Olha Ilkiv

Olha Faustinivna Ilkiv (; 21 June 1920 – 6 December 2021) was a member of Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN), partisan and signaller of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army.

Ilkiv was also a former inmate, who spent 14 years in Soviet prisons. Her parents were Faustin Ilkiv and Rosalia-Caterina (née Kotsur).

After her parents' divorce in 1934, Ilkiv went with her mother to live in Warsaw. She received her education at the Ukrainian Girls' Institute in Przemyśl, and they were brought up like models of "Homo Sovieticus".

After the death of Stalin in 1953, his successor Nikita Khrushchev pardoned hundreds of people on the condition that they repented; Ilkiv did not do so. There were four women left in the USSR who did not repent – Olha Ilkiv, , and . All of them were Roman Shukhevych's liaisons. They were placed in one cell so that they would not incite their cellmates. Fourteen years later, Ilkiv was released after her request for pardon. In 1953, following the death of Stalin, the director of the orphanage of Ilkiv's children, Valentina Antipova, responded to Ilkiv's letter at her own risk, so her children found out that their mother was alive.

Later life

From September 1964, Ilkiv worked as a kiosk maker, cloakroom attendant and nurse at the Lviv Regional Hospital, and from 1966 as a janitor. From 1972 until her retirement in 1976, she worked at the Lviv Historical Museum and in the department of funds of the Museum of Folk Architecture and Life (1977–1979).

Ilkiv took part in the constituent assembly of the KUN in Kyiv (1992) and the OUN in Ukraine (1993). From 1995 to 2000, she was the deputy chairman of the All-Ukrainian League of Ukrainian Women.

In 2008, Ilkiv was awarded the Order of Princess Olga, 3rd class.

Ilkiv died in Lviv on 6 December 2021, aged 101.