Ilya Stepanovych Oberyshyn (; c. 1921 – 11 November 2007) was a Ukrainian soldier who fought against both

Nazi Germany Nazi Germany, officially known as the German Reich and later the Greater German Reich, was the German Reich, German state between 1933 and 1945, when Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party controlled the country, transforming it into a Totalit ...

and the

Soviet Union The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR), commonly known as the Soviet Union, was a List of former transcontinental countries#Since 1700, transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 until Dissolution of the Soviet ...

as a part of the

Ukrainian Insurgent Army The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (, abbreviated UPA) was a Ukrainian nationalist partisan formation founded by the Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN) on 14 October 1942. The UPA launched guerrilla warfare against Nazi Germany, the S ...

in the 1940s. He became a fugitive in the Soviet Union as a result of the fighting and went into hiding in 1951. Oberyshyn was not able to get a job, get married, or visit a

hospital A hospital is a healthcare institution providing patient treatment with specialized Medical Science, health science and auxiliary healthcare staff and medical equipment. The best-known type of hospital is the general hospital, which typically ...

as a result. He also faced imminent arrest for not having a Soviet passport, which he burned in 1944. It was only after hearing the results of the

Ukrainian independence referendum A referendum on the Act of Declaration of Independence was held in Ukraine on 1 December 1991.Dieter Nohlen & Philip Stöver (2010) ''Elections in Europe: A data handbook'', page 1976 An overwhelming majority of 92% of voters approved the declar ...

in December 1991 when he came out of hiding and turned himself in to the Ukrainian authorities. He then lived an active political and social life until he died in 2007.

Biography

Oberyshyn was born in 1921 in the village of Potik in the

Stanisławów Voivodeship Stanisławów Voivodeship () was an administrative district of the interwar Poland (1920–1939). It was established in December 1920 with an administrative center in Stanisławów. The voivodeship had an area of 16,900 km2 and comprised twe ...

of the

Second Polish Republic The Second Polish Republic, at the time officially known as the Republic of Poland, was a country in Central and Eastern Europe that existed between 7 October 1918 and 6 October 1939. The state was established in the final stage of World War I ...

. His accurate date of birth is unknown.

Education

Oberyshyn studied in the Rohatyn Gymnasium. At the age of 17, he joined the OUN Youth, where he was trusted with anti-drug and anti-nicotine campaigning. With the arrival of the Red Army in 1939, Oberyshyn entered the physics and math department of the

University of Lviv The Ivan Franko National University of Lviv (named after Ivan Franko, ) is a state-sponsored university in Lviv, Ukraine. Since 1940 the university is named after Ukrainian poet Ivan Franko. The university is the oldest institution of highe ...

. However, he was forced to leave his studies and take up teaching after mass arrests of students began.

In the OUN & UIA

In 1941, Oberyshyn became a member of the

Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists The Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN; ) was a Ukrainian nationalist organization established on February 2, 1929 in Vienna, uniting the Ukrainian Military Organization with smaller, mainly youth, radical nationalist right-wing groups ...

and received the pseudonym "Stetsko" in honor of one of the organisation’s leaders,

Yaroslav Stetsko Yaroslav Semenovych Stetsko (; 19 January 1912 – 5 July 1986) was a Ukrainian politician, writer and ideologist who served as the leader of Stepan Bandera's faction of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, the OUN-B, from 1941 until his ...

. During the same year he also went back to studying, although this time he entered the Danylo Halytsky Lviv National Medical University, which was known as the Lviv State Medical Institute at the time. The OUN instructed him to obtain medicine for the resistance movements. In early April 1944, he joined the OUN underground. Soon he was transferred to the Ukrainian Red Cross, an auxiliary structure of the

. After appropriate training, he was appointed a regional leader of the URC. In spring 1947, the medical service was disbanded, after which he became a member of the Security Service (SB) at the

Ternopil Ternopil, known until 1944 mostly as Tarnopol, is a city in western Ukraine, located on the banks of the Seret River. Ternopil is one of the major cities of Western Ukraine and the historical regions of Galicia and Podolia. The populatio ...

regional leadership of the OUN. From September 1947, Oberyshyn was a super-district leader of the OUN and a super-district SB officer in the Zbarazh district. From 1951, he lost contact with the leadership, was forced to act independently and go into hiding from Soviet authorities. He was in an illegal situation for forty years without any Soviet documents and passport. He only came out of hiding on December 3, 1991, after hearing about the results of the Independence Referendum of Ukraine and turning himself in to the authorities. In an interview in 1997, Oberyshyn said: "...In 1951, my friends died. I was left alone, without any connections. I went to the emergency meeting points, but no one showed up there either, and everyone was dead. And then I decided to go deep underground. I broke all ties with civilians with whom I had been associated during the liberation struggle. I kept in touch only with those whom I trusted one hundred percent... ...I did not sleep in a bed for forty years. I was constantly wandering from place to place. There is not a village in the region where I could not hide. In summer, in peasant clothes, I would go to the markets of Ternopil, and in winter, wherever I had to, mostly in attics, in straw. After all, you couldn't go to anyone's house because there were sons-in-law, daughters-in-law, grandchildren... ...They could smell that I was alive, and they did not stop looking for me until the last days of the KGB's existence. But as soon as I heard the results of the Ukrainian referendum on December 3, 1991, in the first radio newscast, I realized that it was not their enormous power, but me, alone and exhausted, who had won. My comrades who gave their lives for Ukraine had won..."

Later life and death

After coming out of hiding, Oberyshyn moved to Ternopil and led an active social and political life. However, this did not last as his health started to decline. He then moved to the village of Horodnytsia, where he died on 11 November 2007.

Personal life

Oberyshyn had a wife named Emilia Turchyn (28 October, 1926 – 9 June, 2018). Meeting Emilia in the late 1940s, Oberyshyn settled in her family’s attic after losing contact with the leadership and the rest of the OUN in 1951. Oberyshyn and Emilia fell in love, secretly married, and had a son, who Emilia named Arkadii.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Oberyshyn, Ilya Ukrainian military personnel 1921 births 2007 deaths Ukrainian Insurgent Army