Stefan Terlezki

Stefan Terlezki, CBE (29 October 1927 – 21 February 2006) was a British Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament (MP) for Cardiff West from 1983 to 1987. Terlezki was born in Oleshiv, a village near the town of Tlumach in what is now western Ukraine but was then part of Poland. Terlezki experienced life in both Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, which made him a powerful voice against totalitarian governments.

Terlezki was brought up in the nearby farming community of Antonivka, where his first teacher at the village school was the Ukrainian poet Mariyka Pidhiryanka. His father Oleksa Terletskyj was a peasant farmer who also worked at a brickworks, where he organised a sit-in protest for shorter working hours. This led to a period of imprisonment by the Polish authorities.

Western Ukraine was occupied by Russian forces in 1939 and then annexed to the Soviet Union. One of Terlezki's uncles was classified as a kulak after paying some neighbours to help with the harvest. He was arrested and deported to Siberia, a fate also suffered by several of Terlezki's cousins, who were students suspected of Ukrainian nationalism. Oleksa Terletskyj had initially welcomed the Communists and become Antonivka's village chairman but he later resigned.

After the German invasion in 1941, Stefan Terlezki was put to forced labour repairing a railway bridge over the river Dniester, damaged during the Red Army retreat. He also witnessed the murder of Jews thrown from the neighbouring road bridge by German soldiers. His father also sent him on errands to aid Jewish villagers by obtaining false baptism certificates for them.

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