Mariia Stepanivna Shtepa (
Ukrainian: Марія Степанівна Штепа, pseudonym Topolia;[1] 13 March 1925 — 1 June 2020,
Chortkiv, Ternopil Oblast[2]) was a Ukrainian writer, participant in the national liberation struggle. Member of the
Organisation of Ukrainian Nationalists (1942).[3]
Biography
Shtepa was born in
Romashivka, Ternopil Oblast. In 1944—1946 she was a liaison of the armed underground in the Chortkiv Raion. In 1946, Mariia was arrested by the NKGB and sentenced to 10 years in prison. She served her sentence in a penal labor camp in Mordovia and Chelyabinsk Oblast (both now in the Russian Federation).[3]
Organizer of the church choir in the village of Bilobozhnytsia, which rehearsed at her home in the 1980s. She initiated the construction of the monument to the Victims of the Totalitarian Regime in the center of the village, as well as the restoration of the grave of the Sich Rifleman at the Bilobozhnytsia cemetery.[4]
She was the founder of the Museum of Political Prisoners and Repressed in the Chortkiv District in the premises of the Buchach Diocesan Administration of the UGCC.[5]
She died on 1 June 2020, in the shelter of the Chortkiv department of the Caritas Charitable Foundation.[6]
In 2021, film director Mariia Yaremchuk and co-producer Volodymyr Khanas made the documentary Mariia from the series Zhyva UPA.[11] On 8 April 2022, the film premiered in Lviv.[12][13] On 20 October 2022, the film was screened in Kyiv.[14]
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abЗоряна Мурашка. Чортків у постатях. Марія Штепа, У круговерті часу (Сторінками історії Чорткова (1918—1991 рр.). Книга третя, П. С. Федоришин, Тернопіль : Підручники і посібники, 2022, s. 453, ISBN 978-966-07-4050-1.
^Штепа, М. Терновий вінок Ромашівки [Текст], М. Штепа, Тернопіль : Збруч, 2006, 178 s.
^Пам'ять кличе [Текст] : [спогади], Марія Штепа, Чортків ; Тернопіль : Терно-граф, 2008, 123 s.