The Connection

Years of starvation and war had robbed Galina Lodoba and her half-sister Tatyana Schremko of their parents and their homes, and the sisters had struggled in the years that followed to keep together and stay alive. While trying to escape the Soviet army, Galina and Tatyana were separated on the last day of the Second World War.

For almost 70 years, that was the end of the story. Tatyana, now an Alexandria resident and artist, never gave up the search for her sister. There had been vague hints about where her sister might be: first a letter immediately after the war, then a report by the Red Cross in the ‘70s, but there was no way for Tatyana to find out what had happened to Galina.

“All the time I’d been searching for my sister,” said Tatyana. “I had no idea where she may be, if she was even alive.”

Then, in October of 2014, Tatyana received a phone call from her daughter Alexa. She was crying and told her mother that she’d found Galina.

“She’s not alive, is she,” Tatyana said.

“No momma, she’s not.”

Galina had died on Feb. 10, 2013. Tatjana Christie, Galina’s daughter named for an aunt she’d never met, arrived in Washington Oct. 11 and met her aunt for the first time. Tatyana would never get a chance to meet her sister, a pain that she says is still very fresh, but she did have a chance to meet a niece she never knew she had.

“This is really terrible for me,” said Tatyana. “But nothing is ever a total negative, there is a balance.”

Tatyana and Tatjana spoke on the phone for hours, filling in the gaps in their respective stories. Some of the resemblances in the post-war lives of Tatyana and Galina were uncanny. Both had married physicists, and both had one daughter each.

“There was a need to absorb each other, to understand what each other’s lives are like,” said Tatjana. “She wanted to know if my mother happy, what was her life like? For both of us, there had been a lifetime of searching.”

Tatyana and Galina were born in the city of Harbin, China. When the Japanese invaded in 1931, the city was turned into a war zone and the two sisters fled with their family to Kharkiv in Ukraine.

“That was the end of us,” said Tatyana.

Tatyana’s father was arrested and they never saw him again. Soon after, Germany invaded and Tatyana and Galina’s mother died from starvation and the cold, leaving the two of them with just each other to survive the occupation. The German officers warned them that, in a few weeks, the SS would arrive to Kharkiv.

“They told us to get our Jewish friends out,” said Tatyana. “You never read about that. My sister was working with the underground, getting their friends out, with the help of those first German cavalry officers.”

When the Germans retreated, the two sisters and much of the remaining population fled along with them. For the following two or three years, the sisters travelled across Europe, loosely following with the retreating Germans to avoid the Soviets.

“We had nothing,” said Tatyana. “Each time you took a step from one location to the next, anything you accumulated you lost again.”

Their trip was plagued with disease and parasites. Often there was no food, especially during the winters.

“She didn’t want to tell some stories, because maybe she thought that her daughter would judge her,” said Tatjana Christie, “but my mother was even more of a hero than I understood.”

Tatjana and Tatyana both described Galina as an incredibly vivacious woman and a survivor.

The last time Tatyana saw her older sister Galina was “Victory in Europe Day.” Nazi Germany’s surrender had just been announced to a camp full of refugees from the war and what was left of the destitute army that had invaded the Soviet Union. The Soviet military was not far behind them, and Galina and Tatyana had seen first-hand what a vengeful army was capable of. Galina was lifting her 10-year-old sister up into the German jeep, full of refugees and soldiers. Galina was trying desperately to hold on, but the jeep was moving too fast. Some of the Germans called for her to get onto the truck behind them to keep up. She did, but the truck was moving too slowly. Tatyana looked forward for a minute, and when she looked back for her sister, Galina was gone.

Tatyana originally wanted to move to Canada in 1949, but was encouraged by friend she made in the school to go to the United States instead in 1950. One of the many ironies of Tatyana and Galina’s life was that the ship to Canada, in 1949, was carrying Galina.

When Galina arrived in Canada, she began working at an immigrant hospital in Toronto. She fell in love, married, had a daughter, and was divorced. She built a new life in the post-war immigrant community in Canada, but the war and the loss of her sister stayed with her.

Even at the end, Galina was still searching for Tatyana. The last line of her obituary had Tatyana’s full name and the date they were separated. It was this connection that finally allowed Alexa to stumble on the obituary.

“There is a trauma and loss; that I didn’t try harder,” said Tatyana. “I had a good life, I could have tried harder.”

There is some consolation, for Tatyana and Tatjana, in knowing the truth. For Tatjana, growing up knowing she had an aunt out there in the world was like living with a ghost. Even meeting her in person, she described it as difficult to reconcile the woman she saw in front of her with her mother’s sister, who’d taken up an almost mythological role in her life.