Semchyshyn, Myroslav

Semchyshyn, Myroslav [Семчишин, Мирослав; Semčyšyn], b 26 August 1910 in Zolochiv, Galicia, d 5 February 1999 in Chicago, Illinois, USA. Philologist, journalist, and community figure. He studied at Lviv University (1932) and taught at the Academic Gymnasium of Lviv (1936–8) and the Lviv Pedagogical Institute (1939–41). During the Second World War and German occupation he worked for the Ukrainian Relief Committee in Lviv and briefly edited the newspaper L’vivs’ki visti. As a postwar disolaced person he worked for the Ukrainian Relief Committee in Vienna (1944–6) and taught at a Ukrainian gymnasium in Salzburg. He emigrated to England in 1947 and in London was the editor of Ukraïns’ka dumka (London) (1948–50). From 1955 he lived in Chicago, where he cofounded and edited (1955–7) the paper Ukraïns’ke zhyttia (Chicago). He was a professor of Russian, Polish, and (from 1973) Ukrainian at Northeastern Illinois State University (1961–78). He wrote articles on linguistic, literary, and pedagogical subjects, booklets in English on Ukrainians in Illinois (1976) and the Ukrainians (1977), and a book on 1,000 years of Ukrainian culture (1985). From 1981 he headed the Chicago chapter of the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]