From: Eugene Harasymiw [mailto:[email protected]]
Sent: Sunday, April 14, 2002 8:37 PM
To: [email protected]
Subject: "Asper matriarch dies aged 98" (April 9, 2002)

Dear National Post:

How perfectly decent of your paper to mention the passing of your present owner's mother. Our heartfelt condolences go out to the family as well.

However, your Zev Singer inserted a curious reference to the late Mrs. Asper as having escaped pogroms in Ukraine in the 1920's.

Well, a thorough search by our research team since this past Tuesday of reliable historical sources reveals there was no such thing as a pogrom committed in Ukraine at that time. What is more, for the Aspers to have "up and left" Ukraine in the early 1920's would mean they must have been in full accord with the deeds of the Soviet state up to that time. History tells us that this was the period of "War Communism" -- a time when millions of innocent people were slaughtered by the Bolsheviks (some of whom had curious names like Dzerzinsky, Trotsky, Bukharin, Zinoviev, Kamenev, Yagoda, etc.), with all of this purportedly committed in the name of the goal of building a truly humane society. So, this means that the Aspers quite approved of these developments. In fact, your poor Mr. Singer obviously confused the wholesale butchery of Ukrainians at the hands of the Bolsheviks, and their collaborators, with dreamed-up pogroms. Oh well, Mr. Singer probably never did do any serious reading, choosing to spend his time weaving yarns that would best suit the needs of his people today -- that is, deflection from war crimes and crimes against humanity that they are perpetrating a la the Nazis.

If you have an ounce of decency in you, publish a retraction, for which we thank you kindly in advance.

Yours truly,

Eugene Harasymiw, LL.B.
Chair, Civil Liberties Committee Alberta Ukrainian Self-Reliance League
10611 - 110 Ave.
Edmonton, AB
T5H 1H7
ph./fax: (780) 457-5170