A Happy Time in a Sad Life
Wladyslaw was normally a gruff man, somewhat bad-tempered, but never overtly mean. He never exhibited a softer side, except on one single occasion. Eventually, I would have known him for six years. Unexpectedly, that one day, he came into my office, sat in a chair across from me, and started to talk. With a little bit of a prologue and introduction, I endeavor to retrace the story he related. He could obviously tell it much better and more effectively because he lived it.
It was a time a little less than a decade prior to the independence of Ukraine – the birthplace of Wladyslaw. He immigrated to Canada after World War II.
During the 1941 invasion of the USSR by Nazi Germany, Wladyslaw seeing his only opportunity to escape Ukraine joined the German military. History claims that the USSR used a scorched earth policy as an impediment and deterrent to German advancement. In other words, the USSR would destroy, burn, flood, dismantle and remove everything and anything leaving the Germans nothing in the way of fuel, crops, supplies, industrial operations, or equipment.
Wladyslaw was eventually assigned guard duty at a Nazi prison camp. He furnished specific tasks of that function to me, but to avoid morbid, brutal, and nauseating details, I’ll exclude any of that from his story. In Germany, he also met his wife. As soon as possible after the war, they filed for immigration authorizations and passage to Canada. It had been just over forty years since Wladyslaw left his parents and a sister, Ofeliya, behind. He would never see his parents again. He maintained constant communications with his sister through the mail and offered to pay for her travel and all expenses to visit him in Canada. For several years, without justification, her passport was denied by USSR and Ukrainian travel officials.
When the requisite permits were finally in place, and her flight confirmed, Wladyslaw traveled to Winnipeg, Manitoba to pick up his only sibling. Despite the years, he recognized her immediately. They embraced, a long extended embrace; they both wept.
As was customary, Wladyslaw went to a large chain grocery store in the ‘big city’ before heading back to his home in a small town. It would be a five-hour journey. As they entered the store, Ofeliya’s eyes, opened wide as she inspected a large expanse of products she had never seen before.
“You must be a member of the nobility?”, she asked her brother in astonished wonderment.
“No”, he said, “I just work in a mill at a mine” – his Ukrainian language skills were beginning to return.
“But how are you able to shop here?”, she questioned.
As they were entering the fruit and vegetable section he began to explain to her that anyone could shop in that store or any other store they wished. Just at that moment she saw the bananas and exclaimed excitedly she knew they existed but had never seen one except in photographs and had never eaten one. He told her to grab a big bunch and put them in the shopping cart. She was awestruck by the opportunity.
The back of the station wagon was fully loaded with groceries as they headed home. Wladyslaw made sure to keep two bananas out for Ofeliya – she was not sure how to peel one, so steering with one leg, he showed her. She ate both delicately, breaking off mouthfuls with her fingers, staring out the window at her good fortune.
“They told me it was going to be like this”, she said with some mistrust in her voice. After asking her to explain, Ofeliya said that the USSR travel officers had told her that she would be treated to all of these wonderful things simply because the west wanted to brainwash her, but that none of the showboating was factual or real.
During her two-week travel allotment in Canada, Wladyslaw, his wife, and Ofeliya traveled extensively through many of the attractions, sites, and scenic wonders of Ontario and northern New York. Ofeliya was captivated by all she saw, all she experienced, but mostly enraptured by the love and devotion of a sibling she had barely known. On departure back to Ukraine, Wladyslaw asked her what she was going to tell her family and friends about Canada, the US, and the west. She merely said, “Nothing. While I know the truth, they will simply think the brainwashing of the west actually happened.”
I’m not sure if Wladyslaw ever told that story to anyone else. I never heard anyone mention hearing the account. I felt, perhaps rather selfishly, somewhat special. I reminisce on this story after seeing a recent news report that followed a man arriving from Cuba to be with his American wife. The first part of the account showed the man astounded and amazed by the variety and range of products in a large grocery store.
In their battle to embed anthropogenic climate change as a reality, the political left continues to use the theory to chip away at freedoms common to a fully democratic society. Many claim the only way to divest the world of climate change is to transform the free market economic system to socialism. The more fragments of democracy get amputated the closer and closer we get to a world known by people like Ofeliya.
As American journalist, essayist, and cultural critic, H.L. Mencken once said, “The urge to save humanity is almost always a false front for the urge to rule it.”
