Volha Kachan Died

The Ukrainian-Belarusian emigration activist died at the age of 95.

On January 23, Ukrainian-Belarusian emigration activist Volha Kachan died in Perth, Australia, at the age of 95, Novy Chas reports.

Volha was born in Volhynia to a Ukrainian family. She studied in Warsaw, then in Czechoslovakia. After the Second World War, she moved to Australia, where she married the Belarusian Arkady Kachan (1921-1982), a well-known public and military figure of the Belarusians in Australia, whom she met in a camp for displaced persons in Germany. Through her husband, Volha joined the Belarusian cause.

She worked as a translator and lecturer in psychology at the University of Sydney. Corresponded in beautiful Belarusian with the London Skarynauka, mainly with Father Alexander Nadson. She supported the Belarusian cause with words and money: she donated to Skarynauka and Belarusian newspapers in Australia.

After her husband's death in 1982, she kept in touch with Skarynauka, the Belarusian Institute of Science and Art. She wrote about the Belarusians of Australia in English, for example, in 1988 in “The Australian People: an Encyclopedia of the Nation, its People and their Origins”.

Volha Kachan also left memoirs in English about the years spent in Poland, Czechoslovakia and Germany. Fragments of memoirs called “Escape from “paradise” were posted online.

She studied psycholinguistics, had academic publications on the psychological foundations, aspects of bilingualism. In the 1980s, her text “Early Bilingualism: Friend or Foe?” attracted particular attention.

Volha lived in retirement in Sydney until 2021. In 2021, she moved to her son Giorgio in Perth, where she died. She was buried in Sydney.