Harassed all the way to his grave
Presumed Nazi war criminal Vladimir Katriuk will have been the victim of harassment from Vladimir Putin's Russian government which recently wanted to extradite the Ormstown resident even though he had twice been exonerated by Canadian legal authorities in 2007.
The 93-year-old bee-keeper died in his hospital bed last May 29, about 20 days after the search notice launched by Moscow to find the man of Ukrainian origin. The senior citizen had suffered a cerebrovascular accident (ACV) at his home on des Dumas range during the night of May 22 and his health condition deteriorated until his final breath. He died at 7:35 a.m. on May 29.
Sonija Hart, who sufficiently knew Katriuk to consider him as her adopted grandfather, affirms that this unjust treatment finally got the better of the World War 2 veteran. Domiciled in Ormstown not far from the modest house Katriuk inhabited with his wife, Maria Stephanie Katriuk, the 33-year-old Hart was categorical : the last episode of the long saga surrounding the ghosts of Vladimir's past had been fatal.
«After the extradition request, he was troubled, stressed and even anguished», she said. «He was talking in his sleep, according to what his wife Maria confided in me», described Hart, who stayed at Vladimir's bedside during his final days at Barrie Memorial Hospital. Trained as an herbalist, she developed a very special link of friendship with Vladimir from her first purchases of honey at the bee-keeper's place in 2005.
Katriuk furnished her with the raw material (honey, bee-glue, wax) for her herbalist practice which consists of the preparation and commercialization of medicinal plants or derivative products. In return, Sonija brought him creams, ointments and herbal tea, notably to treat colds and his kees, bruised by his trade as a butcher which he practised upon his arrival to Canada in 1951.
«Down through the years, an attachment was created. I was very close to him and Maria. For me, he was grandpapa Vlad», Hart asserts. «From the first time I met him, I noticed in Vladimir's look that there was something special between those two. I think he considered her as the daughter he never had», corroborated Frederic Blanchette, Hart's husband of 10 years.
Saddened by the death of her hero, Hart lives in mourning with difficulty and her eyes teared up a few times during the course of the interview accorded to this newspaper. Katriuk was in relatively good health before the last Russian quest to put him back before the courts and this recent chapter drove him to his tomb.
«Vladimir paid the ultimate price for a political act», she deplores. «The Russians were looking for a scapegoat and they got his skin. No proof was ever held against him in regard to events that happened in Belarus in 1943. He was found innocent in court in Canada.»
Katriuk never hid the fact that he fought for Ukrainian Nazi forces during World War 2. «The Ukrainians had to make a choice between the Soviets of Josef Stalin and Hitler's Nazis. Vladimir had an allegiance to the Reich because the Russians didn't like the Ukrainians. He had to choose one side or the other. It was not his fault, it was war», Hart explained.