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Will Zuzak; CRTC.006 = 1993-01-17 letter to Dworkin/CBC; 1993-10-20
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Dear Subscribers:
The following letter was sent to Mr. Dworkin of the CBC as a result of
a Ukrainophobic news item on CBC radio:
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January 17, 1993
Jeffrey Dvorkin, Managing Editor
CBC National Radio News
P.O. Box 500, Station "A"
Toronto, Ontario
M5W 1E6
Dear Sir:
I must protest in the strongest possible terms the item,
concerning the visit of Ukrainian President Leonid Krawchuk to
Israel, broadcast on the 6:00 p.m. CBC National Radio News,
Tuesday, January 12, 1993. Your introductory comments, those of
your correspondent in Israel, Marc Levy, and his interviewees,
Ephraim Zuroff and Shimon Peres, were blatantly anti-Ukrainian in
tone and presented a distorted and unbalanced picture of
Ukrainian-Jewish relations.
The item portrayed Jews as victims and Ukrainians as their
victimizers throughout the centuries and especially during World
War II. The historical fact is that, since being evicted from
Western into Eastern Europe during the middle ages, the Jewish
diaspora was able to develop thriving communities in the service
of the Polish and Russian aristocracy. Unfortunately, this was
often at the expense of the enslaved serfs and peasants in Poland
and Ukraine. Never, since the inception of the Ukrainian nation
in the tenth century, was the average Ukrainian as well off as
the average Jew - either economically, educationally or socially.
This is especially true following the emergence of the Bolshevik
Russian Empire in 1917.
Ukrainians were multiply victimized during World War II
resulting in some nine million deaths:
(1) Following the dismemberment of Czechoslovakia as a result of
the West's appeasement of Hitler, Carpatho-Ukraine declared its
independence but was occupied and brutally suppressed by Hungary
in March, 1939.
(2) Immediately following the signing of the Molotov-Ribbentrop
Pact between the Soviet Union and Germany on August 23, 1939,
Poland was partitioned with Stalin occupying Western Ukraine. The
brutal methods of pacification, previously perfected in Eastern
Ukraine, resulted in hundreds of thousands of people being
imprisoned, tortured to death and buried in mass graves or
deported to Siberia. (The Katyn Forest Massacres of about 15000
Polish officers and elite in April 1940 occurred during this
time.)
(3) This period of Soviet-German collaboration, ended abruptly
with the German attack on the Soviet Union on June 22, 1941 as a
result of Hitler's stated policy of "drang nach Osten" to
appropriate Ukraine as "lebensraum" for the German Third Reich.
The Ukrainian people, classified as "untermenschen" along with
Jews and other undesirables, were slated for slavery and/or
extinction. A unilateral declaration of Ukrainian independence on
June 30, 1941 resulted in the arrest and imprisonment of the
leadership of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists (OUN).
The Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), composed of young men and
women fleeing the Germans into the forests, fought a partisan
war, first against the Germans and later against the returning
Red Army and NKVD SMERSH units until the 1950s. (Incidently, Jews
were welcomed and a sizeable number fought within the ranks of
the UPA.) The brutality of the German administration toward the
civilian population rivalled that of the Bolsheviks. Punitive
expeditions massacred whole villages in reprisal for resistance
to the German occupation. Literally millions were either killed
outright, imprisoned in concentration camps, deported to Germany
as "Ostarbeiter" slave labour or requisitioned into the German
war effort on the Eastern Front.
And, of course, the Jewish population was afforded special
treatment by the "Einsatzgruppen", who rounded them up and
segregated them into ghettos separate from the general
population. Despite the penalty of death for anyone caught
harbouring Jews, countless families did so, such that the
majority of Jews in Ukraine survived the war.
(4) In 1944-45, the horror of the German occupation was replaced
by the "re-pacification" of the countryside in the wake of the
advancing Red Army. All able bodied men were detained and either
shot on the spot for alleged collaboration with the Germans, sent
to the front, unarmed and untrained, to act as cannon fodder for
the retreating Germans or imprisoned and later sent to Siberia or
other regions where their labour was required.
A flood of refugees numbering in the millions preceded the
advancing Red Army into Germany, seeking protection from the
Western Allies.
(5) Unfortunately, following German capitulation on May 9, 1945,
the Western Allies instituted a policy of forced repatriation of
refugees and Ostarbeiter back into the clutches of Stalin. Once
again, millions were either shot or sent to the gulags. The small
fraction of refugees, who managed to avoid repatriation, were
eventually allowed to emigrate to Australia, the United States
and Canada, where they now have the honour of being labelled
"Nazi war criminals".
The interview of Mr. Ephriam Zuroff concerning the case of
John Demjanjuk is especially galling. Surely, Mr. Levy in Israel
and the CBC here in Canada are aware that Mr. Zuroff is connected
with the Office of Special Investigations (OSI), Yad Vashem and
the Wiesenthal Centres. These organisations were in the forefront
in slandering thousands of innocent Canadians of being war
criminals as well as providing disinformation and unduly
influencing the Deschenes Commission. All the people involved and
especially Mr. Zuroff must be fully aware of the criminal
activities of the OSI in the denaturalization, deportation and
eventual false conviction of Mr. Demjanjuk for war crimes.
It is deeply disturbing that the CBC would provide a forum
for professional hate mongers who are more interested in
promoting hatred between Ukrainians and Jews rather than righting
an injustice which has been perpetrated.
In conclusion, I feel that the whole news item was
improperly handled by the CBC and particularly by Mr. Levy. There
was very little real information about Mr. Krawchuk's visit and a
great deal of innuendo designed to stimulate a negative emotional
response from listeners. I would hope that in the future such
items will be treated more professionally and with much more
sensitivity.
Yours sincerely
William Zuzak, Ph.D., P.Eng.
cc: Bob Bishop
CRTC
UCC
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Will Zuzak; CRTC.006 = 1993-01-17 letter to Dworkin/CBC; 1993-10-20
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