John Oleszko was born in Tsarist Russia in 1893, but in 1915, he was living in Chicago, Illinois, in the United States of America, having emigrated there some time before the outbreak of the Great War. He was employed there as a labourer.
In the spring of 1915, he decided to return home - probably because of the dire situation of the Imperial Russian forces against those of the Central Powers on the eastern front. As a result, he booked third class passage on the May sailing of the Lusitania from New York to Liverpool for the first main part of his journey home. Having left Chicago sometime in April, probably by rail, he arrived at the Cunard berth at Pier 54 in New York port on the morning of 1st May 1915. He then boarded the liner with ticket number 170779 in time for her scheduled 10.00 a.m. departure. This was then delayed until the early afternoon of that day while she loaded cargo and embarked passengers and crew from the Anchor Lines vessel the S.S. Cameronia which the British Admiralty had requisitioned for war service as a troop ship.
Then, six days out of New York, in the early afternoon of 7th May, the Lusitania was torpedoed by the German submarine U-20, off the coast of southern Ireland, and sank in just 18 minutes. At that stage of her voyage, she was only about fourteen hours steaming time away from the safety of her home port.
Altogether there were 68 Russian nationals on board the Lusitania. Of these, 29 survived the sinking and 39 were killed as a result of this action. Unfortunately, John Oleszko was one of the 39 and as his body was never recovered from the se and identified afterwards, he has no known grave. He was aged 22 years.
Cunard Records, PRO BT 100/345, Deaths at Sea 1871 – 1968, Graham Maddocks, Geoff Whitfield, Michael Poirier, Jim Kalafus, Cliff Barry, Paul Latimer, Norman Gray.
Copyright © Peter Kelly.