Marunchak, Michael

Marunchak, Michael or Mykhailo [Марунчак, Михайло; Marunčak, Myxajlo], b 4 October 1914 in Dalesheva, Horodenka county, Galicia, d 21 November 2004 in Winnipeg, Manitoba. Community figure and historian. Marunchak studied at Lviv University (1936–40), the Ukrainian Free University in Prague (Ph D, 1941), and University of Manitoba (1955). He was interned by the Germans in a concentration camp during the Second World War. After the war he headed the League of Ukrainian Political Prisoners (1947–8) in the displaced persons camps, and he left Germany for Canada in 1948. He was active in the Ukrainian Canadian Committee (later Congress), the Shevchenko Scientific Society of Canada (full member from 1961), and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in Canada (president from 1983). He was head of the Markiian Shashkevych Institute in Winnipeg and a lecturer at the Ukrainian Catholic University (Rome). Marunchak compiled a considerable private archive of materials related to Ukrainian-Canadian history and started developing a broad scheme about Ukrainian life in Canada. His magnum opus is the two-volume Istoriia ukraïntsiv Kanady (1968–74), which appeared in English in a single volume as The Ukrainian Canadians: A History (1970; 2nd ed, 1982). His other major Ukrainian-Canadian works include Studiï do istoriï ukraïntsiv Kanady (Studies in the History of Ukrainians in Canada, 5 vols, 1964–80) and Biohrafichnyi dovidnyk do istoriï ukraïntsiv Kanady (A Biographical Guide to the History of Ukrainians in Canada, 1986). Marunchak also wrote Systema nimetskykh kontsentratsiinykh taboriv i polityka vynyshchuvannia v Ukraïni (The System of German Concentration Camps and the Politics of Extermination in Ukraine, 1963) and Ukraïntsi v SSSR poza kordonamy URSR (Ukrainians in the USSR outside the Borders of the Ukrainian SSR, 1974).

[This article was updated in 2025.]