On the 12th of June 2023, we held the first working night for our newly installed master, W Brother Malcolm Grange. It was a ‘white table’ event where wives, partners and friends of masonry were welcomed to our festive board.
After a short meeting were we welcomed two new joining members to the Lodge and proposed a third, as well as voting contributions to 4 worthy causes, namely the South Holderness Swimming Club, support for Tim Weston a 20 year old student undertaking a trek to the Himalayas to raise funds for Meningitis research, support for Connaught Court and lastly to the Daisy Appeal (Castle Hill Hospital), we had the usual high quality meal courtesy of the Tickton Grange Hotel and were treated to a guest speaker, Mrs Olga Coates who gave a talk entitled ‘Life behind the Iron Curtain’. The following is an extract from the minutes of our meeting’s after proceedings which gives a flavour of Olga’s talk:
The Worshipful Master introduced our guest speaker for the evening, Mrs Olga Coates, who gave us a talk on ‘Life behind the Iron Curtain’. A potted history of her parents escape from pre-war Ukraine and Stalin’s forced famine (killing a reported 40 million people), then an anonymous part of the USSR, to Poland, only to be caught up in the second world war and forced to work by the Nazi regime in Germany as slave labour. Eventually they managed to make their way to England after the war and were located in a refugee camp in Priory Road Hull, where Olga was born.
The family worked in agriculture as many ex-eastern Europeans were prized for their knowledge and hard work in that key post-war industry. Eventually her father was offered a job in a local village by a farmer and with it came a tied cottage. A huge benefit for the family!. Arriving at their new home with the few possessions they had, they spent the night on the wooden floor with no furniture, curtains or beds. Drafty and cold but a home, the villagers soon learnt of their plight and rallied around to provide the basics needed to make it a proper home.
Her father and mother were hard working and her mother especially so to make ends meet, often picking peas, on a piece-work basis, 5 times more than any other worker, to try and provide some little extras for her family.
The tied cottage was eventually condemned as unfit to live in for children and the family were offered a council house, which they accepted even though it added an extra 16 mile round cycle trip to her father’s place of work.
Life was tough in the UK for the family but even worse for the family they left behind in the Ukraine. Under Stalin the purges continued and the people lived a peasant existence. Gulags were part of life and even a small step out of line could send a person to certain death in one.
During the post war period Olga’s mother suffered immense mental stress wondering about her lost family in Ukraine. Eventually several decades later correspondence came through heavily censored from the USSR. A prompt reply was not in turn responded to and the worst was feared that her Ukraine family had been purged to a Gulag.
More decades and more mental strife were to pass before contact was made again and this turned out to be because of a simple slip by the local post-mistress in the village were Olga and her family had lived before moving to their council house, sending the reply from her relatives in Ukraine back as not-delivered, rather than just finding out the forwarding address for Olga’s mother. On both sides of Europe the family had feared the worst for their relatives in the UK and in Ukraine. A sad story of assumed tragedy that could have been avoided, leading to immense mental suffering.
Happily this further contact came to a happier ending, but not without further obstacles being encountered along the way. Eventually Olga’s uncle and aunt managed to fly to Heathrow and visit the family in their home near Hull. Fascinated by the things that we in the UK took for granted in the 1990’s, running water, hot water, flushing toilets. The latter becoming an object of fascination for Olga’s visiting relatives, who regularly flushed the loo, just to see it work.
Of even more fascination was the availability of food from the shops and the range of choices for even the basics such as bread. Ukraine had two types of bread both hard and black and unremarkable, and yet in the UK there was a preponderous of choice. The relaxed time that British people had, weekends to enjoy themselves, nice clothes, ladies who went around in high heels, it was a revelation to someone from rural Ukraine at that time.
Just before their return to Ukraine, Olga’s relatives refused to go into the local ASDA store; it was just too much for them. They had, they said, been living a lie; brain-washed by the USSR into believing the West was poverty stricken and the people of the West were living a life of bare existence, when in fact the opposite was true. It was very distressing for them.
In the 90’s the USSR fell apart and Olga determined to go to Ukraine to meet here family there. Travelling on such a journey was arduous and hazardous, but she made it and was welcomed and feted not just by her own family but by the whole village. A true journey of life, Olga was shown by her aunt the comb that Olga’s mother had wanted to take with her when she escaped from Ukraine all those years ago. Still held by her sister in remembrance. Olga would have liked to have taken it back to her mother, but her aunt refused, it was her memento of her sister and it was staying in Ukraine. Olga was inundated with presents from the village, handmade feather filled cushions, she could only take a few as they would otherwise have filled the plane; she returned home a happier person, that she had seen her family and found out more about their history and life.
Olga’s talk took an hour and could have gone on longer still. Everyone was enthralled and saddened in equal measure. No wonder that the Ukrainian people will not accept being forced back under the yoke of an oppressive Russian by the current conflict. We should not forget Olga’s story and the lessons behind it. Slava Ukraini!!
All the ladies present on the evening received a gift of a replica ‘anointing spoon’ as used at King Charles 111’s coronation as a memento of the event and of a good night at Wyke Millennium in June 2023.
