Trafika Europe 7 - Ukrainian Prayer

Yuri Vynnychuk

also did not know the reason and that tormented us the most. Our mothers – Vlodzya Barbaryka, Golda Milker, Yadzya Bilyevych, and Rita Yeger – got acquainted on the tenth anniversary of the battle of Bazar, had come to the symbolic grave in the Yaniv Cemetery, and since all four were Lvivians, they quickly became friends and all the more began to visit each other, and kids were happy about that because we had three Christmases and three Easters – Catholic, Greek Catholic and Jewish – and gladly visited each other, then regaled ourselves on red Kozak borscht, in which “little ear” dumplings with mushrooms floated, and on the surface golden fried onions, then – stuffed fish, which Golda decorated on top with grated horseradish and a wonderful cut-outs of

Kholodny Yar (Cold Ravine), and avenge the defeat, and then return home in glory, because the borders then were not yet guarded so closely. Each of us put himself in the position of his father and tried to imagine escape, revenge, and a return home, but one interesting detail that we also learned from the newspapers stirred our imagination the most: that night one of the wounded soldiers ripped himself out of the grave, crawled to the peasant houses where they treated him, and later helped him cross over the Polish border. Who was that Kozak of the Kyiv 4th Division, who managed to survive and save himself? And what if it’s one of our parents? I have often asked myself the question: If my dad died for Ukraine, then for what did the parents of Yas, Wolf and Yosko die? They themselves

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