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By Patrick Walters, Associated Press Writer, AP World Politics
Philadelphia, PA, Thursday Oct 3,2002
| PHILADELPHIA - On July 23, 1942, Nazis forced 24-year-old Maria
Maksymiuk Harkuscha from her home in a small Ukrainian village, sending
her on an odyssey through labor and refugee camps before she escaped to
America a decade later.
Separated from her parents and three siblings, who also were taken away,
Harkuscha knew little of their whereabouts until exactly 60 years later. On
July 23, 2002, after her daughter, Ann Freed, started a search for relatives
through the Red Cross, Harkuscha got a letter from her 79-year-old brother,
Elko Maksymiuk.
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Eighty-four-year-old Maria Maksymiuk Harkuscha, left, who is hard of hearing, listens to her son Frank Harchuska at her home Thursday, Oct. 3, 2002 in Lebanon, Pa.,
as he shows her for the first time a photograph of her brother Elko Maksymiuk in the Ukraine.
AP Photo/Brad C Bower
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"He said `After the war, everybody came back except Maria,'" said Freed, 57,
who lives in Williamstown, New Jersey "They made it back to that village."
Harkuscha, 84 and living in Lebanon County, has lived in America for 50
years. She is returning to northwestern Ukraine near Poland this weekend to
see her brother for the first time in six decades. She speaks little English
and plans to make the trip with Freed and five family members, who will
begin the journey on Saturday.
"This is my brother," Harkuscha said through her son Frank Harchuska,
pointing at a picture of Elko Maksymiuk, one she received in the mail on
Thursday. "I want to talk to him in our language (Ukrainian) and I just want
to talk to him."
The family started the search for Maria Harkuscha's relatives in earnest
about two years ago. Freed said she contacted the American Red Cross (
news - web sites) and has also worked with and Red Cross's Austrian and
Ukrainian offices, as well as the American Red Cross Holocaust and War
Victims Tracing and Information Center in Baltimore.
Freed filled out forms identifying the lost siblings - Elko, Anna and
Nicholas - and submitted them with the Red Cross.
"Then we waited and she waited," said Deborah Cooper, a representative of
the Southeastern Pennsylvania Chapter of the Red Cross. In May, Cooper said
she heard from the Ukrainian Red Cross, which said it had located Maksymiuk.
Through Cooper, Harkuscha exchanged the letters with her brother and found
out he was sick, but that he would look forward to seeing her again.
Maria Harkuscha last saw her family when they were put on separate trains in
1942. Since then, her parents and other two siblings have died, Freed said.
After being taken by Nazis, Harkuscha was sent to a job in Austria and then
put in a labor camp, where Freed was born.
With a newborn child, Harkuscha was put in a place for unwed mothers, then
moved to a refugee camp in Austria.
After spending several years moving from camp to camp in Austria, Harkuscha
and her husband, Andrew, whom she married in 1947, eventually found a
sponsor in Maryland who paid for their trip to America.
Once in America, Harkuscha first worked on farm in Linwood, Maryland, and
later worked in a clothing factory in Lebanon. After she had children and
her husband was diagnosed with a mental illness, she became a homemaker,
Freed said. Andrew has since died.
Frank Harchuska, who was born in America after his parents moved to Lebanon,
said his mother is both happy and enthusiastic about her visit with her
brother. Having heard Maksymiuk is in ill health and may have had a stroke,
she often prays for him.
He said he and his eight siblings eventually changed the spelling of their
last name to "Harchuska" in order to "American-ize" it.
"Every time we bring up the visit to see her brother, she puts her hands
together and says, 'Poor brother, sick,'" said Frank Harchuska, who lives in
Jonestown, and is also traveling to Ukraine. "She doesn't remember a lot of
things."
For personal and academic use only.
To view the original story click on:
http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20021004/ap_wo_en_po/us_lo
ng_lost_siblings_1
To view the photograph with the story click on:
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