Thank you for publishing the July 23, 2002 front-page story "Soviet-Era Atrocity Unearthed in Ukraine."

Sadly, it may have been news to the Western world, especially North America, but it was not in Ukraine. Almost every village there has graves, almost every family an atrocity to tell about.

Until the collapse of the Soviet Union, Ukrainians could not speak about what they had lived through. Those who had emigrated to the United States after the war, as refugees, were not believed. They were not believed about the genocide by famine of 1932-33, about the annihilation of the intelligentsia and clergy, about the skeletons and skulls surfacing in so many parks and woods, about the deliberate destruction of medieval churches and cultural antiquities.

Now the Russians are concerned about the rehabilitation of Ukrainian freedom fighters of World War II? The Russians are also butting in to Ukrainian church affairs and language issues. The Russians should stay out of Ukrainian issues -- during the centuries of occupying Ukraine, they have done more than enough already.

ORYSIA TRACZ
Winnipeg, Manitoba

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