Antin Petrushevych

Antin Petrushevych was born on November 23, 1892 in Lviv, Ukraine. He was an only child. Antin completed law studies in 1915.

During the First World War, having learned several foreign languages, Antin Petrushevych worked with the military censor in Vienna. In 1919 he married Franciska Anna Pashek (she was born in Vienna), and they together relocated to Paris, where he was included into the Ukrainian National Republic Peace delegation, that was located in Paris under the leadership of Sydorenko. When later came the complete breakdown in relations between Dictator Petrushevych and Supreme Otaman Petliura came to be realized, Dr. Wasyl Panejko and Professor Dr. Stepan Tomashiwsky along with civil servants Oleksander Kulchytsky and Antin Petrushevych officially resigned from the UNR Delegation and established an independent ZUNR Delegation, that was to look after the interest of just Galicia.

From the marriage of Antin and Francisca Petrushevych there were born two daughters - Anna-Maria-Antonia and Maria-Ivanna-Yevhenia.

When the decision of the Council of Amabassadors was made on March 15, 1923 in Paris to cede eastern Galicia to Poland, and as a consequence the ZUNR Embassy in Paris was closed, Antin Petrushevych returned to Vienna and lived for a while at the home of his testiv. He had no employment income, and as a result he with great attention studied the multilingual daily press and researched the history of the Petrushevych family tree, their nobility and heraldic emblems and collected over time a significant amount of material on this subject. He did special research into the issue of the million dollar fortune that was left behind by the brothers Franz and Adolf Petrushevych, who had taken part in the Texas-Mexican war and had died there. Most of the materials collected, or perhaps only a part of it, were in the possession of Antin's daughters.

Eventually, Antin was able to get work at the Soviet trade mission in Kaunus, the capital of Lithuania. He moved there with all of his family where they all obtained Lithuanian citizenship. During the years 1932-1938, Antin and his family resided in Berlin, Germany where he was arrested by Hitler's Gestapo. Following an eleven-month investigation and him eventually being found innocent of any crimes, Antin got the order to return to Kaunus, where even before the end of his trial, his family had already been exiled to. During the German occupation of Lithuania, the Gestapo again arrested Antin and incarcerated him in a Kaunus hard-labour prison, where on December 12, 1941 he died. In a note on his death, a reference is found with the following content: "Kauener gefangnis fur schwere Arbeiten. Begrabnis des Anton Petrusevicius, gest. 12.12.1941, wird stattgegeben". What was the real reason for his death, perhaps, no one will be able to find out, but with complete confidence it should be realized that he was probably shot by the Germans. Questions pertaining to this issue were put to the Austrian Police Headquarters in Vienna, but no satisfactory response was given. Only in 1943, Antin's family returned to Vienna, where Antin's widow died in 1949, and his daughters, after a five-year residence in Austria, received back their Austrian citizenship.