Olga Nikolaevna Anstei also Olga Anstey (1 March 1912 – 30 May 1985; Ukrainian: Ольга Анстей), was a Jewish-Ukrainian émigré poet from Kiev.[1] She was the wife of poet Ivan Elagin (Ukrainian: Іван Єлагін). Olga Anstei is best remembered for writing about the Holocaust. Her "Kirillovskie iary" (another name for Babi Yar) written in 1943, was one of the first-ever literary works on the subject of 1941 massacre of Ukrainian Jews in Kiev.[2]
Olga Elagin and her husband defected together from the Soviet Union to the West in 1943. Their works were published side by side in the poetry anthology entitled Berega: Stikhi Poetov Vtoroi Emigratsii (Shores: Poetry of the Second Emigration) by Valentina Sinkevich, the first ever collection of works by the second wave of Jewish emigration from the Soviet Union. They divorced in 1950.[3] She remarried, but divorced again. Olga Elagin died in New York City at the age of 73.[4]
She is buried at the Russian Orthodox Convent Novo-Diveevo in Nanuet, New York.