A rchive Date
[ 28-11-2003 ]
Category
[ International Relations ]
sub-Categoy
[ Ukraine ]
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[http://www.torontosun.com/Columnists/gleeson.html
'No shortage of monsters in the world'
By JOHN GLEESON - Winnipeg Sun
November 28, 2003
The overall tone of the 70th anniversary of the Ukrainian Holodomor has been one of reconciliation, respect and shared sadness for the seven million victims of Stalin's inhuman regime.
But when you're talking about genocide - and especially comparing one genocide with another - some bad blood's bound to resurface, and sure enough it did.
Responding to last Friday's column (Genocide survivors end silence), T. Ranisgu of Toronto didn't just rewrite history to make his point - he turned it upside-down.
"Maybe the Ukrainian people kept quiet because of their complicity with the Nazis in WW2," Ranisgu wrote. "I have Jewish relatives who have told me of atrocities committed by Ukrainian citizens. They helped the Nazis round up and kill Jews during the war and in return they got their property and belongings. The Ukrainians helped the Nazis also because they figured it would make them independent from the Soviets. What Stalin did was pay them back for siding with the Nazis."
There you go. The Holodomor of the early 1930s was payback for the Holocaust of the 1940s. Now it all makes sense, right?
In fact, ethnic conflict between Jews and Ukrainians in the old country is well-documented - and since it was a factor in both genocides, it should be exposed to the light of day and then hopefully laid to rest.
After the Bolsheviks seized power in 1917, Ukraine was occupied in turn by Red Russians, White Russians and Poles. In just three years, Kiev was liberated 15 times. When the Reds re-invaded Ukraine in late 1918 they outraged the peasants by taking their grain and starting the process of consolidating individual holdings into state farms. Ukrainians, their culture and livelihoods now under attack, rose up against the Bolsheviks, some of whom were Jews.
"To these angry mobs anti-Bolshevism automatically meant anti-Semitism," Lionel Kochan and John Keep wrote in The Making of Modern Russia. "Fifty pogroms occurred at that time in three provinces and by 1921 the total had reached 2,000. Overall ethnic violence cost some 30,000 Jews their lives."
A dozen years later, when Stalin's minions went about the monstrous business of exterminating at least seven million Ukrainians, some of the Soviets involved (including the chief of the secret police and other senior Communist officials) were Jewish. A decade later, when the Nazis invaded Ukraine and started rounding up Jews as part of Hitler's "Final Solution," some Ukrainians collaborated (and many, many more became victims of the Nazis).
So yes, Jewish blood was on Ukrainian hands and Ukrainian blood was on Jewish hands.
Still, a few racist murderers being among the millions killed in both holocausts does not render the overwhelming majority of victims any less innocent, nor the genocide carried out by the Bolsheviks and Nazis any less depraved.
Even T. Ranisgu acknowledges as much, ending his letter: "There's no shortage of monsters in the world and Stalin may have been just as evil as Hitler. Ukrainians should have their peace of mind and maybe the governments can acknowledge their pain."
ACKNOWLEDGING THE pain is what this weekend's Holodomor symposium is all about. Along with a noon-hour ceremony on Saturday by the Famine monument at City Hall, one of the highlights will be a memorial luncheon for the approximately 30 survivors now living in the Winnipeg area.
Speaking at the Sunday luncheon will be Asper Foundation executive director Moe Levy, who is spearheading the late Israel Asper's Canadian Museum of Human Rights, slated to open by the summer of 2008 at The Forks.
Although the museum will have a strong Canadian focus, Levy says the Holodomor will not be forgotten this time.
"The Ukrainian genocide was always one of the stories we wanted to tell in this museum," Levy says. "We intend to tell the whole story and tell it accurately." To ensure this, he says, Ukrainian-Canadians will appoint their own historians and representatives to the committee overseeing the museum exhibits.
Levy is aware of the historical bad blood between Ukrainians and Jews but says both communities have "come a long way" since the genocides of the last century, adding he hopes any lingering acrimony will be replaced by the "spirit of reconciliation" that's driving the museum project.
Eugene Hyworon, parish president of St. Mary the Protectress Ukrainian Orthodox Cathedral, where the symposium is being held, says the historic conflict between Ukrainians and Jews was the result of misunderstanding, but he feels it shouldn't be swept under the rug. "The cycle of violence is not going to stop until people recognize the mistakes they made in the past and correct past injustices," Hyworon says.
Most of the survivors were small children when the Holodomor occurred; they know little of the ethnic politics or "genocidal justifications" behind it. They remember hunger and death.
Symposium organizer Fr. Jaroslaw Buciora notes many survivors did not want to be given special recognition or feted at this weekend's event.So instead, a symbolic famine meal is planned and 30 icons will be blessed and presented to the survivors individually after the Sunday morning liturgy.
"The survivors are quite humble people," he says. "For some of these people God was their only source of life - it's because of God they survived."
Thank God they did.
John Gleeson is the editor of the Winnipeg Sun. He can be reached by e-mail at jgleeson@wpgsun.com.
Letters to the editor should be sent to editor@wpgsun.com
 World Fact Book (CIA)]
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