Nevertheless, there was one Europe Correspondent for PostMedia news who was determined to muddy the waters. He penned two articles: "Harper accused of exaggerating Ukrainian genocide’s death toll" and "Ukrainian museum toured by Harper show ‘one-sided history of atrocities, critics say." In the first article, Harper was criticized for indicating "on both days of his first -ever journey to Ukraine that ‘almost’ 10 million people died in what is known as the ‘Holodomor’ – or death by starvation."
In the second PostMedia News wrote, "Prime Minister Harper visited a prison-turned-museum during his recent trip to Ukraine that, according to some historians, highlights atrocities committed by Soviet and German occupiers while ignoring those perpetrated by Ukrainians against Jews." The reference is to the "Prison at Lonsky" museum. The correspondent goes on to specify the "beating, humiliation and murder of Jews in Lviv by Ukrainians – with Nazi encouragement – in the days after the Soviets were routed by Hitler’s forces in the early summer of 1941."
Both criticisms are not so much not warranted, but rather they are irrelevant to the prime minister’s mission in Ukraine. The number assessment of the Holodomor, irrespective of certitude, does not hurt, nor should it offend anyone. The case for "almost 10 million" can be made readily by clear and convincing proof ranging from census reports to various documents recently unearthed with only limited access to Soviet archives. That the Nazis were responsible for the Jewish pogrom in the early days of July 1941 was well established by an Extraordinary Soviet Commission after the Soviets reinvade Lviv in 1944 as well as by the findings at Nuremberg. The Lonsky prison tour which focused on Ukrainian victims of Soviet and Nazi regimes does not detract from the fact that there may have been other nationalities.
Honoring Jewish victims at Babyn Yar does not dishonor the non-Jews, the gypsies, the Ukrainian nationalists and the entire Kyiv Dynamo soccer squad.
But all that is besides the point.
The two articles were carried widely enough in Canada by newspapers such as The National Post, The Montreal Gazette, The Edmonton Journal and some others. Canada’s mainstream media did not. PostMedia is a restructuring of CanWest Global which owns all the newspapers carrying the two articles. CanWest Global was founded and controlled by a Canadian-Jewish family, the Aspers.
Over the years, many Ukrainians have been accused of anti-Semitism and many Jews of Ukrainophobia. These phenomena and the ensuing characterizations have evolved because of the territorial proximity of Jews and Ukrainians under czars and commissars. Much like neighbors of varying cultures they often clashed. They were aided and abetted in this tragedy by the czar and later the commissars. The czars expelled the Jews from Russia into Ukraine. There the czars’ and commissars’ henchmen worked to provoke conflicts. Divide and conquer was the Russian mantra for centuries.
Today there are some 100,000-150,000 Jews in Ukraine. Ukraine is a relatively independent country, at least it was until the current president assumed power. Essentially, anti-Semitism and Ukrainophobia are memories.
Jews have no reason to fear Ukrainians and certainly Jews or other nationalities have not been disenfranchised in contemporary Ukrainian society and government. Many Jews who emigrated from Ukraine to Israel are going back.
Yet, no doubt bigots remain on both sides. The bigger problem, however, is that some Jews are insensitive to the suffering of others. The Holocaust is not diminished by Jewish recognition that almost 10 million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor. Jewish victims are not dishonored by acknowledging that other people were victims also. Some Ukrainians will perceive this excessive reaction by Jewish media as a self-preserving defense tactic since, statistically, a disproportionate component of the Holodomor’s executioners were Jews and an equally overwhelming amount of Soviet accomplices during the Soviet’s two years in western Ukraine from 1939-41 were Jews.
Those Ukrainians need to recognize that those executioners and accomplices were criminals not because they were Jewish, but because they were bad people. Today, the reason why Ukraine’s current minister of education, Dmytro Tabachnyk, is so virulently anti-Ukrainian education, language and culture, is not because he is Jewish, but because he is a bad person and like those who control the Jewish Canadian press, he is bigoted and insensitive.
Askold S. Lozynskyj is immediate past president of the Ukrainian World Congress and its current main representative at the United Nations.
