The Chicago Catholic, November 16, 1979
Religious embroideries fashioned under the crudest of conditions in a Siberian labor camp have finally made their way to the United States, fulfilling the wish of their imprisoned maker.
The embroideries — was on display at St. Nicholas Ukrainian Cathedral on Chicago’s North Side — are the work of a woman arrested with other members of her family shortly after the Soviets occupied Western Ukraine in 1944. Her 19-year-old daughter was executed before her eyes.
Afterwards, when she was deported to the labor camp in Mordovia, she used her talents and skill to embroider a series of icons.
THREADS came from the clothing of her cell-mates. The needle was made from the fish bones they sometimes used to get for supper. The light polar nights made it possible to engage in this strictly-forbidden activity.
Released after serving a long sentence, the woman hid the embroideries in her belongings. Before she died shortly afterwards, she entrusted them to a clandestine priest and asked him to deliver them to her relatives in America. The journey took 15 years.
All of the icons are dated and dedicated either to friends, her daughter, son-in-law, or husband, whose death she mourned with a modest embroidery instead of a monument on his grave.
