Edmonton Holodomor Events - Nov.
2008
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Holodomor Awareness Week 16-23
November 2008
Most Ukrainian communities around the world are planning events
to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor -- the
Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 -- during the week of 16-23
November,
2008. All churches are expected to perform a Panakhyda for the
10 million victims on Sunday, November 23, 2008.
Please make an extra effort to attend these events and encourage
your extended family and friends to do so. When we pray for
the souls of the 10 million dead, we are also nurturing our own souls,
as well as the souls of the Ukrainian people and all of humanity.
In Edmonton, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, Edmonton Branch,
is sponsoring two events as follows:
Panel Discussion on
Holodomor Denial [jpg Poster] [pdf USS Poster]
4:30 PM, Thursday, 20Nov2008
University of Alberta, Student Union Building “Stage”,
Edmonton.
(Convenient parking at 87 Ave. – 116 St. Parkade)
Panelists:
Natalia Talanchuk: Holodomor Survivor
Andriy Semotiuk: Legal Expert
Marko Tymchak: University Student Activist
William Zuzak: Moderator
Holodomor Memorial Service
[pdf Poster]
12:30 PM, Saturday, 22Nov2008
St. John’s Orthodox Cathedral, 10951 – 107 St., Edmonton
Panakhyda: Multiple clergy officiating with Dnipro choir
Keynote address: Andriy Semotiuk on the legal aspects of genocide
(in adjoining Cultural Centre)
Laying of wreaths: at Holodomor Monument on south side of City
Hall, 104 Ave. – 100 St., Edmonton. (Limited busing available.)
-30-
Ukrainian Canadian Congress - Edmonton Branch
Luba Feduschak, President
Phone: 780-464-6480, Email: [email protected]
B. Edmonton
Examiner article
C. Report: Panel
Discussion on Holodomor Denial [jpg photo]
About 80 people -- clustered around tables in an informal
cafeteria-style setting -- attended the event hosted by the
Ukrainian Students' Society (USS) at the University of Alberta. After
the formal presentations -- lasting some 40 minutes -- there
were many questions from both students and adults in the audience
directed to the various panelists.
At the conclusion, video excerpts of the film documentary being
produced by Ms. Tomkiw in Los Angeles were shown, while the USS
distributed pizza and chicken wings to the students who had
participated in the 33 hour Holodomor "fast" as part of Holodomor
Awareness Week on Campus.
A CBC cameraman briefly appeared and the event was reported on CBC
television.
The presentations of the moderator and panelists are summarized below:
William Zuzak (moderator):
The purpose of this panel discussion is to examine the
various aspects of the term “Holodomor Denial”.
The word
“denial” has several meanings. In my dictionary,
definition #6 states: “a psychological
defense mechanism in which confrontation with a personal problem or
with
reality is avoided by denying the existence of the problem or reality.”
The
Holodomor was a very traumatic experience for
millions of Ukrainians -- for the victims, the survivors, the
bystanders and
the perpetrators. In the former Soviet Union, it was extremely
dangerous to
write or even talk about the Famine-Genocide of 1932-33. It was much
safer --
and better for your health -- to pretend or even believe that the
Holodomor
never happened.
The late
James Mace, who spent the last years of his life
in Ukraine studying the Holodomor, developed the term “post-genocidal
society”
to describe the effects of this phenomenon on present-day Ukrainian
society. To
survive, you were forced to live a lie. It is not easy to confront and
overcome
habits and beliefs from the past.
I suggest that this term
“post-genocidal” could also be
applied to Ukrainian communities in Canada and the rest of the Diaspora
around the
world -- on the macro level, as well as on the micro level of each
person of
Ukrainian origin.
One could apply the term
“Holodomor denial“ to people who:
(1) - deny that the Holodomor ever took place;
(2) - deny that the Holodomor was deliberate;
(3) - deny or quibble about the total number of deaths;
and
(4) - admit that the Famine-Genocide of 1932-33 was a
deliberate and horrific crime against humanity, but deny that it was a
genocidal act against the Ukrainian people.
Since 1933,
we seem to have made considerable progress on
these four categories. Virtually all countries now recognize that the
Holodomor
was a deliberate crime against humanity perpetrated by Stalin and the
Soviet
regime. Several countries, including Canada and three provinces,
recognize that
it was also genocide.
However,
there are several
organizations and countries that have declined to recognize the
Holodomor as
genocide. These include the Russian Federation, Britain and Israel. It
would be
interesting to analyze the reasons for this reluctance.
Natalia Talanchuk
(Holodomor survivor):
Mrs.
Talanchuk was born in Dnipropetrovsk in 1925, just in time to witness
the
Holodomor of 1932-33, the Great Terror of 1937-38 and to be sent to
Germany as
a slave labourer or Ostarbeiter in 1943. There, in a DP camp in 1945,
she met
and married Constantyn Talanchuk, who had been incarcerated in
Auschwitz as a
political prisoner by the Nazis in 1943, subsequently transferred to
Buchenwald
and freed at the end of WWII. They immigrated to Canada in 1949.
Her earliest memories were of her father waking her up to say goodbye
as he was arrested by the OGPU in 1928 and incarcerated until 1934. He
was subsequently re-arrested in 1938, sentenced to the Gulags for 10
years "without the right to correspondence" and vanished from her life
forever. She related ...
- her mother forbid her to look out the window to view dead bodies
slumped against their fence,
- carts driving through the village to gather such dead bodies,
- the "Torgsin" stores where you could buy food only for gold or
diamonds,
- rumours that red meat suddenly appearing in the village was
really human flesh,
- watchtowers manned by the militia with rifles at the borders of
Kolhosp land.
Andriy J. Semotiuk (legal
expert):
Mr. Semotiuk is an attorney practicing in the area of international law
specializing in immigration. He is a member of the bars of California
and New
York in the United States and Ontario, Alberta and British Columbia in
Canada.
A former United Nations correspondent stationed in New York, Mr.
Semotiuk has
written articles for Southam News Services and other newspapers in the
United
States and Canada. Mr. Semotiuk is a member of the Los Angeles Press
Club and
of the law firm of Hansma, Bristow & Finlay in Edmonton and
Manning and
Marder in Los Angeles.
He presented a condensed version of his presentation prepared for the
Holodomor Memorial Service on 22Nov2008. This included ...
- the wording of the of
the UN Convention on genocide with the key
legal components to the definition -- the actus reus and the mens rea.
- As
for the actus reus, in 1932 - 1933 the
Communist Party of the Soviet Union under the leadership of Joseph
Stalin
turned the entire country of Ukraine into one big concentration camp.
They
sealed the borders refusing to allow anyone out and any assistance in.
They
then requisitioned all the grain and food stock the peasants in Ukraine
had. On
the Ukrainian side of the border people starved to death. On the
Russian side
there was food to eat. These were the essential ingredients of the
genocide.
- In
terms of the mens rea, one has to identify not only the intention to
kill, but
also the intention to target a specific nationality. The discussions in
1943 between Stalin and Churchill and the admission of Duranty to
British consular officials that as many as 10 million people perished were reliable "admissions against
interest" that went a long way towards establishing the immensity of
the
genocide.
- A reference to the recently uncovered 1953 writings of Raphael
Lemkin, the father
of the Genocide Convention and his conclusion that the 1932-1933 events
amounted to a genocide because they consisted of an attack on the
intelligentsia, on the cultural leadership, on the Ukrainian churches
and on
the peasants.
Marko
Tymchak (University student activist):
Mr. Tymchak is in the third year of a degree in Physics at the
University
of
Alberta and is very active in Ukrainian affairs and the Ukrainian
Students’
Society. He presented the youth perspective --
categorizing the Holodomor amongst the
various genocides throughout the centuries, exploring the views of
typical students
on the subject and proposing the appropriate position that youth, in
general,
and Ukrainian Canadian youth, in particular, should take on the
Holodomor.
- He stressed the idea
that youth should understand the indignance, grief, and anger
that exists
about the Holodomor, but to continue the memory of Holodomor by moving
towards
respect, commemoration, and equal attention to crimes around the globe.
In this
way, Ukrainians can begin to stop
feeling that because they
were once victims they will always be victims. By coming to terms with
the
event, which means neither forgiving nor forgetting, we
strengthen respect for and energy towards our culture.
-Holodomor
should be the
spark that ignites a flame of refusal to ignore any crimes against
humanity --
past, present or future.
D. Report:
Holodomor Memorial Service
St.
John's Cathedral was filled to overflowing for the "panakhyda" at which
some 20 priests of the Ukrainian Catholic and Orthodox churches
officiated. Both Bishops Ilarion (Orthodox, speaking Ukrainian) and
David (Catholic, speaking English) spoke on the Holodomor after the
service.
There
was standing room only in the Cultural Centre, where the official
program included greetings/speeches from dignitaries
including
MLA Gene Zwozdesky and Mayor Stephen Mandel. The keynote speaker,
Andriy Semotiuk spoke on the legal aspects of the Holodomor as a
genocide. (See summary above.)
A large fraction of the attending
public travelled to the Holodomor monument at Edmonton City
Hall
for the wreath-laying ceremony.
CTV filmed the event and
interviewed Holodomor survivor Natalia Talanchuk which was broadcast
that evening as a lead story. Unfortunately, the video clip no longer
seems to be available on their website.