Some Special Ukrainians.
Because of the war we missed the fifteenth anniversary in 2022 of the death of Opanas Zalyvakha in 2007, but we are thinking ahead now and 2025 will mark the 100th anniversary of his birth and so we write in anticipation of that anniversary.
We visited the home of Mrs. Lyuba Lemyk and the Zalyvakha family and their children in Ivano-Frankivsk on several occasions together with our mother, Maria Lozynskyj. Our mother was a childhood friend of Mrs. Lyuba since they studied in the gymnasium prep school together in Lviv.
Because of Mrs. Lyuba, my mother became a nationalist. Mother was a family darling, but a fearful weepy child who later became an actress in the first Ukrainian full length feature film in Western Ukraine. But her dear friend, Mrs. Lyuba, was very brave, a Ukrainian nationalist and quite intrepid and determined.. In fact, that friendship and then life itself, made my mother strong and a Ukrainian nationalist as well,
There was one incident, back in Polish occupied Western
Ukraine, when the occupying authorities organized a holiday in honor of Józef Pilsudski at the Basilian Seminary in Lviv. Students were gathered in the auditorium. Lyuba (then Wozniak) prevailed upon two of her friends to provide cover while she released a stink bomb, dispersing the whole assembly and the celebration. Our mother was one of those friends providing cover. All three were threatened with expulsion from the gymnasium. It was the first nationalist act for our mother.
Mrs. Lyuba was the aunt of Mrs. Daria,(Wozniak on her mother’s side and Bandera on her father’s) the wife of Opanas Zalyvakha. Everyone in that modest house, with its very primitive plumbing and in need of critical repair, was undisturbed about such mundane matters. They understood that there is something more important than money or comfort. They were personages of history. They were patriots, political prisoners. Lyuba Wozniak Lemyk, was a political prisoner, the wife of OUN militant and leader of the OUN infiltration force, Mykola Lemyk. Lemyk was killed by the Germans, and Mrs. Lyuba was imprisoned by the Russians for her nationalist activities.
Opanas Zalyvakha’s wife, Daria Bandera, was the daughter of Stepan’s brother Vasyl Bandera. Vasyl Bandera was arrested on September 22, 1941 by the Germans for proclaiming the restoration of Ukrainian statehood. Later he was sent to Auschwitz and murdered there by Polish prisoners with the consent of the capos.
The artist, himself, was the former dissident, political prisoner Opanas Zalyvakha. Quiet, introspective, he only went to the house to eat and then went back to his studio to work. 
Once, in our presence, the long-term political prisoner, Zenon Krasivskyj, who felt it his duty to visit and take care of political prisoners, came to see how Opanas was faring. Given the state of his health, Krasivskyj himself needed care. He died in September 1991, grateful to God that he had lived to see the restoration of independence.
Opanas Zalyvakha embodied the milestones of Ukraine’s twentieth century history. He also personified the unity of the east and west of Ukraine. His parents fled with him from Kharkiv during the Holodomor. He became famous as a dissident, a political prisoner, as one of the creators, together with Alla Horska, of the famous Taras Shevchenko stained glass window, planned for the entrance to Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University but was destroyed by the Russians.
It seemed that we knew more about him from writings than from our visits with him. The visits were mostly brief in his house. Conversations were sparse, the longest was in his studio. And once in Kyiv at the Palace of Ukraine on the occasion of celebrating the anniversary of independence, while Ukrainian political prisoners of the Soviet era of the 1960s, 70s and 80s were being separately honored.
The longest conversation took place in his studio while he was painting a portrait of Roksolana. Here, in his studio, one could feel how terrible and cruel his sentence was as a political prisoner, for he was banned from practicing his art like Taras Shevchenko. His workshop smelled of oil paints and turpentine. It was filled with drawings and paintings and colors. The heart of a real artist was felt here. And here one also felt Zalyvakha’s need to create. He had a terrible allergy to paints. As soon as he touched them, his fingers became painfully swollen and cracked until they bled. Despite the pain, he could not help creating. He couldn’t help but be himself whether it was as an artist or as a Ukrainian patriot.
In his workshop, he was most talkative. He said that talent comes from God. But talent is not enough to be a real artist. You have to work on yourself, which means that you have to study and read all your life, because that’s the only way an artist deepens his worldview and only then is he able to create art. Together, talent and worldview make the artist. In the workshop, he spoke of Ukraine, about devotion and commitment, about love for the homeland. About the necessity of a principled life. He did not talk about his prison life.
He gave us a gift of Roksolana’s portrait. He also gave us a portrait of the political prisoner Mykhaylo Soroka, who was an older symbol and example for the others and perished in a Soviet camp. These two portraits are different but both are filled with meaning and symbolism. They show the artist’s great talent and his worldview – faithfulness to the Almighty and devotion to Ukraine. He surrounded Roksolana with blue and yellow colors under the watchful eye of wisdom. And even pinned a trident on her jacket. Zalyvakha also added roses as a symbol of love. The composition of the portrait is vertical, its form suggests the spiritual reach to the heavens. And this eye of wisdom — God, is very prominent in the portrait of Mykhaylo Soroka. These portraits actually have the appearance of a modern religious and national icon.
At later meetings, Zalyvakha was already ill, but he did not stop coming to the studio to work. His smile remained on his face, although it was already twisted in pain. Opanas Zalyvakha was a brilliant artist. He was also an extremely modest, honest, principled person. Such people fought for and created the Ukrainian state. And we are grateful to them. For this Ukraine and the triump of good over evil, all Ukrainians and the entire world are fighting now.
