Ivan Yermachenka was born into a peasant family near Barysaw.
12 Facts About Ivan Yermachenka
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Ivan Yermachenka graduated from the gymnasium in Moscow, entered the electrical engineering faculty, but his studies were interrupted by the First World War.
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In 1921 Ivan Yermachenka was appointed ambassador of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in Istanbul and general consul for the Balkans.
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Ivan Yermachenka established Belarusian consulate missions in Bulgaria and in Yugoslavia.
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Ivan Yermachenka then moved to Prague where in 1929 he graduated from the Medical Faculty of Charles University.
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From 1938 Ivan Yermachenka worked on cooperation between the Belarusian exiled government and Nazi Germany.
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On 20 April 1939 Ivan Yermachenka sent together with Vasil Zacharka, the president of the Belarusian Democratic Republic in exile, a seventeen-page memorandum to Adolf Hitler personally asking him to take into account the interests of Belarus in any future developments.
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In October 1941 Ivan Yermachenka travelled to German-occupied Minsk to set up Belarusian Self-Help, the only legal Belarusian organization at that time.
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Ivan Yermachenka later became advisor to Wilhelm Kube, the German Generalkommissar of Belarus.
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In June 1942, Ivan Yermachenka tried creating the Belarusian Self Defence Corps that was supposed to consist of three divisions, although only 20 battalions were created, which were not armed by the Germans, and thus they were disbanded in spring of 1943.
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In 1948 Ivan Yermachenka emigrated to the US, where he worked as doctor at the Binghamton State Hospital.
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Ivan Yermachenka co-founded the United Belarusian-American Help Committee in South River, New Jersey and became an active member of the Belarusian community in the United States.