User:Obolonska56/Volodymyr Bemko

Volodymyr Bemko (September 16, 1889, Kozova, Ternopil oblast — August 15, 1965, New York, USA ) was a Ukrainian Galician lawyer, public figure, and military officer (UGA centurion).

Biography
He graduated from the gymnasium in Berezhany in 1909 and studied law at Lviv and Jagiellonian Universities. For his participation in the student strike in Lviv on July 1, 1910, he was imprisoned by the Austrian authorities for 3 months.

As a soldier of the 24th Regiment of the Austrian Army, he participated in the First World War on the Serbian and Italian fronts, was wounded and promoted to lieutenant.

He initiated the secret "Military Committee" in Kolomyia and organized the November Rank in Pokuttia. From the spring of 1919, he was Deputy State Secretary of Military Affairs of the ZUNR in Stanislaviv. Commandant of the Nyzhniv military district in May 1919. Deputy Commandant of the "Stage Command" of the UGA. UGA liaison officer at the headquarters of General Schilling's Volunteer Army in Odesa in January 1920. Deputy Chairman of the UGA Liquidation Commission in Kyiv in May 1920. He survived the horrific "Quadrangle of Death" during which he was seriously ill (typhus).

In the interwar period, he worked as a lawyer in Berezhany (his office was located on the first floor of the Narodnyi Dom). He was also the head of branches of the Ridna Shkola society, the Poviat Union Cooperative, the Berezhany Ukrainbank, the Narodnyi Dom, and the Poviat Committee of the UNDO. For his active work for the benefit of the Ukrainian community in the county, he had many conflicts with the occupation authorities: he was repeatedly fined, arrested by the police, and spent several or several weeks in jail.

In 1944, he immigrated to Austria, and in 1953 to the United States (Newark, New Jersey). He was one of the initiators of the publication of the collection "Berezhanska Zemlia" (volume 1 – 1970), the author of the essay "Berezhany-Berezhanshchyna."

He was buried at the Hollywood Cemetery (Union, N. J.).