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KOTORIS
EMIGRATION TO THE NEW WORLD & THE PATH TO MY NEWFOUND FAMILY
In the last years of the nineteenth century, in the Galician village of Jacowce—today called Shevchenkove—winter still clung to the fields when a child named Basilius, known as Wasyl[1] Katoroż entered the world. It was 19 February 1891, and his parents, Stefan and Anastazja Kunabska, welcomed a son into a land shaped by centuries of shifting borders and layered identities. Galicia was a crossroads of tongues and traditions: Polish nobles, Ukrainian peasants, Jewish merchants, and the ever‑present Austro‑German bureaucracy. Empires rose and fell around it, but life in Jacowce moved with the seasons.
Wasyl grew up with his brothers, including Michal and the older Dmitro, eight years his senior. Dmitro would be the first to leave his homeland, crossing the Atlantic to Cleveland, Ohio, where steel mills roared and immigrant boarding houses filled with the smoke of cheap cigarettes and the murmur of many languages. He died there in 1957, far from the Galician soil of his birth.
By 1913, the world was still changing: the United States entered a period of peace, prosperity, and progress. In the nation's growing cities, factory output grew, small businesses flourished, and incomes rose. Rumours of opportunity in America reached even the quiet villages around Ternopil. At twenty‑two, Wasyl made the decision that would alter the course of his life—and mine! He bade farewell to Jacowce and with his cousin, Danyla Pianke, a determined twenty‑year‑old, they moved forward, chasing the same dream. They travelled westward, through the patchwork of nations that were then familiar to them: Galicia-Austria, Poland, Germany. In Hamburg, they boarded the SS Pennsylvania, bound for New York.
When immigration officials asked who he was, Wasyl answered with the complexity of a Galician man: ethnicity Polish, citizenship Austrian, language Ukrainian. It was the truth of his homeland, a place where identity was never simple.
🌿Catharina "Katie's" Journey
Years earlier, in Palchyntsi, another child had been born—Catharina Zakamarko[2], on 1 December 1895. Her childhood was shaped by the same winds of empire, but her journey would be even more daring. At just 15 or 16, she left home, crossing Western Galicia, Poland, and Germany on foot and by rail, determined to reach the “new world”.🌿Catharina "Katie's" Journey
She arrived at Ellis Island around 1910 and registered, it seems, as “Katie Zakamarik”—perhaps hurriedly, perhaps she was distracted in some way? The name of her ship is lost to time, but her courage is not.
Her father was Athanazy, and in 2024, a curious discovery emerged: a Wasyl “Zokamarka” from Palchyntsi arrived in America on 30 June 1913 aboard the Salamanca. He was nineteen, and he listed his father, “Afhamas”, as his nearest relative. The resemblance of names invites speculation—perhaps kinship, perhaps coincidence—but it adds another thread to the tapestry of Katie’s story.
She would live a long life, passing in 1970, survived by sisters Theodosia Gontar and Olga Zakamarko, her brother John in Ukraine, seventeen grandchildren, and four great‑grandchildren.
🏠 Building a Life in America
By 1930, Wasyl was thirty‑nine and working as a steel mill labourer. He and Katie had built a family together—though the record of their marriage remains elusive, hidden somewhere in the folds of history. (Since writing this, evidence has come to hand suggesting they were married in 1914.)
Their home was filled with the warmth of children:
Michael (14)
Anna (12)
Stephen (9)
William (8)
Olga (4)
Two more children were lost at birth—a stillborn daughter in 1928, and a son born on 8 November 1932, whom they hoped to name Volodymyr. Their grief lived quietly between the births of Olga and her next sister, Mary, born in 1934.
Life was hard, but it was theirs.
Wasyl’s story ended in Allentown, Pennsylvania, where he died of pulmonary tuberculosis on 11 February 1939, just shy of his forty‑eighth birthday. He had crossed an ocean, survived the mills, found a wife, raised a family, and carved out a life in a country that had once been only a dream.
🌍The War, Brisbane, and Me
🌍The War, Brisbane, and Me
One of Wasyl and Katie’s sons, Stephen, born 1 June 1920, grew into a handsome young man who would soon wear the uniform of the United States Army. He trained at Fort Sam Houston in Texas, then Fort Dix in New Jersey, before being sent overseas to Australia and New Guinea during the Second World War.
In Brisbane, Queensland, he met Ruby Berthelsen (my mother), born 4 June 1920. They fell in love quickly—war compresses time, intensifies emotion, and makes every moment feel fragile. Their romance led to my birth on 9 February 1943.
For decades, the details remained hazy. I knew of my biological father, but only in name. A breakthrough came in 2024: my daughter Thérèsa’s DNA results opened the door. My own DNA that arrived later, confirmed it! Records surfaced. A name became real. A father’s story became mine.
🌍 Galicia: The Land That Started It All
Galicia—an ancestral homeland—it was never just a place. It was a mosaic of cultures, a battleground of empires, a region claimed by Poland, Austria, Russia, and Ukraine across centuries. Its heartlands now lie in Lviv, Ternopil, and Ivano‑Frankivsk Oblasts, but its spirit lives in every story of migration, resilience, and reinvention.
It is the land of Wasyl and Katie’s adopted country that shaped them. It is the land that set my family’s story in motion. It is the land whose echoes still reach me today.
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[1] Wasyl's given name was often recorded as Wassrole, just one of many other variants. His registered given name at birth and baptism was Basilius.[2] Catharina was her registered name according to birth and baptismal records. She invariably used a few variants such as Katherine, Katie, Catherine and in her native tongue the name would be written Катарина or Катаріна.Page updated
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