Ivan Bilaščenko (1926–2023) at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial, 2019.
Ivan Bilaščenko was born in 1926 in Dmytrivka, Cherkassy region, Ukraine. After the German invasion, the family survived a shooting of the village’s Roma ordered by the Germans thanks to the help of the mayor. At the age of 16, he was deported to Germany for forced labour, but managed to escape. He returned home and joined the Red Army as a soldier. After the war, he graduated from a technical college for civil engineering and started a family.
He worked for many years and shared his experiences as a survivor of the famine in Ukraine in 1932/33 (Holodomor), the Genocide of the Roma and World War II. In August 2019, he took part in the international commemorative event ‘Dikh he na bister’ (Romanes for ‘See and do not forget’) at the Auschwitz-Birkenau Memorial.
