BETWEEN HITLER AND STALIN

OLENA TELIHA

b. 21 July 1907, St. Petersburg, Russia, d. 21 February 1942, Kyiv

Teliha was a poet, publicist and nationalist activist. She immigrated to Czechoslovakia in 1922, where she studied at the Ukrainian Higher Pedagogical Institute. She soon became a part of the burgeoning literary and intellectual Ukrainian community in Prague. She moved to Warsaw in 1929, and in 1933 began contributing to the Ukrainian nationalist journal Vistnyk, published in Lviv. From 1939 she worked in the cultural sector of the Leadership of Ukrainian Nationalists.

After the outbreak of war, Teliha moved to Lviv and after the German occupation of Kyiv went there with OUN expeditionary groups. In Kyiv, she became head of the Writers’ Union and editor of the weekly literary journal Litavry. The German authorities closed down Litavry’s parent newspaper, Ukraiinske slovo, and replaced it with the pro-German Nove ukraiinske slovo. An outspoken critic of German occupation and determined supporter of the Ukrainian struggle for independence, Teliha refused to cooperate with the German authorities. She was arrested by the Gestapo and shot on 21 February 1942 at Babyn Yar.