anna Kowalska’s legacy belongs to her diary that she had kept since 1927 until her death (in the last years of her life, a daughter Tultsia was writing it down). Maria Dąbrovska emphasized that Anna was a brilliant interlocutor, and friends saw her as an open and tolerant person. She had many good friends among writers. She was of leftist views but distant from Communism. In 1936, she aptly noted in her diary: "Communists will be nice until they get what they want."

Notes of Anna Kowalska are filled with loneliness, despite her active life among friends and acqauintances.

Authors and sources

The walk was designed by:

Ostap Slyvynskyi - about Iryna Vilde, Rachel Auerbach, Debora Vogel, Maria Strutynska, Halina Górska, and Zuzanna Ginczanka;
Iryna Frys – about Katria Grynevycheva, Daria Vikonska, Olha Duchyminska, Milena Rudnytska, Sofia Jablonska, and Anna Kowalska.

Photo courtesy of: Yaroslav Tymchyshyn, Myroslava Liakhovych, Ihor Zhuk, Bohdan Yemets, Vasyl Rasevych, Narodowe Archiwum Cyfrowe (1-N-3177), Biblioteka Narodowa/Polona, collection of the Emanuel Ringelblum Jewish Historical Institute in Warsaw, collection of Cezary Gawryś from the Fotonova.pl press agency, collection of Natalia Otko from the Urban Media Archive in the Center for Urban History, Diasporiana.org.ua, Libraria.ua. Translated by – Svitlana Bregman.
Editing by – Taras Nazaruk, Olha Zarechniuk.

Produced within the accompanying program to the exhibition "Zuzanna Ginczanka. Only Happiness is Real Life" run at the Center for Urban History from September, 21 until December, 30, 2018.

References
Iryna Vilde:
Марія Вальо, Забутий світ Ірини Вільде, Вільде, Ірина. Незбагненне серце (Львів, 1990), 3–23.
Богдан Герей, "Ірина Вільде: таємниці життя і кохання", На скрижалях, 2018.
Роман Горак, Кинути каменем: есеї про Ірину Вільде (Львів, 2018), 540.
Мирослава Крат, "Дика" письменниця Ірина Вільде, Друг читача, 3.11.2008.
Наталка і Ярема Полотнюки, Через терни до зірок Вільде, Ірина. Метелики на шпильках; Б'є восьма; Повнолітні діти: повісті (Дрогобич, 2007), 476–486.

Rachel Auerbach:
Kapkę uparta: Rachela Auerbach, Żydowski Instytut Historyczny.
Anna Kaszuba-Dębska, Rachela Auerbach, Projekt Szpilki, 2012.
Karolina Szymaniak, Próba zdekonspirowania imienia własnego. Kilka uwag o Racheli Auerbach i (nie)obecności jidyszowych autorek w historii literatury polskiej, Sporne postaci polskiej krytyki feministycznej po 1989 roku. Red. Monika Świerkosz (Gdańsk, 2016), 75–108.
Karolina Szymaniak, Rachela Auerbach (1899–1976) – szkic biograficzny, Auerbach, Rachela. Pisma z getta warszawskiego, (Warszawa, 2015), 258–270.

Debora Vogel:
Anna Kaszuba-Dębska, Debora Vogel – Dozia Projekt Szpilki, 2012.
Karolina Szymaniak, Być agentem wiecznej idei. Przemiany poglądów estetycznych Debory Vogel (Kraków, 2006).
Aleksandra Zbroja, Debora Vogel, zapomniana poetka – podwójnie obca Wysokie Obcasy, 27.01.2018.
Юрко Прохасько, Птаха Фоґель, Фоґель, Дебора. Фігури днів. Манекени: пер. з ідишу (Київ, 2015), 5–9.

Maria Strutynska:
30 років тому померла жінка, яка започаткувала жіночий рух на Галичині Gazeta.ua, 06.05.2014.
Про один деталь у вигляді Івана Франка. Публікація 1966 року Фотографії старого Львова.
Ярослав Стех, До 120-річчя від дня народження Марії Струтинської Міст. Online.

Halina Górska:
Helena Boguszewska, Wspomnienie o Halinie Górskiej (Warszawa, 1945).
Halina Górska, Literatura polska XX wieku. Przewodnik encyklopedyczny / Red. Artur Hutnikiewicz, Andrzej Lam (Warszawa, 2000), T.1, 202.
Józef Rurawski, Halina Górska (Warszawa, 1968).
Adrian Uljasz, O wrażliwość społeczną i tolerancję. Wartości wychowawcze w twórczości Haliny Górskiej, Przegląd Nauk Historycznych, 2013, №1, 215–239.
Katarzyna Kotynska, Lviv: Re-reading the City: transl. from Polish. (Lviv, 2017), 69–73.

Zuzanna Ginczanka:
Agata Araszkiewicz, Rozkosz Ginczanki, Ginczanka, Zuzanna. Mądrość jak rozkosz (Warszawa, 2017), 175–198.
Agata Araszkiewicz, Wypowiadam wam moje życie. Melancholia Zuzanny Ginczanki (Warszawa, 2001).
Jak burgund pod światło. Szkice o Zuzannie Ginczance / Red. Karolina Koprowska, Sylwia Papier, Roma Sendyka (Kraków, 2018).
Izolda Kiec, Ginczanka. Życie i twórczość (Poznań, 1994).
Yaroslav Polishchuk, Poetry and Fate of Zuzanna Ginczanka, Ginczanka, Zuzanna. Poems: transl. from Polish. (Lviv, 2017).

Katria Grynevycheva:
Ярослав Гриневич, Катря Гриневичева. Біографічний нарис (Торонто, 1968).
Катря Гриневичева, Зібрання творів у трьох томах, упоряд. Ярослава Ваврисевич (Львів, 2014).
Катря Гриневичева, Шестикрилець, Шоломи в сонці: історичні повісті, упоряд. О. Мишанич (Київ, 1990).
Катря Гриневичева, Непоборні: повість, оповідання, новели, упоряд. Ф. Погребенник (Львів, 2004).
Хвилини з життя Катрі Гриневичевої, Нова Хата, 1927 р., с. 1–2.

Daria Vikonska:
Євген Маланюк, Дарія Віконська (Торонто, 1966).
Ігор Набитович, Дерево життя літературного роду: Іван Федорович, Володислав Федорович, Дарія Віконська (Київ, 2018).
Олександр Шейко, Друзі митця та їх трагічна доля, Фотографії старого Львова, 5.05.2016
Райська яблінка. Антогологія української малої “жіночої” прози Галичини міжвоєнного періоду, упоряд. Надія Поліщук (Львів, 2014).
Дарія Віконська, Джеймс Джойс: Тайна його мистецького обличчя. Жінка в чорному: Етюди, поезії в прозі, нариси, діалоги, упоряд. Василь Ґабор (Львів, 2013).

Olha Duchyminska:
Ольга Дучимінська, Сумний Христос: повісті, оповідання, упоряд. Роман Горак (Львів, 1992). Ольга Дучимінська, Чую… молитву Землі: поезії, (Івано-Франківськ, 1996).
Іванка Корань, Дами з вулиці Голомба (ч.2).
Володимир Пахомов, Творча спадщина Ольги Дучимінської, (Івано-Франківськ, 2001).

Milena Rudnytska:
Леся Онишко, Мілена Рудницька: штрихи до портрету, Наше слово, 23.12.20120
Марта Богачевська-Хомяк, Мирослава Дядюк, Ярослав Пеленський (ред.), Мілена Рудницька. Статті, листи, документи (Львів, 1998).

Sofia Jablonska:
Тарас Прохасько, Теура – донька всього острова.
Теура: Софія Яблонська, передмова Оксана Забужко, ред. Вероніка Гоменюк, Андрій Беницький (Київ, 2018). Софія Яблонська, Чар Марока; З країни рижу та опію; Далекі обрії: подорожні нариси, упоряд. Василь Ґабор (Львів, 2015). Софія Яблонська, Книга про батька: з мого дитинства (Едмонтон - Париж, 1977).
Валентина Передирій, Світ Софії Яблонської.
Ярослав Поліщук, Далекі обрії Софії Яблонської.

Anna Kowalska:
Anna Kowalska, Dzienniki 1927-1969, przedmowa Julia Hartwig, red. Paweł Kądziela (Warszawa, 2008).
Anna Kowalska, Na rogatce, (Warszawa, 1953).