Yulia Fedechko, nee Khomyk (Chomyk), was taken from her village in Galicia in Ukraine in 1943 as a teenager to work on a farm in Klagenfurt in Austria. Her conscription into forced labor was recorded by the German Authorities in Przemysl (Peremyshl), one of the two cities through which train traffic was funneled because of the differences in rail track gauges between Europe and lands ruled by the Soviets in 1939. In Klagenfurt she contacted her brother Ivan who had been sent there earlier, and she met her future husband, Yurii. In 1950 she came to the United States with Yurii. Eventually, they settled in Columbus in Ohio where their two sons were born and raised.

As relations with the countries behind the Iron-Curtain thawed, Yulia got in touch with the family she had left in Ukraine in 1943 and went back to her village to visit them in 1969. To this day she corresponds with them and opens her arms and house to any relative who can visit her.