Basarab, Olha

Basarab, Olha (née Levytska), b 24 July 1899 in Pidhoroddia, Rohatyn county, Galicia, d 13 February 1924. (Photo: Olha Basarab.) Civic and political activist. She was a member of the first women's platoon of the Ukrainian Sich Riflemen in Lviv. Basarab did charitable and educational work on the Committee to Aid the Wounded and the Interned in Vienna and on the Committee to Aid the Civilian Population. Her work was recognized by the International Red Cross. She helped organize soldiers that the Austrian army demobilized into Ukrainian military units. Basarab was on the executive of the Ukrainian Women's Union in Vienna, and in 1923 she became a member of the supreme executive of the Lviv branch of the Union of Ukrainian Women. The Polish police arrested her for belonging to the Ukrainian Military Organization and tortured her to death during interrogation on the night of 12–13 February 1924. Her martyr's death had a great impact on the interwar generation of Galicia's Ukrainians.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 1 (1984).]