Ukraine List #452 | 11Apr2011 | John-Paul Himka et al [National
Post-2011apr23-A5 advertisement]
http://www.ukrainianstudies.uottawa.ca/
http://www.cjc.ca/2011/04/12/international-scholars-issue-open-letter-on-the-uccla-ucc-and-the-cmhr/
The Ukrainian Canadian Civil
Liberties Association, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and the Canadian
Museum for Human Rights
The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian
Canadian Congress have been campaigning against the plans of the
Canadian Museum for Human Rights in Winnipeg to mount a permanent
Holocaust gallery. The UCCLA has mailed out a postcard across Canada
that reproduces the cover of an edition of George Orwell’s Animal Farm
and implies that supporters of a Holocaust gallery are pigs. For its
part, the UCC, which, in contrast to the UCCLA, is an elected body that
represents major Ukrainian Canadian organizations, has complained that
the planned Holocaust exhibit is “unacceptable” and has asked the
Museum to provide the Holodomor, or Ukrainian famine of 1932-33, “no
less coverage… than the Holocaust.”
We, the signatories to this letter, have all studied various aspects of
genocide, fascism, anti-Semitism, Stalinism, war criminality, the
Holodomor, and the Holocaust. We unequivocally recognize that the
violence and oppression that Ukraine has experienced during its
multi-totalitarian past ought to be remembered and commemorated in a
Canadian museum devoted to the history and abuse of human rights. What
we object to is the dishonest manner in which the UCCLA and UCC have
distorted historical accounts of the Holodomor while at the same time
refusing to acknowledge the Ukrainian nationalist movement’s role in
the Holocaust.
The Ukrainian famine, which constitutes one of Stalin’s great crimes
and one of Europe’s most devastating tragedies, deserves a place in any
venue dedicated to commemorating and understanding the violation of
human rights. Yet the way the UCC treats the Holodomor is problematic.
All demographic studies place the number of famine deaths in Soviet
Ukraine in the range of 2.6 to 3.9 million. This is, in itself, a
grievous toll. Nonetheless, the UCC has, at times, inflated the number
of victims to seven or even ten million. The implication is obvious:
seven or ten million is more than six million; the Holodomor deserves
more attention than the Holocaust. Such a manipulative attempt to
exploit human suffering is reprehensible and should not be acceptable
to the Canadian public.
We are also troubled by the attitude of the UCCLA and UCC toward the
OUN, the UPA, and the 14th Grenadier Division of the Waffen SS
‘Galicia’ (1st Ukrainian). OUN stands for the Organization of Ukrainian
Nationalists. UPA is the Ukrainian abbreviation for the Ukrainian
Insurgent Army, the armed branch of the OUN. The Galicia Division, a
military unit that was primarily involved in counterinsurgency
activities, was established by the Germans in 1943. Tens of thousands
of Ukrainians who belonged to these formations perished while resisting
the ruthless imposition of Soviet power at the end of the war. Today
many Ukrainians revere the members of these organizations as the
champions of an oppressed people. In February 2010, the UCC called on
the Canadian government “to make changes to Canada’s War Veterans
Allowance Act by expanding eligibility to include designated resistance
groups such as OUN-UPA.” Last Remembrance Day, the UCC asked Ukrainian
Canadians to honour veterans who belonged to OUN, UPA, and the Galicia
Division.
In their calls to honour the members of these organizations as
veterans, what the UCCLA and the UCC do not fully acknowledge is that
all three groups have been implicated in violence against civilians on
a massive scale. Significant historical research indicates the
political responsibility of the OUN in anti-Jewish violence in the
summer of 1941. Emerging research also demonstrates that many former
policemen who aided the Nazis in genocidal operations subsequently
joined the UPA, created in early 1943. Moreover, the UPA murdered tens
of thousands of civilian Poles in the western province of Volhynia to
undercut the ability of postwar Poland to make claims on the area. The
Galicia Division was also involved in anti-civilian military actions,
although mainly outside of Ukraine.
By pointing out the historical record of the OUN, UPA, and the Galicia
Division, we do not mean to suggest some sort of collective
responsibility for genocide on the part of all the men and women who
served in them, and certainly not on the part of all Ukrainians.
Nevertheless, in an age when the mass murder of civilians is regarded
as a crime against humanity, the mixed record of these organizations
has to be openly debated, particularly when the significance of the
Holocaust is being questioned in a public campaign pertaining to a fair
representation of the history of human rights.
We therefore assert that since the UCCLA and UCC have not understood
that confronting the historical record openly and honestly is
preferable to manipulative falsehood, have engaged in a competition of
suffering, and have failed to acknowledge both the vices and the
virtues of the nationalist movement, they ought to stay out of a debate
about the Canadian Museum of Human Rights.
Tarik Cyril Amar, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Columbia
University
Alexander Babyonyshev, Davis Center, Harvard University
Alejandro Baer, Associate Professor of Sociology, University of
Bayreuth & Department of Social Anthropology, Universidad
Complutense Madrid
Karyn Ball, Professor, Department of English and Film Studies,
University of Alberta
Omer Bartov, John P. Birkelund Distinguished Professor of European
History and Professor of History and Professor of German Studies, Brown
University
Delphine Bechtel, Associate Professor for Central European Studies,
University Paris IV Sorbonne
Elissa Bemporad, Jerry and William Ungar Assistant Professor,
Department of History, Queens College, City University of New York
Paul Bognador, Independent Scholar, London
Richard Breitman, Professor, Department of History, American University
Aleksandr Burakovskiy, Independent Scholar, Clifton, NJ
Marco Carynnyk, Writer and Independent Scholar, Toronto
David Cesarani, Research Professor in History, Royal Holloway,
University of London
Catherine Chatterley, Founding Director, Canadian Institute for the
Study of Antisemitism; SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of
History, University of Manitoba
Paul A Chilton, Professor Emeritus, Lancaster University
Johan Dietsch, Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of Languages and
Literature, University of Lund
Karin Doerr, Professor, Classics, Modern Languages and Linguistics,
Concordia U
Roman Dubasevych, Ph. D. Candidate, Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität
Greifswald
Gary Evans, Adjunct Professor, Department of Communication, University
of Ottawa
Richard J Evans, Regius Professor of History and President of Wolfson
College, University of Cambridge
Robert Fine, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Warwick
David Fraser, Professor of Law and Social Theory, University of
Nottingham
Christian Ganzer, Deutsche Akademische Austauch Dienst Lecturer,
National Pedagogical Drahomanov University, Kyiv
Norman JW Goda, Braman Professor of Holocaust Studies, University of
Florida
Frank Golczewski, Professor, Historisches Seminar der Universität
Hamburg
Nora Gold, Associate Scholar, Centre for Women’s Studies in Education,
Ontario Institute of Studies in Education and University of Toronto
Chad Alan Goldberg, Associate Professor and Director of Graduate
Studies, Department of Sociology, University of Wisconsin
Brian Goldfarb, Principal Lecturer in Sociology, De Montfort University
Andrew Gow, Professor, Department of History and Classics, University
of Alberta
Lisa Grekul, Associate Professor, Department of Critical Studies,
University of British Columbia
Steven Haberman, Director and Deputy Dean, Professor of Actuarial
Science, Cass Business School, City University, London
Jeffrey Herf, Professor of Modern European History, Department of
History, University of Maryland
John-Paul Himka, Professor, Department of History and Classics,
University of Alberta
David Hirsh, Goldsmiths College, University of London
Sara R. Horowitz, Professor, Humanities, York University
Pavel Ilyin, Geography Consultant, United States Holocaust Memorial
Museum, Washington, DC
Dovid Katz, Editor, Defendinghistory.com, Chief Analyst, Litvak Studies
Institute, Professor emeritus, Vilnius University
Myrna Kostash, Writer, Edmonton
Matthew Kramer, Professor of Legal and Political Philosphy, University
of Cambridge
Frederick Krantz, Professor, Liberal Arts College, Concordia
University, Director, Canadian Institute for Jewish Research, Montréal
Taras Kurylo, Independent Scholar, Edmonton
Marija Kropuves-Berg, Bloomington, IN
Alexandr Kruglov, Associate Professor, Chair of Philosophy, Kharkiv
University of Radio Electronics
Francis Landy, Professor of Religious Studies, Department of History
and Classics, University of Alberta
Richard Ned Lebow, James O. Freedman Presidential Professor, Dartmouth
College
Deborah Lipstadt, Dorot Professor of Modern Jewish History and
Holocaust Studies, Emory University
Meir Litvak, Director, Center for Iranian Studies, Tel Aviv University
David Matas, Human rights lawyer, Order of Canada, Winnipeg
Jared McBride, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, UCLA
Maureen McNeil, Professor, Lancaster University
Oleksandr Melnyk, Ph. D. Candidate, Department of History, University
of Toronto
Erin Moure, Poet and essayist, Montréal
Eduard Nižňanský, Professor, Department of Universal History, Commenius
University
Nina Paulovicova, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History and Classics,
University of Alberta
Srdja Pavlovic, Assistant Adjunct Professor, Department of History and
Classics, University of Alberta
Dina Porat, Head, Kantor Center for the Study of Contemporary European
Jewry, Tel Aviv University
Moishe Postone, Professor, Department of History, Center for Jewish
Studies, Co-Director, Chicago Center for Contemporary Theory,
University of Chicago
Alexander V. Prusin, Associate Professor of History, Humanities
Department, New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology
Doron Rabinovici, Historian, Vienna
Larry Ray, Professor of Sociology, Faculty of Social Sciences, Sub-Dean
for Graduate Studies, School of Social Policy, Sociology and Social
Research, University of Kent
John E Richardson, Senior Lecturer, School of Arts and Cultures,
Newcastle University
William Risch, Associate Professor of History, Georgia College
Andrew Roberts, Historian, Fellow of the Royal Society of Literature,
London
Alvin H. Rosenfeld, Irving M. Glazer Chair in Jewish Studies, Director,
Institute for the Study of Contemporary Antisemitism, Indiana University
Grzegorz Rossoliński-Liebe, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History,
University of Hamburg, and Research Fellow at the Wiesenthal Institute
for Holocaust Studies, Vienna
Per A Rudling, Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of History,
Ernst-Moritz-Arndt-Universität Greifswald
Clemens Ruthner, Assistant Professor of European Studies, Trinity
College, Dublin
Shimon Samuels, Director for International Relations, Simon Wiesenthal
Centre
Anna Sommer Schneider, Ph. D. Candidate, Jagiellonian University, and
Research Assistant, Emory University
Guy Sela, Ph. D. Candidate, University of Oxford
David M. Seymour, School of Law, Lancaster University
Anton Shekhovtsov, Kreisau Fellow of the George Bell Institute,
Sevastopol
Ivan Sloboda, Translator, London
Charles Small, Director, Interdisciplinary Institute for the Study of
Antisemism, Yale University
Peter Stachel, Post-doctoral Fellow, Institute for Culture Studies and
History of Theatre, Austrian Academy of Sciences
Lionel Steiman, Senior Scholar, Full Professor, Department of History,
University of Manitoba
Terri Tomsky, SSHRC Post-doctoral Fellow, Department of English and
Film Studies, University of Alberta
Rafał Wnuk, Professor, Department of History, Catholic University of
Lublin
Ruth Wodak, Distinguished Professor, Chair in Discourse Studies,
Department of Linguistics and English Language, Lancaster University
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The Ukraine List (UKL) #452
compiled by Dominique Arel
Chair of Ukrainian Studies, U of Ottawa
http://www.ukrainianstudies.uottawa.ca/
11 April 2011
Four images of the defamatory advertisement attacking the Ukrainian
Canadian Congress and the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties
Association that appeared on page A5 of the 23Apr2011 Saturday issue of
the National Post are listed below:
np_2011apr23_a5_1.PNG
np_2011apr23_a5_2.PNG
np_2011apr23_a5_3.PNG
np_2011apr23_a5_4.PNG