As we recall, last year the main theme of the Travelling Docudays UA festival was the question of historical memory. We opened our own festival programme then with a special event at the Volodymyr Hnatiuk Ternopil National Pedagogical University: the presentation of “The Pastoral Mission of the Kovch Family in the Ternopil Region”.

The news hook for this event was the 140th anniversary of the birth and the 80th anniversary of the death of Father Emilian Kovch – a great humanist and Righteous Among the Nations.

Kovch Emilian (20.08.1884 – 25.03.1944) – priest of the UGCC, chaplain of the Ukrainian Galician Army, educator, public figure, humanist. During the Nazi occupation, he was the parish priest of the town of Peremyshliany and the Majdanek extermination camp. In 1999, he was proclaimed a “Righteous of Ukraine” by the Jewish Council of Ukraine.

One of the many sources of information in preparing that event was a rare publication – a book of memoirs by the daughter of our Righteous one, Anna Maria Kovch-Baran, which was published in 1994 in the Canadian city of Saskatoon under the title “For God’s Truth and Human Rights: A Collection in Honour of Fr. Emilian Kovch”.

Anna Maria Kovch-Baran (1914–1995) worked for many years for the Ukrainian community in Canada. From the very beginning of her stay in the city of Saskatoon, Saskatchewan, in the 1950s, she took an active part in cultural, educational, organisational, and journalistic work. She was one of the co-founders of the Ukrainian Museum of Saskatchewan. Anna Maria's journalistic work consists of numerous articles and reports. As a correspondent for the Ukrainian press, she was the editor of the section “Pages of Saskatchewan” in the periodical “Ukrainian News” (Edmonton) for six years. Anna Maria is also the author of the books: “Ukrainian Catholic Churches of Saskatchewan” (1977); “Women of Saskatchewan – Pioneer Years”, and others. Her last work was the biography of Fr. Emilian Kovch, her father – “For God’s Truth and Human Rights”, published in 1994, a year before her death.

We were convinced by our own experience that this book is indeed a bibliophilic rarity – it was not to be found in many libraries: from our native Ternopil to Canadian Saskatoon... But in the end, the search was crowned with success – one copy of the book was found in the library of the Holy Dormition Univ Lavra, located not far from that very town of Peremyshliany, in which Father Emilian Kovch actually served as parish priest.

So, having secured the kind consent of the Abbot of the Univ Lavra, Father Yosafat, through correspondence, and having arrived in Univ, we managed to make photocopies of all the pages of this edition.

And a few months later, another piece of pleasant news arrived from Canada – in the same city of Saskatoon in 2006, Anna Maria Kovch-Baran's memoirs about her father were republished in English, and this edition will arrive here shortly. We sincerely thank the Canadian Ukrainians of the new wave of emigration for their assistance in these searches!

Truly, he who seeks will always find!

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So, towards the end of our programme of the 22nd Travelling Docudays UA in the Ternopil region, on the day of our visit to the regional scientific library, we had the opportunity to present another “rare resource” – the English-language edition of “For God’s Truth and Human Rights” by Anna Maria Kovch-Baran. We hope that not only Ternopil residents but also foreign students and guests of the city will have the opportunity to read it and learn about the historical figure of our great Righteous one.

At the same time, on this day, the latest issue of the periodical “Zolota Pektoral” [Golden Pectoral] was donated to the Ternopil Regional Universal Scientific Library, containing an article by Oleksandr Stepanenko “He Saw God, the One for All” – about the pastoral mission of the Kovch family in the Ternopil region. In it, the author, besides describing the life path of Father Kovch, presented currently available information about his family circle, particularly about his father, Father Hryhoriy Kovch. Countrymen from Warm Podillia should pay tribute to him as well.

By the way, the literary-artistic and public-political journal “Zolota Pektoral”, which has been published in Chortkiv since 2007 by the public organisation “Pektoral” thanks to the titanic efforts of chief editor Volodymyr Pohoretskyi, is also our “rare resource” and, unfortunately, terribly underestimated. After all, almost no printed periodicals of this kind remain – not only in our region but in Ukraine as well.

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We are glad that, to the best of our abilities, we have contributed to the preservation of the memory of Father Emilian Kovch and his family circle.

Undoubtedly, future generations should remember Him as a great Righteous one. After all, the righteousness of life lies precisely in the unquestioning giving of Goodness to people.

Today, when Ukraine is experiencing yet another tragic page of its own history, when crimes against humanity are committed daily, many of us also face a difficult choice: to submit to cruel circumstances or to resist them? To help another or to save oneself at the cost of others? To reconcile with evil or to answer it, and if to answer, then how?... The example of people who once survived similar trials and emerged from them with dignity can help make this choice. Such a person, beyond any doubt, was Father Emilian Kovch. We can be fully proud of him. We can strengthen our spirit on his worldview and deeds. With Him, finally, we could worthily present ourselves as a cultural nation to the whole world. Ultimately, we ourselves have a chance to defeat brutal violence only when we remember and value Apostles of Goodness like him in our history. 

Father Kovch: “He who sows the wind reaps the whirlwind. He who sows wheat reaps wheat. Similarly, he who sows love will reap love, even if this harvest be late.”