Helena M. Thomson of Hartford said her 88-year-old mother suffered a massive stroke on Saturday and she praying that her mother survives until Friday when her uncle is to land in New York.
“We hope to bring her home (from the hospital) if the doctors feel it will not aggravate her condition on Friday am – so she can be home for her brother and die at home,” Thomson said today. “We need all the prayers so she can make it through till Friday.”
Thomson’s mother,
Ann Burlak Myhajczuk and Helena Thomson
Iaroslav Burlak
last saw her brother Iaroslav Burlak in the Ukraine 68 years ago. The family discovered last year that Burlak was still alive and living in the Ukraine.
For months Burlak made requests from the U.S. government for a visa to visit his sister, but was turned down three times on the grounds that he might use it as an excuse to stay in America.
Finally, Senator Chris Dodd intervened personally and called the state department asking that Burlak be given an opportunity to visit his sister before she died.
The State Department, as the result of that call, reconsidered, and finally gave Burlak a visa.
“This is wonderful news for Ms. Myhajczuk and her family,” said Dodd after the state department accepted his request. “After the many hardships she has suffered during her life, she will now have the opportunity to be re-united with a brother she has not seen for 68 years. It’s stories like these that make me proud to be a U.S Senator and proud of the dedicated staff that work to help people like Ms. Myhajczuk every day.”
Myhajczuk was taken from her home in Ukraine in 1942 by the German army to work as a laborer in Germany, leaving her family behind, to never see them again.
After World War II she decided not to return to her homeland, then a part of the Soviet Union, and she moved from the German labor camp to Venezuela, which was then accepting displaced people.
She ended up in Connecticut, and last year she located her youngest brother, now 72, still living in Ukraine.
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