This memoir by London-based Ukrainian Ivanna Mashchak covers the tragic chapters of Ukrainian history in the 1930s–1950s. It includes accounts of the Ukrainian underground in Poland, Operation Vistula, and the overcrowded Gulag camps in Kolyma, which the author personally endured. The narrative offers an honest and deeply personal recollection of a Galician village in the 1930s, Polish and Soviet interrogation rooms, arrests and interrogations, as well as a journey across the icy Sea of Okhotsk.

The story is complemented by brief memoirs of her husband, Volodymyr, describing his service in the “Halychyna” Division and the subsequent transfer of Ukrainian soldiers to Great Britain. Through the experience of one family, the book reveals a broader picture of everyday life in Western Ukraine — its customs, education, religion, and social realities — as well as the central ideal shared across generations: the struggle for independence, a struggle that was often bloody, sacrificial, and uncompromising.

Length: 256 pages. Hardcover.