A letter to Ukraine's U.N. envoy (11/13/94)

CONTINUING REACTION TO "60 MINUTES" REPORT

A letter to Ukraine's U.N. envoy

Rabbi David H. Lincoln of the Park Avenue Synagogue in New York wrote a letter to Ambassador Anatoliy Zlenko, Ukraine's ambassador to the United Nations, regarding the "60 Minutes" report titled "The Ugly Face of Freedom." Rabbi Lincoln has given The Ukrainian Weekly permission to reprint the letter.

Dear Ambassador Zlenko:

I was so distressed about the "60 Minutes" program I feel I must write to you.

For very many years I have been trying to assist my good friend Prof. Taras Hunczak to work constructively towards an understanding between Jews and Ukrainians. My father, Ashe Lincoln, who is a leading Queens Counsel in England, was the honorary secretary of the Anglo-Ukrainian Committee in the 1930s when few people could have foreseen a free Ukraine.

For these reasons, I have taken a deep interest in these matters throughout the years; and recently I translated a book from the original Yiddish into English by Moses Silberfarb, who was vice-secretary for Jewish affairs when Jewish National Autonomy was set up by the Ukrainian Rada in 1917.

Last November, Prof. Hunczak invited me to lecture in Kyyiv on that book, and I took the opportunity to travel also to numerous cities and towns in western Ukraine. Suffice it to say I witnessed the miracle of a revival in Jewish life after the horrors of communism. I conducted services and spoke to communities in Lviv, Ternopil, Ivano-Frankivske the Carpathian area, etc., etc. The world should know that synagogues have been restored, day schools for Jewish studies opened their textbooks coming from Israel. Local people I spoke to are saddened if Jews move away for economic reasons. When speaking of the rights of others in the new Ukraine, my Hungarian friends inform me that Ukraine is the only country to afford them full rights.

I do not speak for Israel, but by all accounts relationships are exceptional.

No one is denying that our mutual history has had its tragic dimensions, but you may be assured of my readiness to help in any way I can to let the truth be known.

Yours sincerely,

Rabbi David H. Lincoln

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