COURAGE

gyűjtemények hálózata

Evhen Batchinsky was born in 1885 in Katerynoslav (later Dnipropetrovsk, now Dnipro) in the Russian Empire. Born into the szlachta, or a legally privileged noble class, Batchinsky attended a military cadet school in Oryol, Russia and the artillery academy in St. Petersburg before serving in the Tsarist army as an artillery lieutenant. He was among the officers with revolutionary aims in the period 1905-1907, advocating for the institution of a constitutional monarchy and federalization of the empire. For this, Batchinsky was arrested and released from military service, serving 10 months in prison before fleeing to France where he lived from 1908 until 1914. Batchinsky traveled briefly to Bukovyna (then part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire) in 1910, where he was arrested and spent three months in jail for agitating for the creation of a Ukrainian university in Lviv. From that point onward, he was under the surveillance of Romanian, Hungarian and Soviet state security services. He then returned to France, before moving to Geneva in 1914, when he also began studying socioeconomics at Lausanne University.

From 1915 to 1917, he was a representative of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (Soyuz vyzvolennia Ukrainy) in Switzerland and was editor of La Revue ukrainienne, an official publication of this organization. In 1918, he was made temporary consul of the Ukrainian National Republic (UNR) diplomatic mission in Switzerland, participating in various diplomatic and political activities. From 1919 to 1922, Batchinsky served as general secretary of the Chambre de Commerce Ukraino-Suisse in Geneva founded by Pavlo Chyzhevsky, an emissary of the Ukrainian National Republic, and was editor of its publication, Vistnyk (The Herald). During the interwar period he continued his journalistic activities, and was an accredited journalist to the League of Nations for several Ukrainian newspapers.

In 1939, Batchinsky founded the Central Aid Committee of the Ukrainian Red Cross in Exile, and was its director until 1950, when it was disbanded. Though not officially recognized by the International Red Cross and severely lacking in resources, this organization helped a large number of Ukrainian refugees during and immediately after World War II with advice, documents, and occasional material assistance. Documents Batchinsky prepared helped save a number of Ukrainian refugees from forced repatriation to the Soviet Union. At least three large boxes of materials relating to the Ukrainian Red Cross and the Prisoner of War Post remain at the Ukrainian Museum-Archives in Cleveland.

Alongside his diplomatic and humanitarian activities, Batchinsky avidly collected documentation from this period, amassing a collection that totals 115 linear meters, including 67 meters of manuscripts and other papers and about fifteen hundred serial and monographic publications. As indicated in the finding aid prepared by Carleton University, he acquired these materials in various ways. Some were encountered in his day-to-day administrative functions and preserved organically, while in other cases he sought out personal papers of notable diplomats and representatives of the UNR’s government-in-exile. Evhen sent some of these materials to his brother Leonid Bachynsky in Cleveland, Ohio from the 1950s to the 1970s. Though Carleton acquired most of these surviving materials in 1982, which amounted to one-third of the reunited Evhen Batchinsky Collection, some items remain part of the UMA’s holdings.  

Jana M. Bauerová was born in Dačice in 1980 and spent her childhood in Stará Říše in the neighborhood of the Jirous family. She graduated from business school in Jihlava. She works as an archivist at the Libri Prohibiti library, where she is responsible for the estate of Ivan Martin Jirous. In 2004, together with Františka Jirousová, she established the literary group Catholic Decadence. In 2008 she published the poems Northerly Cross, and in 2018 she and Františka Jirousová published their dairy memories of Jirous entitled Mága.

Ante Beljo was born in the village Veliki Gornji Ograđenik near Čitluk, Bosnia-Herzegovina in 1946. He attended primary school in his hometown and secondary school in Široki Brijeg. At the Faculty of Science, University of Zagreb, he studied physics, but he did not complete his studies, because in 1967 he emigrated to Austria, and then to Canada in May 1968. In Sudbury, the largest city in Northern Ontario, in addition to his regular work, he was also an active participant in Croatian cultural organizations in Canada and North America. He is one of the founders of the Croatian-Canadian Folklore Federation and was active in the work of Amnesty International. During the introduction of the multiparty system in Croatia (1989-1990), he became involved in the activities of the Croatian Democratic Union in Canada. In 1990 he returned to Croatia, and in January 1991 he established the Croatian Information Centre, an NGO with the mission of informing the international public and Croatian emigrants about events in Croatia and Bosnia- Herzegovina. From 1993 to 2000 he served as director of the Croatian Heritage Foundation. He was a member of the Croatian Parliament for two terms (elected in 1995 and 2000). In 1995 he was awarded the Order of Danica for special merits in education.

Marina Benažić is a professor of art history and comparative literature. Since 2006, she has been the curator of the Tošo Dabac Archive, and its manager since January 2007. Her position as manager of the Archive means that she is the chief executive of the Archive, the main organizer of all events organized by the Archive, and also makes her the most conversant with the contents of the Archive.

Benažić was not associated with the socialist regime, nor was she involved in the cultural activities of the opposition. Her importance to the Collection rests on the fact that she is its manager.