1985: A LOOK BACK: A monumental year (12/29/85)

1985: A LOOK BACK

A monumental year

Readers of The Ukrainian Weekly might be tempted to look back at the past 12 months as a monumental year. The newspaper featured no less than five different stories on the erection and defacement of Ukrainian monuments. One issue of The Weekly carried three monument related stories.

The first story appeared on June 2 and concerned itself with news about a newly erected Jerusalem monument dedicated to Ukrainian victims of the Holocaust and the Great Famine in Ukraine. The monument, erected by the Society of Ukrainian-Jewish Contacts in May, stands near the Tomb of King David on Mount Zion.

Only a few months later, on November 3, The Weekly carried three monument stories. They included news about the Jerusalem monument; a monument unveiled in Australia dedicated to the victims of the Great Famine; and a monument erected in New Jersey in memory of the Rev. Nestor Dmytriw, a former supreme secretary and auditor of the Ukrainian National Association and a pioneer missionary who died in 1925.

The story on the Jerusalem monument reported that the six-month-old structure had been vandalized by a group of sledge hammer-wielding vandals led by the head of a World War II veterans organization. At the time of the report, police in Jerusalem had made no arrests.

Finally, the monumental year was brought to a close with news about the defacement of a monument in Edmonton dedicated to the millions of people who died during the 1932-33 Great Famine in Ukraine. According to the report, the two-year-old monument was vandalized during the Veteran's Day weekend. The word "Lies" was painted across its base. The monument, designed by Ludmilla Temertei of Montreal, stands in a downtown square in front of Edmonton City Hall. It bears the inscription: "In memory of the millions who perished in the genocidal famine inflicted upon Ukraine by the Soviet regime in Moscow 1932-33."