Early Life
Ivonka Survilla was born into the family of Uladzimier Shymaniets, an engineer, and Evelina Shymaniets née Pashkievich.
In 1940, after the Soviet annexation of West Belarus, Uladzimier Shymaniets was arrested by the Soviets and sentenced to five years of concentration camps. He escaped deportation to the Gulag and execution due to the German attack on the USSR
In 1944 the family fled to the West through East Prussia with the thousands of other refugees and eventually reached Denmark where they lived in a refugee camp for several years. On the way Survilla's younger sister died.
In 1948 her family moved to France and settled in Paris. Survilla's family members were active participants in the life of the local Belarusian community. Ivonka Survilla has studied one year at an art school and then graduated from a humanities faculty of the Sorbonne.
In 1959 Ivonka Shymaniets married Janka Survilla, a Belarusian activist and radio broadcaster. With him she moved to Madrid, Spain, where they ran a Belarusian language radio station which was supported by the Spanish government.
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