From: Eugene Harasymiw
Sent: Mon 1/1/2001 12:38 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: L'affair Bouchard - Michaud

Dear Mr. Bouchard:

I represent an organization founded in 1927 which has over 1,000 members in the province of Alberta.

We would like to take issue with a remark attributed to you in the Quebec media. In your on-going and extremely ill-advised sparring with Mr. Yves Michaud, you stated: "...the Jewish people have suffered more than any other people in the world. And to what they have been subjected in the last century was the most terrible ever, ever."

We find such statements from a leading political figure in Canada absolutely naive and deplorable. If you, sir, were really concerned with historical accuracy in your assessment of human suffering, you would consult The Black Book of Communism -- Crimes, Terror and Repression edited by Stephane Courtois (Harvard Univ. Press, 1999). There you would find 858 pages written by six leading socialist scholars who definitively set the number of victims of communist crimes at well over 100 million.

This is not to mention the death toll among black Africans at the close of the 19th century at around 25 million -- these innocents dying as a result of the European ivory trade.

Closer to our members' hearts is the indisputable fact that about 25 million Ukrainians perished during the first 3 decades of Soviet Communist rule. What would also surprise you is which ethnic group made up 52% of the Bolshevik party apparatchiks who conducted the Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-33, with its approximately 7 million death toll. Can you guess?

Sir, for the good of your fine province, re-consider your hasty and politically inspired remarks, and issue an apology to the countless other peoples whose suffering has far, far overshadowed anything that Mr. Michaud's detractors experienced during the Second World War. We await your confirmation of this polite request.

Merci.

Yours truly,

Eugene Harasymiw, LL.B.
President
Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League
Edmonton, Alberta
ph/fax: (780) 457-5170