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Yuri Vynnychuk
sparrow, her little sunshine,
and a cute little frog, a baby
hamster, and a little snail...
But it was just not I who
could not accept the death of
my father, for there, near the
village of Bazar, the fathers
of three of my friends Yoska,
Wolf and Yasko died:
Leopold Milker, a Jew, born
in Galicia in 1901, the son
of a teacher, who studied
in Vienna, a pharmacist in
charge of a field hospital
pharmacy during a campaign;
Bronislaw Bilyevich, a Pole,
born in 1895 in the village of
Hvizd of the Novohrad-Volyn
district of Volyn Province, a
villager, in the army of the
Ukrainian National Republic
from 1919;
Ernest Yeger, a German, born
in 1890 in Prague, graduated
from the Polytechnic Institute
and officer training school
in Vienna, a lieutenant in
the army of the Ukrainian
National Republic from 1920.
They all had died for Ukraine,
but what was Ukraine for
them? No one had an answer
to this question. Bazar -
for each of us remained
something mythical, warriors
who went on that tragic
campaign, grew in our
imagination to the grandeur
of the Argonauts, who set
off for the Golden Fleece,
for they also set off for the
Golden Fleece of freedom,
but every last one of them
died for Ukraine. Before
execution by firing squad the
Bolshevik commissar offered
the following to the doomed
360: “If any of the convicted
repents and swears to join
the Reds to fight against the
Ukrainian gangs, he will be
pardoned!” But in response
to this call Lieutenant Colonel
Mytrofan Kuzmenko darted
out and shouted to the
villagers,whomtheBolsheviks
had herded to the spot of the