Barys Rahula

Barys Rahula (Belarusian: Барыс Рагуля, Boris Ragula, 1 January 1920 – 22 April 2005) was a Belarusian military commander serving with the Biełaruskaja Krajovaja Abarona (BKA) during World War II; the military arm of the pro-Nazi Belarusian Central Rada. After the war he studied medicine in the West and became a Canadian doctor.

Life

Barys Rahula was born near Nowogródek and spent his early years in the Kresy region (now West Belarus). In 1938, he became student at the University of Vilnius but was mobilized into the Polish army after the Nazi-Soviet invasion of Poland.^[1] He soon became a German POW, but in 1940 escaped from German prison to West Belarus occupied by the Soviets. In Belarus, he got arrested by the NKVD but managed to escape from prison in the first days after Germany's attack on the USSR.^[2]

Under German occupation, Rahula participated in the creation of the pro-Nazi Belarusian national army known as the Home Defence Force (BKA) and was also one of the organizers of the Belarusian Independence Party. He left Belarus with the German army ahead of the Soviet advance.

After the war, Barys Rahula studied Medicine at the Catholic University of Leuven. In 1954 he moved to Canada and became one of the country's better known Belarusian oncologists. After the Chernobyl Disaster, Rahula organized fund raising to support victims of the catastrophe. He died in 2005.

References

1. Успамін пра Барыса Рагулю
2. У Канадзе памёр Барыс Рагуля at Радыё Свабода 2014 (www.svaboda.org)

Selected Books

• Беларускае студэнцтва на чужыне (Belarusian Students in the Strange Lands)
• Жыцьцё пад агнём (Living under Fire)

External links

• Boris Ragula. Against the Current on Google Books.
• Сьв. пам. Барыс РАГУЛЯ