Kostia Hupalo

According to the calculations of some modern researchers, in 1941–1943 more than 600 participants of the Ukrainian liberation movement were killed in occupied Kyiv. Among them was Kostia Hupalo, a talented representative of the creative intelligentsia, who climbed the career ladder from a professor of Russian philology to the author of the modern national revival drama “Triumph of Prosecutor Dalskyi”.

The future playwright was born in Hupalivka village of Dnipropetrovsk region in 1907. He graduated from the Faculty of Literature and Linguistics of Kharkiv University. He taught in Poltava region, then returned to Kharkiv, where he continued his teaching work: in high school, at the School of Red Commanders (senior political instructor), All-Ukrainian Institute of Communist Education. In 1935, he joined the inspectors of the Kharkiv City Department of Public Education. He defended his thesis in 1939.

Kostia Hupalo was in Kyiv when the premiere of his play “Triumph of Prosecutor Dalskyi” took place in Lviv Opera Theater on February 4, 1942. A few days later, on February 9, he was arrested in the building of the Union of Ukrainian Writers during a raid of the Security Service of the Reichsführer-SS (SD). According to incomplete information, he and other members of the OUN were shot at Babyn Yar at the end of February 1942.

From the memoirs of his daughter: “K. Hupalo’s Russian language specialization is a forced action, where time actively drove Ukrainians. In 1940, my father was invited to work as a teacher at the University of Ivan Franko in Lviv, where he headed the department of Russian language and literature and had the status of professor. In Lviv my father began to see and understand life differently. In Lviv he became a member of the OUN, a Melnykite...”.