SZCZERBIAK UKRAINIAN ANCESTRY

 

            Maria Myca (pronounced Mi tsa) Szczerbiak was a remarkable woman of endurance, perseverance, and self-sacrifice.  To celebrate her life, this is her story in her own words.

 

            Around 1911 and before the outbreak of the First World War, Alexander Myca was sent to Siberia.  Ukrainians striving for independence were being persecuted by Russia.  Russia wanted to suppress all Ukrainian culture and political activities.  Russian troops entered Ukraine subduing all Ukrainian life.  They arrested and exiled many Ukrainians to Siberia, including Alexander Myca.  Alexander spent seven years of his young life in Siberia not for a crime, but for the love of his country, Ukraine.

 

            After his release from Siberia, Alexander met Anna, a widow with three sons, Theo the oldest, and Michael and Dmetre, twins.  Anna’s husband had immigrated to America to find work in Pennsylvania.  Plans were made for Anna and the boys to follow.  However, Anna’s husband died a short time after his arrival.  He died in a mining accident.  How he died was not clear.  With news of her husband’s death, Anna had to forego her plans to travel to America and remain in Ukraine.  She was raising her three sons when she met Alexander in 1918.  Anna and Alexander married in 1920 and made their home on a farm in Ukraine.

 

            Maria was the first child born to Alexander and Anna Myca.  She was born on November 3, 1922, in the district of Paszowa, in Ukraine which, at the time, was under the control of Poland.  Michael and Ilko followed.  Maria grew up with five brothers.

 

            Life on the farm was relatively good.  The family built a one floor house on the land they owned.  They had “a horse, two cows, chickens, and pigs,” but had little in material goods.  Maria said, “We had no shoes.  You worked the farm barefoot.  When you collected the harvest in October and November, your feet were very cold.”  Still, they had enough to eat from the yield of the land and life on the farm was harmonious.

 

            Maria had a “good relationship” with her tall and lanky father, known as Alexie.  She said “He was a happy, generous, and a considerate man.  He worked for several rich Polish landowners as a farm manager.  He would travel from village to village looking for workers.  He would pick them up and bring them across the border into Poland to do farm work.  Knowing that his farm workers were to poor to bring their own lunch, Alexie, would provide them with sandwiches on a daily basis so that they would not go hungry during the day.”  Maria, age nine, and her brothers traveled with their father, Alexie.  He, along with his children and his workers, would plant and harvest wheat, vegetables, and potatoes.  It was not unusual for children, including Maria, to carry sack of potatoes on their back.  When they returned home, Alexie, Maria, and her brothers would then tend to their own crops and animals.

 

            Maria’s mother, Anna, was a pretty woman slightly built and strong.  She cared for the household and helped Alexie in the fields.  She made a happy home for all.

 

            Maria’s formal education was limited.  She said, “I finished five grades.  I liked school.  I was slow in history, but I liked to write.  Pencils were not easy to have.  The school would cut one pencil into three pieces for us to share.  There was no paper; there was no money.  We would write on rocks, wood, or anything we could find.”

 

            Life on the farm was, as Maria put it, “lucky living before the Russians came.”  In 1930, Russia began forcible collectivization of the farms in Ukraine.  Many Ukrainians resisted.  Stalin imposed a famine to break Ukrainian opposition.  The Ukrainians suffered much deprivation.  Millions died.  Compulsory collectivization brought nothing but property confiscation, poverty, starvation, and death to the Ukrainians.

 

            In 1939, the Soviets began to collectivize the farms in Maria’s area.  They “took the land and left barely a foot wide piece of property around the house.”  Maria’s family was left with “one cow  for cottage cheese and a couple of chickens for eggs to be shared by a household of ten people.  If the chicken wandered of that foot wide piece of property and crossed the line into Russian territory, the Russians would grab it.”  Maria’s family and the people of her village were forced to provide two thirds of the farm yield to the Soviets.  She said “If you planted three rows of crop the Russians took two, and if you planted two rows of crop the Russians took the two you planted.  There was nothing after that.  There was no food, no clothing, and no bread.  People were starving everywhere.  It was hard for everyone. That was no life.  For six months, I was hungry.  Not a scrap of food could you find.  Many times I would dig in the ground with my bare hands looking for a raw potato to eat.  I survived on cottage cheese.  There was nothing more.”

 

            In 1940, Maria saw cruelty at the hands of the Soviets.  When she was seventeen, her nineteen year old brother Michael was put in jail because he refused to work for the Soviets.  He worked in a praviti, a governed facility where people would wait in line for two days to get bread.  The Soviets took him and others from her village.  It was feared that Michael would not return.  Maria said, “The Russians would beat up on people and put them in  jail for no reason.  They would hurt the women.  Thank God Michael was saved.”  He was one of the lucky ones who was let out of jail after one week.  Out of forty-eight people, including Michael, whom the Soviets arrested from her village only eight were saved.  Maria saw Soviet brutality, first hand, when with her own eyes she saw forty people, who were friends and neighbors, put up against a wall and shot.

 

            The Soviets demanded farm production.  During these times of turmoil and hunger, Maria’s father, Alexie, suffered severe depression and was of little help to the family.  There was nothing they could do for him.  He just seemed to get worse every day.  Maria and two of her brothers had to work the farm giving up their crop to the Soviets.

 

            In 1941, at the age of eighteen, Maria’s mom died.  Her mother, Anna, suffered for eight months.  It was a “long and painful time” for Maria.  Not only did she take care of her mother, but she took care of her father, her brothers and the farm.

 

            Soon Nazi Germany invaded Russia and drove the Soviets out of Maria’s village.  Germany too, demanded the same two thirds crop yield as the Soviets.  Hitler promised a better life for those who went to Germany to work.  Maria signed up and was placed on a train to Germany.  Once in Germany, she had to have a medical examination.  Faced with humiliation, Maria and hundreds of men, women, and children were kept naked in a large room during these examinations.  For one week, Maria and the others were examined from top to bottom to see if there were any conditions to prevent them from working.  Those who were sick or had lice were taken away by the Nazis.  Those who could work were given jobs with German families.  Maria said, “I was the last to be picked.  The reason was that I had a large goiter and no one wanted to look at me. I was afraid no one would want me.  I prayed.  My prayer was answered.  I was chosen by a German farmer.  He chose me because he felt sorry for me with the way I looked.  He told me that he was afraid of what might have happened to me if I were not chosen.  My job was to work the farm and to be a housemaid to his wife and five children.  I had no choice.  It was either Germany or Russia.”

 

            In 1942, Nazi soldiers were grabbing people from all over.  Young or old, men, women, and children were taken.  When the soldiers came to her farm to pick up produce, Maria had to hide in a crawl space as large as a burial box dug underneath the basement.  Usually this was for a few hours.  One time they came and stayed for three days.  The farmer passed food and water to Maria through a pipe and that is how she survived.  It was well known that many Nazi soldiers raped women when they stopped at the farms, and, therefore many women were hidden.

 

            Maria looked down the barrel of a riffle three times, once with the Russians, once with the Germans, and thinking that she was the enemy, once with the Americans.  She heard bombs drop and the earth rumble.  She heard horror stories of how people suffered and the atrocities of their suffering.  She did not know how or why she made it from the devastating upheaval, and many times she said that she should have been dead.

 

            At the end of one day, in the spring of 1945, the war was over.  Maria and a worker friend returning from a hard day’s work in the fields found the house empty.  The family she worked for was nowhere to be found.  They had fled their home.

 

            Maria thought she could go home now to her village in Ukraine, but there was no home or village.  The Soviets had taken over all the property and the land.  Maria’s family, taking with them everything they could carry on their backs, were forced to leave Ukraine to a destination unknown to Maria.

 

            Maria had no home, no family, nor a country to go back to.  In the midst of all the confusion her papers were stolen.  She wandered the ruined streets of Germany.  It was not long before the Americans picked her up and took her to a refugee camp.  She spent six years of her life in the refugee camp with her husband, Michael Szczerbiak, her daughter, Dianne, and her two sons, Joseph and Walter.

 

            In 1951, Maria, Michael, and the children, sponsored by St. John the Baptist Ukrainian Catholic Church, traveled across the Atlantic Ocean for ten days on a ship called “General Eltinge” and arrived in New York on December 1, 1951.  They were processed on Ellis Island.  On December 2, they arrived in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania and stayed with two very kind people.  A short time later, the family rented two rooms in a house with no kitchen or bath.  An outhouse was provided behind the house.  While Maria made these two rooms a comfortable home to live in, she gave birth to her son, John.

 

            Maria and the family came to live in their own home on South Side, Pittsburgh in 1956.  Soon after, Mary and Pat , twin girls, were born.  With a large family to feed and a mortgage to pay, it was necessary for Maria to find a job.  She would have to leave responsibility to her oldest daughter, Dianne, to help raise her children, do the chores, and mind the house if she were to go to work.  On October 11, 1957, starting as a dishwasher and eventually moving into a position of vegetable preparer, Maria doing an honest and hard day’s work, from 4 o’clock in the afternoon to 12 midnight, dedicated thirty years to the Pittsburgh Athletic Association.

 

            In 1965, Maria, a Ukrainian immigrant, proudly became a citizen of the United States.  She loved America and she loved her homeland, Ukraine.  She was proud of her heritage.  She kept her language, traditions, customs, and beliefs alive.  She remembered her roots.  She remembered where she came from  when she became an American citizen.

 

            Maria faced many adversities.  She endured much hardship.  She suffered much physical and emotional abuse.  She knew difficult times.  She had the will to survive and found her strength to persevere from her devout belief in God.  She was a woman of honesty, integrity, and humility.  She acknowledged the dignity of a human life with kindness, consideration, and compassion.  Her self-sacrifice made it possible for her children to live a better life.