They came here in hope. Now Manchester’s Ukrainians face the darkest of days

For almost 70 years St Mary’s Catholic church in Cheetham Hill has been at the heart of Ukrainian life in Manchester.

And on Thursday morning, just hours after Russian launched its invasion, it was where the community came together on one of their darkest days.

Amid shock, anger and grief, long-established families born and raised here stood side-by-side with newer arrivals to our city.

All had just one thing on their mind.

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In the packed church friends shared news of relatives and anxiously hunched over mobile phones desperate for the latest updates on the invasion.

Tears were shed as the sombre 90 minute-long Mass was brought to a close with a defiant rendition of the Ukrainian national anthem, ‘Ukraine Has Not Yet Perished’.

Genia Mandzij, chair of the Manchester branch of the Ukrainian Women of Great Britain, was among those who addressed the gathering.

Her story is typical of many first generation Ukrainian immigrants in Greater Manchester.

She was born in Rochdale in 1952 after her parents arrived in the UK as refugees following the Second World War.

Aged just 15 her mum was taken by the Nazis while she worked in a field near her home in Ivano-Frankivsk, in Western Ukraine and forced to work in a German factory that canned food for the troops, while her dad was conscripted into the Polish army.

They later met in Preston, married and moved to Spotland in Rochdale where they brought up a family.

Growing up Genia, 69, says she always felt ‘100 per cent British and 100 per cent Ukrainian’.

“I went to Ukrainian church, Ukrainian youth groups, but I went to English school and lived an English life,” she said.

“I never felt as though there no children like me, there were always others around with a similar background.”

The first Ukrainians arrived in Manchester in the late 19th and early 20th Century, when a group from Western Ukraine, initially bound for America, landed in Liverpool.

Many could not afford the onward journey or were persuaded to stay in the UK by other Eastern Europeans already here.

Around 100 families found their way to Manchester and settled in Red Bank on the edge of the city centre, where they established the first Ukrainian community in the UK.

They found work, often in tailors owned by immigrants from other Eastern European countries, and soon others followed.

By 1912 there were some 500 Ukrainians in Manchester, mainly from the Peremyshliany and Zolochiv districts of the present-day city of Lviv.

But by the beginning of the First World War nearly all had either emigrated to North America or returned to their homeland.

Those who had arrived from parts of Austria-Hungary or Galicia, as a large part of Ukraine was then known, were deemed to be ‘enemy aliens’, and some were detained in internment camps, mainly on the Isle of Man.

Following the war the community was depleted in numbers, but began to establish itself in the life of the city.

A social club was formed on Cheetham Hill Road in 1929 and a Ukrainian Catholic congregation was established at St Chad’s Church in the 1930s.

Genia’s parents were part of most significant wave of immigration, when thousands of displaced Ukrainians settled in Manchester following the Second World War.

By the late 40s around a third of the 10,000 Ukrainians in the UK had made their home here.

Youth groups, a women’s association, choirs and dance troupes were formed.

A Saturday school, which still runs to this day, was set up and two community centres and an Orthodox church opened in Whalley Range.

In 1954 St Mary’s Church, near the junction of Bury Old Road and Middleton Road, was bought by Father Djoba, the first parish priest.

Nine years later it was followed by the opening of the Ukrainian Cultural Centre, just round the corner on Smedley Lane.

And in recent years a new influx of people have arrived from Ukraine, seeking work and opportunities, and in the process have breathed new life into the community.

Genia went to university, qualified as a teacher, married her husband Mike, a nuclear engineer who came from a Ukrainian family in Bradford, West Yorks, and raised two daughters of her own in South Manchester.

But she says it hasn’t always been easy.

She says Ukrainians have often faced discrimination, especially during the Cold War when they were regularly mistaken for Russians.

But Genia says she has always retained her Ukrainian roots and is proud of the contribution she and thousands like her have made to life in Manchester.

“It’s who I am,” she said. “I just couldn’t turn my back on it.

“The Ukrainians who came here after the war were given an opportunity by the UK and they took it.

“They were hardworking, they assimilated into the community without losing their identity, and they raised children who went on to become doctors, nurses, teachers, engineers, giving something back to society.

“My mum was taken from a field when she was just 15 and made to work in a factory.

“She had never had the opportunities I did. She was proud of what we achieved.”