CHORNOMAZ Danylo Hryhorovych

 244329.07.2019

author: Vasyl Ovsiyenko

(b. 23.12.1917, Village of Stehnikivtsi, Ternopil Region, Ternopil Oblast – Ϯ December 1988, the same village)

He was a Prosvita member, participated in the national liberation struggle; he was imprisoned by Poles, Germans and two times by Bolsheviks.

He went to the primary school in the Village of Stehnikivtsi, then to the Polish Gymnasium in Ternopil. Before leaving gymnasium the students were offered to transfer their birth certificates from the Greek Catholic Church to the Roman Catholic. Chornomaz organized an action of disobedience, for which he was expelled from the Gymnasium and arrested for several days (1937).

Chornomaz studied experimental psychology by correspondence in Vienna. The studies were interrupted by war. Before the war he managed the rural sports organization Luh secretly engaged in paramilitary activities, i.e. military training of youth. He was a Prosvita member and member of the men’s organization Sokoly.

In 1937, Chornomaz married Mariya Malychok (then she headed the women’s rural branch o Prosvita). They had a daughter, b. 1941, sons Yaroslav, b. 1947, Bohdan, b. 1948, and daughters Nadiya, b. 1960, and Mariya, b. 1964

During the war, Chornomaz held an elective position of the Complex Community Secretary. He collaborated with the OUN underground (underground pseudonym "Andriy"). With the return of Soviet power rafted to the front. A few months later he came back as an invalid: his left hand did not function. He went on cooperating with the underground.

In 1948, Chornomaz was arrested and sentenced to death, which six months later was replaced by 25-year imprisonment. He did his term in Siberian camps Novaya Chunka, Chuna. In captivity, he met Dr. Volodymyr Horbov and brother of Ivan Ohiyenko. He was amnestied in 1956.

As an invalid Chornomaz worked no more, but made some money on the side fulfilling translations for Ternopil Medical Institute (he knew Latin, Greek, English, German, and Polish). Knowing mathematics, he calculated cubic content of lumber for forestry and earned some timber; in the late 60s the family worked hard and built a khata.

Chornomaz wrote memoirs, but shortly before his arrest he reduced them to ashes. Accidentally, one page didn’t burn down and became one of the main charges against him.

In connection with the arrest in Uman on 13.06.1972 of  Bohdan Chornomaz, his son, on charges of anti-Soviet agitation and propaganda the khata of Chornomaz was searched and photocopy of Dziuba’s work Internationalism or Russification? was found; outside the household the agents found ammunition and detonators. In August 1972, Chornomaz was arrested and charged with possession of anti-Soviet literature and under Art. 187-I of the CC of the UkrSSR was tried by Ternopil Oblast Court and sentenced to three years of imprisonment. His son Yaroslav, distance education student of the Moscow Polytechnic Institute of Oil Chemistry on trumped-up charges of theft was also sentenced to three years (the case was managed by the KGB), and son Bohdan under part 1 of art. 62 was sentenced to three years of high security camps. During the investigation they sent Chornomaz for examination to a mental hospital and forced him to make a public statement regarding sons, but he denied the request.

He did his term in a penal camp in the Dnipropetrovsk Oblast.

After his release, he lived in the Village of Stehnikivtsi, where he was buried later in time.

Bibliography

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