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Gonta Dmytro

1900-1959

Commander of the 2nd battery of the Black Cossacks regiment, centurion of the UPR Army, bandura player.

Biography.

Dmytro Honta took an active part in the liberation struggle of 1918-1921. In 1918-1919, he was an aide-de-camp to Ataman Yukhym Bozhko, with whom he actively formed the Zaporizhzhia Sich in the Katerynoslav region. After the Sich was disbanded into Petro Diachenko's Black Cossacks regiment, he commanded the Black Cossacks regiment's cavalry battery.

He studied bandura playing with kobzar Antin Mytiai and later with Kostiantyn Misevych. In 1925, together with Kost Misevych and Danylo Shcherbyna, he performed at the People's House in Lviv. In the 1930s.

During the interwar period, he performed in Galicia and Poland as part of a trio of bandura players together with K. Misevych and D. Shcherbyna. He did a lot to popularize the bandura in Galicia and Volyn. He is the author of the song "In a foreign land" ("Fly, my duma", lyrics by Roman Kupchynskyi). He painted churches in Kurylivka and Butsiv near Przemysl.

During the German occupation in 1943, he was exiled to the Dachau concentration camp. On April 29, 1945, he was released by the Americans. After the war, he found himself in Munich and then settled in Philadelphia, USA.

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