As Channel Raises Funds for Ukraine, Refugees Past, Present Keep Memories Alive

CHANNEL PARTNERS CONFERENCE & EXPO/MSP SUMMIT, LAS VEGAS — The channel is rallying to the aid of Ukraine as refugees and residents of the war-torn country seek to preserve their way of life.

As of last week, a fundraiser led by Avant (a CP Expo Channel Champion sponsor)had raised more than $62,000 for the Razom nonprofit. Razom, which brands itself around “building a prosperous Ukraine,” has been providing on-the-ground support in Ukraine amid Russia’s invasion of the country.

The United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees reports that one-quarter of 44 million people in Ukraine have fled their homes. Moreover, more than 4.4 million of them are categorized as refugees fleeing Ukraine. The International Criminal Court (ICC) is already investigating widespread evidence of war crimes committed against civilians.

The Russian Federation’s latest onslaught, which began on Feb. 24, follows a series of aggressions in an ongoing war that goes back to 2014. And for Ukrainians at home and abroad, the humanitarian crisis is yet another in a long history of displacement.

Avant’s Alex Danyluk

Alex Danyluk’s 92-year-old mother tells him that she sees herself in the faces of the refugees on TV. Danyluk, Avant’s chief strategy officer, is the son of first-generation Ukrainian immigrants. But “refugees,” rather than “immigrants,” might better describe them, as they had been forced out of Ukraine.

Razom for Ukraine’s Dora Chomiak

“Our parents didn’t intend to emigrate,” Razom president Dora Chomiak said. “They were displaced persons.”

Building a Village

Chomiak and Danyluk’s parents have shared the stories of displacement. Ukrainians suffered during World War II at the hands of both Soviets and Nazis. The Nazis shipped out Chomiak’s father in a boxcar when he was eight years old. After the war, he could not return to to his home, locked out by the conquering Soviets. Danyluk’s parents spent five years in Germany in camps for displaced persons before they ultimately arrived in the U.S. in 1949.

Alex Danyluk (center) with his parents, Roman (left) and Marta (right) in 1963.

This generation built roots in the United States, founding credit unions, mutual aid societies, newspapers and performing arts groups. Nevertheless, they held closely to the Ukrainian culture. Chomiak and Danyluk both attended Ukrainian school on Saturdays, where they learned their ancestors’ history and language. Danyluk said that first generation of Ukrainian-Americans found these organizations in part because they had already seen their culture come under attack during the World War II.

“It was a survival mechanism in some sense to build up all this cultural community and infrastructure within the diaspora,” Danyluk told Channel Futures.

The efforts to preserve the cultural heritage have paid off. Many people close to Danyluk, including members of his wedding party and his cousin, had returned to Ukraine prior to the invasion. Although Ukrainian-Americans like Danyluk and Chomiak refer to the scattered Ukrainian community as a “diaspora,” they say …