On June 10, 2024, in Kyiv, near the memorial plaque installed on the building on the Hetman Pavlo Skoropadskyi street, 15, a commemoration of the prominent Ukrainian public and political figure, leader of the OUN, well-known poet and scientist-archaeologist Oleg Olzhych was held.
It was at this address that there was a conspiratorial apartment in which Oleg Olzhych, the head of the underground network of the OUN in Ukraine, lived in Kyiv in 1941.
The event was attended by First Deputy Chairman of the State Committee for Television and Radio-Broadcasting Bohdan Chervak, Director of the Ukrainian Institute for Advanced Training of Television, Radio Broadcasting and Press Workers Glib Golovchenko, scientists, representatives of the media and the public.
June 10, 2024 marks the 80th anniversary of the death of Oleh Olzhych, a great patriot of Ukraine. He was born in Zhytomyr on July 21, 1907 in the family of the famous writer Oleksandr Ivanovich Kandyba (pseudonym – Oleksandr Oles). From 1912 to 1922, he lived and studied at a labor school in Kyiv, but he had to finish high school only in Prague. He studied at the Ukrainian Free University, and later at Charles University. In 1930, he defended his thesis for the title of Doctor of Philosophy in Prague on the topic “Neolithic picturesque ceramics of Galicia”. He was fond of poetry. Two collections of his poetry were published during Oleh Olzhych’s lifetime: “Rin” (1935) and “Towers” (1940). Olzhych combined scientific and creative work with participation in the Ukrainian nationalist movement.
Since 1929, he has been a leading figure of the OUN.
In 1937, he headed the cultural and educational office of the Ukrainian Nationalists (PUN).
1939-1941 headed the Revolutionary Tribunal of the OUN. He was the deputy head of the PUN-OUN of Colonel Andrii Melnyk, the head of the OUN on Ukrainian lands from January to August 1944.
Oleh Olzhych came to Kyiv in 1941 to establish the underground network of the OUN in Ukraine. He stayed here until 1942, and with the beginning of Hitler’s repressions against Ukrainian nationalists, he returned to Lviv, where he was arrested by the Gestapo in 1944.
On the night of June 9-10, 1944, Oleh Olzhych died in the German concentration camp “Sachsenhausen”.
ETERNAL GLORY TO THE HEROES!