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Stephanie

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UkraineOralHistories

Stephanie

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UkraineOralHistories

Stephanie

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UkraineOralHistories

It was one of my, probably the hardest years in my life because I didn't know. I didn't know anybody here in Rochester. I didn't know where to go to meet people because that, like, it's it wasn't it wasn't people on the street. It felt like a ghost city with nobody on the streets. You can see a couple people, but not like people, like walking, enjoying. And just, you know, relaxing. The whole year I couldn't drive a car, and I was just sitting home because I didn't have my paperwork. It was one of my, probably the hardest years in my life because I didn't know. I didn't know anybody here in Rochester. I didn't know where to go to meet people because that, like, it's it wasn't it wasn't people on the street. And I didn't know anybody from the Ukrainian community.I need people around me, and I want to, like, talk to people. I want to spend time with people. And for me, it was sitting in my apartment.

I was homesick because all my friends were there, and I still was, like, new to the culture, new thought, new tradition, new to the food. Like food was for me. Everything is different now when I go back home. Tomatoes don't taste like tomatoes, apples don't taste like apples. And it wasn't bad or good, or worse, it just was different than what I remember like from back home.

The Ukrainian Cultural Center of Rochester in Webster, N.Y.

[The Ukrainian Cultural Center] It was more for people, Ukrainians who were born here. So the newcomers, like I was, they didn't spend much time here. And I'm like, okay, it should be churches here. It should be. It's like, it should be something here that's a big city. And my husband told me that it was in Rochester. It's almost 70,000 people, from across the soviet union. So it's a big community. Right. I went to a Ukrainian church and got a card and every Sunday after, after the mass, they have a meet and greet so you can, you can spend an hour after church. It was friends and families, they had tables and I didn't have any friends there. So I was just trying to introduce myself. Like, hello, my name is Nataliia. I came from Ukraine two years ago. That's how I met my friends. And then, then when, when the war starts, we start to think about how we can help Ukraine, what we can do for Ukraine.

We were thinking, we will start making the Ukrainian wreaths to put on the doors and selling them, and that we were sending money back to Ukraine. And then the organization, the Ukrainian National Woman’s League [of America] (UNWLA), they asked us if we would like to join them.

The day it started, it probably was the worst day in my life. I just didn't know what to expect, that it's going to happen. So it hit us so hard that I was, like, staying home for for a week. I still like when I still like trying to remember, I like I have this flashback like it almost like bring tears to my eyes. I remember for the first week, I couldn't even leave my house. I was trying every day. Lucas was a small kid, he didn't understand what was wrong with me. I didn't want to cook, I was worried about my family because they said that they're going to take over Ukraine, where my parents and my sister live. Everyone was living there. I was thinking that I was never going to see them again.

You cannot just stay and be sad or crying. You think you can pull yourself together and start to think how you can help them. And that's why we start doing the marches. We start the protests, we were doing the fliers to help Ukraine. It was definitely one of the darkest periods in my life.

Nataliia speaks about an auction to support Ukrainian aide during a concert at the Wyndham Hotel in Rochester, N.Y. Apr. 22, 2026

I was thinking I saw how other cultures are doing these concerts and working in the hotel, dealing with a lot of different cultures, I thought let me just try it. They were like big celebrities, one evening I was just on my phone, I'm just gonna text on Instagram. She [Iryna Fedyshyn] was, really big star in Ukraine. [I was thinking] Oh, God, oh, God, Hopefully people show up, people show up. Then the first week, we were the only city from all the United States that were sold out in seven days. The concert was sold out in the first week. People were reselling tickets like it was. It was huge. At this concert they have charity raffles and they have the auctions that we were able to allow the community to help Ukraine. The first concert, if I'm not mistaken, raised $21,000. And we were able to buy, for cars for the, for the front line that, like Ukrainian stand up or scheme. They bought another three cars because in Ukraine, the soldiers in the front lines, they really need military cars as they get destroyed, often on a daily basis.

Lucas Kulbaba hangs on the window at his home in Webster, N.Y. Apr. 22, 2026.

Lucas, he was born here, so that is his motherland. Right. In America, for me it is important to keep Ukrainian traditions. But, we also respect American traditions. That's why we like doing both organizations [American scouts, and Ukrainian Scouts PLAST], schools and the same Ukrainian organization plus. So I don't want him to compare cultures or compare, like, you know, the communities. I [thought] should be more involved in the community because of Lucas. So he can start the Ukrainian can, in kindergarten. And then, I heard about the Galena dance, because before I did, before I didn't have a kid, so I didn't know all of this. Like, I didn't even know that we have kindergarten here. I just want him to respect them both. So he knows that he has Ukrainian roles, but he was born here, so he's American. Yeah. And he has to, respect. And he has to have it. And like I told him, like, you know, you live here, that's your motherland. But you have to remember where your parents came from.

Nataliia and her son Lucas at their home in Webster, N.Y. Apr. 14, 2026.

Nataliia Kulbaba sits at the Ukrainian Cultural Center of Rochester in Webster, N.Y. while Melissa Sydor (left) speaks with other patrons, Apr. 3, 2026.

Stephanie Wowkowych

We left walking with one like a suitcase. That's about all that we had. We were walking during night and hiding during the day because of Russian soldiers. We talk about an awful lot of people doing the same thing. We just found out later. The walking wasn't easy. The Russian soldiers or Communist soldiers were in those big, trucks, army vehicles, they were looking for people like us. And so some of them, they caught and just threw them in the truck and took them to over, either their death or to Siberia. My brother was 16. He was smart enough to, to find out all this and said, okay, so where did we hide? Probably in the woods. I'm thinking I'm saying, so what did we eat? Well, maybe something that we can find. They said, what about water? Well, you can be without water, you know, for a while. And then when we found a little brook, we would drink like that.

Stephanie with her family and other workers on the farm, Germany, 1942. (From the collection of Stephanie Wowkowych.

I was six years old or five years old. My younger sister was four. My older sister was ten, and the oldest sister was 13. There were my two parents and my uncle was going with us. His family said they'll stay in Ukraine.

One day my sisters and I were playing somewhere that was like the end of the town. There was a little, little tiny little place over here cemented. There was one window and we heard a voice, like somebody saying something. And we came up and there was the wonderful young man, probably English, certainly not German. And he probably parachuted and they put them like, temporary jail. He was crying, looking at us. And my sister Pauline said he's probably very hungry. So whatever, we went home and my mother just made some mushrooms and they said we lived, you know. Yeah. From and the mushrooms were. In the woods. I mean, anyway, she made something and we had a little piece of bread and we brought them to him, and the window wasn't even with the glass. It was just, right. Bars. Right. So we gave him that, and we're talking to him in Ukrainian, and he's. And he's saying something to us in English. And then my, my, my father came in and says, you better get away from here. If they catch you, they'll probably throw you when they're in there. You. No, you can't do that.

Paintings of two Ukrainians wearing traditional clothing of western Ukraine.

It probably took us about a week to walk from that place where we would have been, occupied by the Russians, to the West. When we came closer to that, like, barracks. There were a lot of people outside and a priest was doing a prayer service in Ukrainian. My father and my mother fell to their knees crying like babies. You know, they were just so happy for my God, it's not only our language, but they were praying and we were with them doing the same thing. And there were English soldiers there, too. The English soldiers were there because Russians wanted to come in and take these people back home. So, English soldiers, at first they said, why don't you want to go home? There were some of the people there that knew English, which was very good. Explained to them, they're not taking us home. They're either taking us to Siberia to freeze or they're going to probably kill us for sure. Ukrainians threw hot water at the Russians. Said to the Russians we’re not going. We're not going. You'll leave us alone. Some of them even committed suicide because they were there. They were so, afraid that they were going to go back to to hell while they were in the camp.

Russian soldiers in Hallendorf, Germany, attempting to take displaced Ukrainians form the British zone of a displaced persons camp (1945). From the collection of Stephanie Wowkowych.

It was a camp [in Hallendorf, Germany] where prisoners of war were there during the war, English, Americans, and so forth. So the barracks were empty, but they were full of all kinds of bugs. They [British soldiers] come in with DDT [and spray us] although we are all right and I'm still alive. We received some of the food, like dried beans or dried peas. Almost all the people, took a shovel and made a little gardens around their barrack so that we had carrots and cucumbers and, a little potatoes. The soil wasn't that good, but somehow they made everything work. I remember, going in that little garden and taking the carrot there, and taking the cucumbers. Then everybody knew, oh, this was mine and this was yours. The summertime was a great time for us. And then there were apple trees, because the road was there.

Members of the high school at the Hallendorf displaced persons camp, including priests, professors, and students wearing suits along with PLAST (Ukrainian scouting group) uniforms.

We also had priests who migrated also, we had a very intelligent, teachers. The reason we had an awful lot of intelligent people that not only intelligent but well educated, because those were the ones that fled first. The Russians, the first thing that they did was looking for any of them to, get rid of them and throw them either in jails or get rid of them.

The other organizations like Scouts, they started like a dancing group, Ukrainian dance group. Then they had a choir, you know, we became, community of, of a lot of talent and, a lot of a lot. And nobody was working. So we were able to do a lot of practicing and, and we had some, we had a lot of help not only from Britain, but also from the United States.

After the war, we were hoping that we could go back to Ukraine and have, our life, because my parents really loved Ukraine and we were too young, but then we heard on the radio and some other people came in from different towns that Russia occupied Ukraine. When the Soviet Union started, the first thing they did was nix the religion, then came up in the schools, the parents couldn't really say much the home because the children’s teachers were always asking what your mothers say? What do your fathers say? They couldn't pray, they couldn't say anything, that was everything. When you're occupied, you're not your own person. That was the same thing as somebody would come into my house and tell me what to do, and I would be subjugated. We knew that it's worse than Hitler. I said, oh my God, we are going west. We don't know where we're going to go, but we're not. We're not going back home because those people, they were either taken to Siberia or they were shot because, communist there, because that's the word, you know, not spies. We knew that we were on the side where the Russians were coming in, and they probably would have brought us to Siberia.

So in 1949 already, English people, and the United States said, okay, we need to place these people somewhere permanently. There were a lot of countries that needed workers and it was like a special visa. They would guarantee the stay of these people and taken care of them. And the people usually signed a contract for one year and then they can do whatever. We were very, very lucky that we had somebody that came here like, six months before us and our family, it was like cousins. And they were sponsored, you. And my Frank, my husband's parents[who sponsored Stephanie’s family]. This father saw this name that he recognized from the village that he was in and wrote to the relief Committee in New York. They said, okay, they gave him the and and the address, and he wrote to them and said that I will sponsor you. How many of you are there? And there were like, just two kids and parents and two parents, the sponsorship at that time was completely different than now.

Stephanie and her family infront of their first house in Rochester, N.Y. 1956. From the collection of Stephanie Wowkowych.

I was admiring little girls and boys in jeans in the street, playing hopscotch with crayons, or chalk or whatever. We would just kind of stay with my sister and look at them. They were they were, I suppose they were kind of indifferent, they were playing their thing and sometimes or then when they were maybe rolling the ball, volleyball or something, if we caught the ball, we kind of throw it to them and they would smile, that type of thing. Everything to me, everything was just beautiful.

Stephanie Wowkowych poses at her house in Webster, N.Y. Mar. 24, 2026.