27 Facts About Stefan Terlezki

Stefan Terlezki, was a British Conservative politician who served as Member of Parliament for Cardiff West from 1983 to 1987.

Stefan Terlezki experienced life in both Nazi Germany, and the Soviet Union, which made him a powerful voice against totalitarian governments.

Stefan Terlezki was brought up in the nearby farming community of Antonivka, where his first teacher at the village school was the Ukrainian poet Mariyka Pidhiryanka.

Stefan Terlezki's father Oleksa Terletskyj was a peasant farmer who worked at a brickworks, where he organised a sit-in protest for shorter working hours.

One of Stefan Terlezki's uncles was classified as a kulak after paying some neighbours to help with the harvest.

Stefan Terlezki was arrested and deported to Siberia, a fate suffered by several of Terlezki's cousins, who were students suspected of Ukrainian nationalism.

Stefan Terlezki witnessed the murder of Jews thrown from the neighbouring road bridge by German soldiers.

Stefan Terlezki's father sent him on errands to aid Jewish villagers by obtaining false baptism certificates for them.

Stefan Terlezki was bought by Hansel Bohmer, who had been conscripted into Nazi Germany's Kriegsmarine and was looking for someone to replace him on his family's farm.

Stefan Terlezki worked on farms near Voitsberg between 1942 and 1945, interrupted only by a spell digging trenches for the German defences at Radkersburg and three weeks imprisonment after his arrest by the Gestapo for insubordination.

Stefan Terlezki was in a large group who boarded a train thinking they would be taken home but who ended up in a camp in the eastern Austrian province of Burgenland.

Stefan Terlezki escaped and fled back to Voitsberg, which in July 1945 became part of the British Zone of Occupation in Austria.

Stefan Terlezki was sent to a Displaced Persons' camp in Villach, Carinthia, where he found work in the cookhouse at a British Army base.

Stefan Terlezki's catering experience allowed him to find alternative work in the canteen of a miners' hostel.

Stefan Terlezki eventually went into hotel management in the Welsh towns of Porthcawl and Swansea before running his own hotels in Aberystwyth and Cardiff.

Stefan Terlezki stood for Parliament in the two General Elections of 1974, unsuccessfully challenging James Callaghan in Cardiff South East.

Stefan Terlezki gained greater public prominence by serving as Chairman of his local football club, Cardiff City FC, between 1975 and 1977.

Stefan Terlezki attracted headlines by advocating the flogging of football hooligans, firmly establishing his reputation as a right-wing Conservative.

Stefan Terlezki refused to travel to the Soviet Union when Cardiff City played Dinamo Tbilisi in the European Cup Winners' Cup, he said he could not risk being sent to Siberia as a Red Army deserter.

Stefan Terlezki became MP for Cardiff West in the Conservative landslide of 1983.

At Westminster, Stefan Terlezki had the chance to do something about his father's plight.

Stefan Terlezki persuaded the Foreign Secretary, Sir Geoffrey Howe, to raise the case with his Soviet counterpart, Andrei Gromyko.

Stefan Terlezki requested a visa to attend the funeral but it was not issued in time.

In 1989, Stefan Terlezki was appointed as the British Government's representative on the Council of Europe's Human Rights Committee.

Stefan Terlezki condemned the preservation of close ties with Russia, especially the leasing of military bases in Crimea and argued that more should be done to promote the Ukrainian language and to discourage the use of Russian.

In 2002, Stefan Terlezki took part in a television documentary about his life story and returned to Voitsberg, where he was reunited with Hansel Bohmer's niece.

Stefan Terlezki published his memoirs, From War to Westminster in 2005.