BOOK NOTES: Memoirs by the first Ukrainian elected as British MP recall unique life's journey (10/23/05)

BOOK NOTES

Memoirs by the first Ukrainian elected as British MP recall unique life's journey

"From War to Westminster," Stefan Terlezki. South Yorkshire, England: Pen and Sword Books, 2005, 268 pp, $35 (hardcover).

Stefan Terlezki has led a life fit for a novel. A Ukrainian-born refugee, he became the first Ukrainian elected to the British Parliament in 1983, representing Cardiff West, and won the friendship of former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher.

However, life has not been easy for Mr. Terlezki. His story is also filled with tales of escape, separation and loss, which are chronicled in the autobiography "From War to Westminster." Mr. Terlezki, 77, recalls being forcibly taken from his family when he was 14 and sold as a slave in a market in Austria.

Separated from his father for 42 years, Mr. Terlezki describes their emotional reunion in London's Heathrow Airport in 1983. The reunion lasted for only a month and then the two men never saw each other again.

Born in the village of Oleshiv in the Halychyna region of Ukraine on October 29, 1927, Mr. Terlezki grew up under Polish rule. His father was imprisoned and tortured for trade union activity.

In his book, Mr. Terlezki describes a turbulent childhood; his mother died at the age of 42. "From the age of 14 I was lost and blown in all directions by winds of horror, tragedy and uncertainty," Mr. Terlezki writes in the book's preface. "I had no hope or future during and for long after the brutality which ended on May 8, 1945," he said, a reference to the end of World War II.

Imprisoned by the German Gestapo and then held in a camp by the Soviet Red Army, Mr. Terlezki escaped to the British Occupation Zone to become a stateless political refugee.

In 1948, after having spent three years in refugee camps, Britain decided to accept Ukrainians who had refused transfer to the Soviet Union. Mr. Terlezki was among those accepted. He volunteered to train as a miner in Wales because he thought the mountains would provide a good training ground for guerrilla warfare against the Russians. Mr. Terlezki, it seems, intended to return to Ukraine.

However, he soon found he was a capable political leader. In the foreword of the book, Lord Geoffrey Howe of Aberavon, a former British foreign secretary and leader of the House of Commons, described his relationship with Mr. Terlezki. The two men met in June 1983 and became lifetime friends.

It was around that time that Mrs. Thatcher asked Mr. Howe to become the British secretary of state for foreign affairs. In that role, the secretary of foreign affairs traveled to Moscow for a meeting in July 1984 with Soviet Foreign Minister Andrei Gromyko.

"One of the important documents which I took with me to Moscow, and was able to leave with Gromyko, was a list of so-called 'reunification cases' - of families that had long been divided by the Iron Curtain and its inhuman formalities," Mr. Howe wrote. "One particularly moving example of these was Stefan Terlezki's, who had been trying to persuade the Soviet authorities to allow his aged father to visit him in the West." It would be one of only two or three cases where Mr. Gromyko accepted Mr. Howe's plea.

Mr. Terlezki's father, who had been banished to live in Siberia, was brought to England for an emotional reunion with his son. The two men saw each other for a month before Mr. Terlezki's father was forced to return. He died soon after, though Mr. Terlezki was able to take comfort in knowing that his father returned not to the brutality of life in Siberia, but to his native village in Ukraine.

Mr. Howe also commented on the book itself, saying that he wondered how well a Welsh-accented, Polish-born Ukrainian could write readable English. "I needn't have worried - on that or any other score. For this is a truly remarkable book, which tells an astonishingly gripping life story in crisp, beautifully crafted English. The spontaneity and recollection of language and mood is both evocative and convincing," Mr. Howe wrote.

For more information on "From War to Westminster," readers may log on to www.pen-and-sword.co.uk, or e-mail enquiries@pen-and-sword.co.uk. It can also be found in most major bookstores by searching under the book's ISBN, 1-84415-265-0.

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