Olena Chovgeniva was born in the village of Ilyinskoye [ru], near Moscow in Russia where her parents spent summer vacations.

In 1942, the Germans executed several dozen radical Ukrainian nationalists from the OUN, Teliha and her husband anong them, in the Babi Yar.

[4][5][6][7] Historians Efraim Zuroff and Per Anders Rudling report that Teliha was an enthusiastic admirer of Adolf Hitler and Benito Mussolini and was in favor of the establishment of a totalitarian government in Ukraine.

[2] Historian Myroslav Shkandrij reports that in 1936 Teliha followed Ukrainian nationalist Dmytro Dontsov's line on support for Hitler, commenting on the Führer's assassination of Ernst Röhm during the so-called “Night of the Long Knives” of 1934: "What is strange about this?

Historian Per Anders Rudling points out, however, that the same newspaper published strongly anti-Semitic material during the September-October 1941 pogrom in Kiev.