Ukrainian lands are a living space for Ukrainian people. Therefore, we have defeated and will defeat any invader!
Oleh Olzhych
Oleh Olzhych (real name Kandyba) was a Ukrainian archaeologist, poet, and politician.
Oleh Olzhych was born on July 21, 1907, in Zhytomyr in the family of the writer Oleksandr Oles. He was good at drawing and playing the piano and violin from an early age. He started his secondary education at a school in Pushcha-Vodytsia near Kyiv and finished it in Prague. Oleh and his mother arrived in Czechoslovakia in 1923 as his father lived there. He graduated from Charles University in Prague (1929). At the same time, he attended lectures at the Ukrainian Free University and the Drahomanov Ukrainian Pedagogical Institute in Prague. It allowed him to become better acquainted with Ukrainian studies, particularly the history of Ukraine.
At 22, he defended his PhD dissertation in archaeology on “Neolithic Painted Ceramics of Galicia” (1930). The next ten years were marked by active scientific work. He worked at the Department of Archaeology at the Ukrainian Free University, shared his experience with students during archaeological expeditions of the American School of Prehistoric Research, lectured at Harvard University (USA), presented the results of his research at international conferences, and published scientific papers in Ukrainian, German, and English.
Together with Yurii Lypa, Oksana Liaturynska, Leonid Mosendz, and Olena Teliha, he was a member of the Prague school of poets. Several collections were published during his lifetime: “Rin” (Gravel, 1935) and “Vezhi” (Towers, 1940). The poems were thematically related to Olzych’s scientific, social, and political activities.
A decisive event in Olzhych’s life was his meeting in Rome with the head of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), Yevhen Konovalets. In the second half of the 1930s, Olzhych’s active social and political activity began. As a member of the OUN, he headed its cultural and educational branch and then became one of the leaders of the organization. He participated in the Proclamation of Carpatho-Ukraine (1938) and the Ukrainian National Council (1941) organization in Kyiv.
In 1944, he was arrested by the Gestapo in Lviv. He died on June 10, 1944, from brutal torture in the Nazi concentration camp Sachsenhausen near Berlin. On July 31, 1944, his wife gave birth to a son named Oleh in honor of his father.
