JOHN (IVAN) KOTSIUBA (CANADA)
In his Canadian papers, John, at any rate, deliberately muddled something. He wrote, for example, that he was born in 1910 either in Berezan or in Berezhany. There are, incidentally, three Berezans in Ukraine, plus a couple of Berezhany. And in none of these localities are there written records of the birth of Ivan Kotsiuba. The Berezhany-Berezan land did not give birth to such a person. And since it is unclear who, where, and under what circumstances gave birth to him, there is a hitch in the search for heirs. Numerous namesakes and elderly Berezan sages have ransacked their memories but have not dredged up even a tiny recollection of a distinguished fellow countryman. There is no John, as if he never existed. John is indeed no more, but a capital remains, and a considerable one. And whatever John may have been guilty of before Themis, let the heir not disdain to accept the relative's gold. The Australians have forgiven John and will not sue.
YOSIF KHAVALKO (CANADA)
Yes, Yosif Khavalko left for Canada, and who wouldn't have left in his place? What pleasure is there in living in a country where an entire village can disappear without a trace, with all its inhabitants, as if dissolved into thin air... Imagine: you were born in Zhytomyr, for example, lived there, and left. You return, and not a stone of Zhytomyr remains, and all your acquaintances from Zhytomyr have vanished as if licked away by a cow. And indeed, such an unfortunate fate befell the 'small homeland' of Yosif Khavalko. The village of Velyka Vyshenka in the Yavoriv district of Lviv region, where our hero was born in 1916, was destroyed during the construction of the Yavoriv training ground. The training ground was built for a long time: started in 1939, and finished only in the 1950s, after the war. When exactly the military took over the defenseless Vyshenka is now impossible to determine, and no indication of where the peaceful villagers were evacuated has been preserved in the archives.
And this is sad, because under such circumstances there is no way to find and make happy the Khavalko family clan. And there is someone to make happy! Yosif's parents, Kondrat Khavalko and mother Magda Khavalko, were not misanthropes, they loved children, and besides Yosif, they had two more sons, Pavlo and Demyan, and a daughter, Praskovya. It is unlikely, of course, that Yosif's own brothers and sister lived to a ripe old age, but they surely had children, grandchildren, great-grandchildren... It is them we are looking for. That the Khavalkos are not a lawyer's invention is known for certain: very distant relatives of Yosif have been found, who even corresponded with him after the war, but have no right to the inheritance. Alas.
ELENA KULEVICH (GERMANY)
It seems that the late Elena Kulevich in Germany had nothing in life but convictions, a date of birth, and money. By conviction she was a Roman Catholic and a hermit. She was born in 1920. She died, since we are talking about dates, quite recently, in 1997, and left unspent money to no one knows whom—we won't say how much, but a lot. Beyond that, there are only intrigues and uncertainty.
For example, it is unknown where Elena Kulevich was born. According to her own version, she saw the first rays of the sun somewhere in Rostoky. There are no fewer than five Rostokys in Ukraine, but the archivists of all five localities unanimously insist that their blessed land did not give birth to Elena Kulevich. Who Elena's parents were and what their names and patronymics were is also unclear: at least, she herself did not write about it anywhere. Apparently, more than anything else in the world, Elena Kulevich wanted to be left alone: after being taken to Germany as a teenager during the war, she did not dare to return home to old relatives, and she never made new ones. She neither married nor had a child. In her 77 years of life, Elena never decided to whom exactly she would bequeath the capital earned by honest labor, so now the money will go to whoever can prove that they are not a stranger to Elena, even if they respected her right to solitude.
YEVGEN KUNISKY (USA)
The death of Yevgen Kunisky caused a great stir among interested parties. And no wonder: such an inheritance and no one who could claim it. The deceased had no brothers, no sisters, no wife, no children. In New York City, where he died, they say the demographic situation is not great anyway, everyone is on their own. And distant relatives of Yevgen, who live in the States but have no right to the inheritance, tried to convince the lawyers that the lonely relative had not even a wife, nor even a real uncle. They are being disingenuous: there was an uncle, and the uncle's children and grandchildren could have put Yevgen's capital to good use. And the story of the uncle is as follows.
The mother of the future American, Valentina Shepeleva, was born in 1902 in the glorious city of Nizhyn, known for its bumpy cucumbers, near Chernihiv. A corresponding record exists in the Nizhyn archives, and there it is also recorded that the mother Valentina had a full brother, who was also born in Chernihiv. What became of him is unknown. He could have died young or unmarried, for these valid reasons leaving no offspring. Or he could have become the founder of the Shepel clan, who, given the economic situation in Nizhyn and neighboring districts, would not mind an extra cent now.
The second group of claimants to the inheritance consists of relatives of Yevgen's father. The father himself, Petro Lukich Konisky, was born in 1895 and certainly did not live to the present day. But where to look for his relatives, no one will say outright. Petro Lukich himself was born, and gave birth to his son Zhenya in 1928, in some unclear place that the grown Zhenya later called 'Bela'. No one in New York asked him for details: for the snobs there, there is no land beyond the 'Big Apple'. And now it turns out that father and son Konisky could have been born with equal success in half the regions of the former USSR: in one of the many urban-type settlements named Bela, in Russia in Armavir, in Belarus, in Bila Tserkva near Kyiv.
It is frightening to think, but under such circumstances, there is only one way to find out the truth: to question all the remaining Koniskys in Ukraine and cross-check their versions. Today, no fewer than ten Konisky claimants have been found, and each has a rather interesting from a literary point of view but not confidence-inspiring explanation of why he should be the heir. The contest for the most truthful story about Yevgen Konisky's genealogy continues.
LYUBA LEVENBERG (CANADA)
Oh, Lyuba Levenberg really let UkrInurCollegium down! When Lyuba died without leaving a will, the lawyers began to look for someone to give her money to. They knew about Lyuba that she was born in Poland in 1918. This knowledge did not add enthusiasm to anyone, because such a record occurs in a third of all inheritance cases and means that a person could equally well have been born in Poland or in one of the five western regions of Ukraine. Emigrants were afraid of harming relatives left on the other continent 'under the Soviets', so they told little about themselves and their families.
But, with great difficulty, they found out that Lyuba's maiden name was Sivak. A common surname. The lawyers had to question more than 300 Sivaks from Western Ukraine, and, imagine, every fifth family had a Lyuba born around 1918! Excited by the prospect of receiving an inheritance, the Sivaks wrote mountains of letters to Kyiv, which the lawyers did not even have time to answer. Meanwhile, a lawyer in Canada tried to find out more about Lyuba and discovered, first, that she had subtracted ten years from her age, that Lyuba was actually born in 1907, in Poland, in Szekhestovo, and her maiden name was not Sivak but Shiver. And now imagine that you have to explain to each of the three hundred agitated, distrustful Sivaks that their Lyuba is not their Lyuba!
Meanwhile, by nationality, Lyuba Shiver was Jewish, and it is very possible, like many of her kin, she fled with her family during World War II from Poland to Ukraine and from there to Canada. If so, it may well be that Lyuba still has relatives in Ukraine. They are the ones being sought.
'Zagranitsa' No. 4, 1999.