Community leaders commemorate famine at multi-ethnic Chicago meeting (03/20/83)

Community leaders commemorate famine at multi-ethnic Chicago meeting

by Paul M. Basile and Luba V. Toloczko Markewycz

CHICAGO - More than 70 white ethnic, Black, Hispanic and Asian ethnic leaders met at a Chicago Ukrainian restaurant recently to commemorate the man-made Great Famine of 1932-33 that took 7 million Ukrainian lives.

The multi-etnic coalition met February 15 at Galan's Ukrainian Cafe in the neighborhood known as the Ukrainian Village on Chicago's Near Northwest Side.

The meeting was organized by the Illinois Consultation on Ethnicity in Education and was moderated by Dr. Myron Kuropas, a consultation founder and supreme vice president of the Ukrainian National Association.

"The consultation brings together a diverse group of ethnic leaders who work, in coalitions, to solve problems and support common causes," said Edwin Cudecki, consultation chairperson and director of the Bureau of Foreign Languages for the Chicago Public Schools.

The gathering at Galan's constituted the largest steering committee meeting in the consultation's 12-year history. The guest list included business and community leaders, government officials, artists, scholars, educators, lawyers, and other professionals from Illinois' Black, Chinese, German, Greek, Italian, Japanese, Jewish, Lithuanian, Mexican, Polish, Puerto Rican and Ukrainian American communities.

Mr. Cudecki called the meeting together so that this group could learn about the Ukrainian American community and commemorate the 50th anniversary of Stalin's man-made famine.

"This is the first time that Ukrainian Americans have reached out to other ethnic leaders to tell what it meant to have this terrible thing happen to us," Dr. Kuropas said.

Dr. Kuropas' program featured the UNA-commissioned film "Helm of Destiny," which traces the growth of the Ukrainian American community and in part, tells the story of the famine.

Other Ukrainian Americans present at the gathering were Julian Kulas, vice president of Chicago's Ukrainian Congress Committee and attorney for Walter Polovchak; Michael Olshansky, UNA District Committee chairman; Stephen Sambirsky, Ukrainian radio announcer; the Rev. Peter Galadza of Ss. Volodymyr and Olha Ukrainian Catholic Church; the Rev. Walter Klymchuk of St. Nicholas Cathedral; Stephen Kuropas, honorary member of the UNA Supreme Assembly; and Illinois educator Alexandra Kuropas.

After introducing his fellow Ukrainian Americans, Dr. Kuropas explained Stalin's efforts to crush Ukrainian resistance to his forced collectivization program.

"In the early 1930s, Stalin moved to collectivize the farms of Ukraine in order to finance the industrialization of the Soviet Union. Ukrainian farmers resisted because they didn't want to give away their grain. To break the back of this resistance, Stalin exported (much of the food produced in the region), causing 5 to 7 million Ukrainians to starve to death," said Dr. Kuropas.

The world knew little of this famine at the time and knows even less of it today, according to Dr. Kuropas. "This is the fist time, to my knowledge, that many of these ethnic leaders will hear anything about this," he said.

The American press corps in the Soviet Union during the 1930s shared part of the blame for this, according to Dr. Kuropas.

During the 1930s, thousands of American writers and movie starts supported Stalin's regime, having been drawn by its ideologies into overlong its grim realities, Dr. Kuropas said. Under the sway of this misconception, American journalists conspired with Soviet censors to cover up the horrors of the famine rather than besmirch the reputation of "the great Soviet experiment."

In sharing this story with other ethnic leaders, Chicago's Ukrainian Americans took an important step toward bringing this tragedy to the attention of the world community, according to Mr. Cudecki.

Mr. Cudecki urged his fellow leaders to write letters to John Flis, president of the Ukrainian National Association, indicating that they share in the sorrow of the Ukrainian community and pledging themselves to helping Ukrainian Americans "make the world aware of the greet tragedy that befell Ukraine in 1933."

Mr. Cudecki seemed to reflect the sentiment of the other ethnic leaders when he wrote, in his own letter to Mr. Flis, that, "by confronting all Americans with the knowledge of Stalin's man-made famine, Ukrainian Americans are committing an act of faith in themselves and in us. We recognize our obligation to join with you and your people in sharing this tragic aspect of your history, so that events like the famine never happen again. This is the lesson that we must learn to teach each other from your history. I assure you that the Illinois Consultation will cooperate with Ukrainian Americans in telling the story of the famine."

With the Soviet Union presently "relocating" tens of thousands of Ukrainians throughout the captive nations, and with Ukrainian patriots being imprisoned in insane asylums for "slandering the Soviet state," Dr. Kuropas said he sees the Great Famine of 1932-33 as anything but a dead issue.

"As the world becomes aware of this horrible act that was done in the name of progress, we hope that it takes into account the people that they are dealing with today," he said. "The system that brought about the Great Famine is still intact."

Ultimately, public awareness of this past tragedy will further the cause of human rights for present-day Ukrainians, according to Stanley Balzekas, president of the Balzekas Museum of Lithuanian Culture and chairman of the Ethnic Heritage Preservation Council.

"This is our way of letting people know that the Ukrainian people exist and that they want their freedom," Mr. Balzekas said. "Through gatherings like this, we hope to find more people to support the freedom of Ukraine."

In its 12-year history, the consultation has often brought ethnic leaders together to support human-rights issues of interest to a particular ethnic group.

"That's the whole purpose of the consultation," said Julian Kulas, vice president of Chicago's Ukrainian Congress Committee and secretary of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council. "When the Italian community was concerned about the defamation of their ethnic character, the consultation helped them broaden the discussion into a civil-rights issue. When Greek Americans were concerned about the plight of Greek Cypriot refugees after the Turkish invasion of Cyprus, we created a multi-etnic forum and rally through which they could tell their story to other ethnic groups and the press."

"When the Nazis threatened to march into Skokie, they were opposed by a coalition of ethnic groups, not just the Jewish community, because of consultation action," Mr. Kulas added. "Also, we responded to the request of Black leaders that we help the Haitians by letting the Carter administration know that we were all concerned about the unfair treatment of Haitian refugees."

"Tonight we're gathered together to offer the Ukrainian community our support," Mr. Kulas concluded.

This coalition approach to human-rights issues benefits each ethnic group as well as the society as a whole, according to Maynard Wishner, national president of the American Jewish Committee.

"There's a lesson in it that strengthens the fabric of civic unity," Mr. Wishner said, "and if the society is healthier, the position of each group is strengthened."

Mr. Wisner, one of the founders of the consultation, explained how the organization got its start: "Historically, in this country, new immigrant groups have tended to remain isolated from one another and have operated in the framework of their own concerns," he said. The American Jewish Committee found that, though these groups had real, human concerns, they made few efforts to reach out for support or help from others because they felt that nobody else really understood or cared.

"We had the notion that ethnicity was a regressive force in America and that this sense of isolation was really fragmenting society," Mr. Wishner continued. "We organized a group of leaders representing different ethnic communities who work well together, feel comfortable with each other, and are willing to come out in support of each other's issues so long as the issue doesn't run afoul of a conflicting policy or widespread opinions in their own communities."

"One of the consultation's strengths lies in the fact that its members can disagree with each other and still walk away friends," said David Roth, Midwest director of the American Jewish Committee's Institution on Pluralism and Group Identity.

Consultation members agree that they gain from their association with each other in many other ways. Through consultation steering committee meetings like the one organized around the 1932-33 Great Famine in Ukraine, ethnic leaders can identify important issues and learn more about each other.

"These meetings give many ethnics an opportunity to express their concerns and be listened to with compassion," Mr. Roth said.

Through these "sharing events," consultation members gain valuable insight into what motivates a particular ethnic group.

"To understand a group, you must understand their sorrows as well as their joys," Dr. Kuropas said. "You can't understand how a Jew feels about Israel until you know about the Holocaust; you can't understand the response of Greek Americans to the Cyprus issue until you know the history of Greek-Turkish relations. You can't understand the Blacks' point of view without understanding slavery and its aftermath."

"All ethnic groups have their wounds and their sorrows: the great tragedies in their history that are very meaningful to them and that, in turn, govern their feelings toward other groups and society," Dr. Kuropas said.

"It is because of acts of oppression like Stalin's man-made famine and the continuing efforts by Soviet leaders to culturally Russify Ukraine, that Ukrainian Americans abhor being called Russians and embrace their mother tongue and culture so closely," Dr. Kuropas explained.

The consultation's ethnic leaders are often surprised by how much they have in common, according to Anthony J. Fornelli, vice chairman of the Chicago Plan Commission and former president of UNICO National, America's largest Italian fraternal organization.

"In greeting together like this, we realize that our problems aren't unique to our community, that they transcend ethnic barriers," Mr. Fornelli said. "All of us have found similarities in history, outlook and goals."

One can easily see why Mr. Balzekas, a Lithuanian American, and Mr. Cudecki, a Polish American, would find common cause in the Ukrainian plight: the Soviet regime also subjugates their homelands. What reasons, though, would some of the other ethnic leaders have for coming to the aid of Ukrainian Americans?

In his letter to the Ukrainian National Association, Ross Harano, former Midwest district governor of the Japanese American Citizens League, noted that: "As one who was born in a United States concentration camp for Japanese Americans during World War II, I am well aware of how tragedies of the past are often forgotten or suppressed by the government."

Paul Gibson, special assistant for minority affairs to Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson, saw similar parallels in Black American history.

"The Black community must also learn how to counter the misconceptions that others have of them," Mr. Gibson said. "The lack of information about the Ukrainian famine is akin to the perception that blacks played no important role in American history."

Connie Seals, a former director of the Illinois Commission on Human Relations, expanded upon this in her letter to Mr. Flis, writing: "There is so much about Ukrainian history that parallels Afro-American history - the massacres, the race riots, and the economically induced oppression."

Elsewhere in her letter, Ms. Seals placed the Ukrainian issue in a broader contemporary context: "It is urgent that the world know the Ukrainian story as we see once again, throughout the world, the deliberate manipulation of economics to lower standards of living and set people against one another."

As these and other consultation "ethnic diplomats" take the story of the Ukrainian tragedy to the larger American society as well as their own communities, the power of the coalition goes with them.

"When a group of leaders works well together and responds to each other's issues, this presents a positive role model to each of their constituencies," Mr. Wishner said.

"A Ukrainian issue will have a greater impact if it's brought to the attention of the public by Italian, Mexican and Greek Americans as well as by Ukrainian Americans," Mr. Fornelli added.

In addition to public advocacy, the letters to Mr. Flis, and letters and articles sent to ethnic media, Mr. Kuropas hopes to call more attention to the Great Famine by making it a part of school history curricula and convincing the mass media to tell the story. This has proved to be a difficult task.

"For a variety of reasons, neither the American academic nor journalistic communities have been sensitive to Ukraine and its aspirations. Ukrainian Americans have been fighting an uphill battle to change this for many years," Dr. Kuropas said. "With the help of other ethnic leaders, we hope to make more headway. The UNA-produced film 'Helm of Destiny' will help us tremendously in telling the Ukrainian American story."

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