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President of Ukraine honours local author

Elizabeth Yates
Brantford Expositor – 24 May 2008 

City author Marsha Skrypuch hopes to snatch a few words with Ukrainian president Victor Yushchenko when he gives her a state honour at a ceremony in Toronto on Wednesday.Skrypuch will receive the Order of Princess Olha, Class III: the highest honour the country bestows on foreign citizens. The medal recognizes her books about the 1932-1933 Ukrainian famine, which killed up to 10 million people. The award comes on the 75th anniversary of what Ukrainians call Holodomor: meaning death by hunger.

Since her award was announced in February, Skrypuch has been waiting to hear when the honour would be bestowed. The date is now confirmed for a 9:30 a.m. reception at the Old Mill Inn and Spa.

About 600 people, mostly from the Ukrainian community, are expected to attend, says Skrypuch, who will be accompanied by her husband, Dr. Orest Skrypuch, and other family members.

Meeting Yushchenko – on his first visit to Canada – will be a thrill. She wants to tell him how much she admires the reforms he has brought to the country where her paternal grandfather was born. “He’s my hero,” she says, citing Yushchenko’s role in the 2004-2005 Orange Revolution, which introduced free elections to Ukraine.

Yushchenko also helped draw attention to the famine and to the fate of Ukrainians during the Holocaust.

“His father was an Auschwitz survivor,” says Skrypuch. “People don’t realize that Ukrainians and Poles died along with the Jews.

“He’s a symbol of all that being acknowledged.”

A writer of award-winning books for children and young adults, Skrypuch has carved a significant career crafting fiction from the facts of historic atrocities.

In 2000, she wrote Enough, a picture book based on a folktale about a young girl’s attempts to save her village from starvation during the Ukrainian famine. The Holodomor also inspired her story called The Rings, published in Kobzar’s Children, a 2006 anthology of Ukrainian-Canadian writings which she also edited.

Author: Marsha

I write historical fiction, mostly from the perspective of young people who are thrust in the midst of war. View all posts by Marsha