ALEXANDER MELNYK

Date and Place of Birth: 1946 in Ellwangen, Germany

Date of Interview: November 23, 2015

Place of Interview: Toronto, Ontario

Interviewer: Sophia Isajiw

Length of Interview: 01:15:18 (raw)

Mother (Survivor): Anna Melnyk (Maiden name: Lysenko) b. July 14, 1914 in Sumy, Kariolske selo, Chernihivshchyna, Ukraine

Father (Survivor): Wasyl Melnyk b. March 20, 1901 in Sumy, not far from Pilypne.

(Excerpt):

A.M.: Here she is, she’s lighting candle at Montreal Ukrainian and Jewish communities. So, joint commemoration, so she was lighting a candle. And just a couple of pictures of her. Here’s one [laughs], just a picture from life – talking on the phone. And that’s just at her 100th birthday. Right there.

I: She was 100! How old was she, did she make it over?

A.M.: When she died she was 10 days from [becoming] 101.

I: Oh! Goodness! That’s a beautiful photograph! Beautiful!

A.M.: Yeah, it is. My wife says, “That’s a nice one, show them that one!” There are my parents. And here, here are the grandchildren. And here, I’m trying to see, here are the kids and family. If you recognize, the Bishop, now Metropolitan, was at our place – Yurij [Kalistchuk]. And, various other pictures, you know, weddings and so on. etc.

But you see, you take a look at these 2 people here [points to photo of parents] and they survived the Holodomor. And here [draws a large circle with his arm to include all the photos on the memory board] is the result, the partial result, of that. So when you snuff out that life, you see how much of life you snuff out. So in a sense, it is a way of reminding us of that.

CROSS REFERENCES:

• Dr. Alex Melnyk’s mother, Anna Melnyk (Survivor), is interviewed, File #336, by Ariadna Ochrymovych in her Sharing the Story project (on HD video) on October 7, 2010.

• Dr. Alex Melnyk interviewed by CTV News, Montreal for “Montreal Ukrainians protest, pray for homeland.” March 1, 2014. http://montreal.ctvnews.ca/montreal-ukrainians-protest-pray-for-homeland-1.1709871