FOR THE RECORD

Prime Minister Viktor Yuschenko's address to Holocaust conference

Address delivered by Ukraine's prime minister, Viktor Yushchenko, in Stockholm on January 27 at the International Forum on the Holocaust.

Allow me to first thank the organizers of this international forum, an extremely important one for the comprehension of history's lessons.

The Holocaust is world Jewry's pain. At the same time, it is a universal tragedy.

The hard fate of the Ukrainian nation scattered her people throughout the world - it has lived through wars and famines, facism, as well as Stalin's purges; its land has been seized by various empires; it has endured attempts to deny the very existence of its language, culture, of the Ukrainian nation itself. That is why Ukrainians understand the ordeal of Jews so well.

I am proud today that I can speak on behalf of another person - Andriy Andriyevych Yushchenko, my father, prisoner of Auschwitz, on whose body, forever remains the number 11367. He, like millions of other Ukrainians, passed through all the circles of the Hell of the Holocaust.

For us, the symbol of the Nazi criminals has become Babyn Yar in Kyiv, where more than 100,000 people of different nationalities were executed, of which more that half represented the Jewish nation. The Babyn Yar tragedy was and remains a deep sorrow not only of Ukrainian Jewry, but also of the entire Ukrainian nation - one of the saddest events for all the people of Europe, stripping them not only of the rights of democracy and freedom, but of the very right of existence.

That war took the lives of more than 5 million Ukrainians and ruined more than 700 cities and towns, as well as thousands of villages. But even before, in 1932-1933, approximately 7 million Ukrainians died of the man-made famine, the repressions organized in the 1930s by Stalin's regime. So we well know what is genocide.

That is the reason why there are so many Ukrainians - many Ukrainians - among the righteous who, during times of evil, extended their hand to Jews. I am proud that on the Avenue of the Righteous in Jerusalem there are so many trees honoring Ukrainians, who, by risking their own lives and the lives of those dear to them, rescued Jews - their neighbors, friends, unknown people and their children - from the Nazi genocide.

I first learned about this garden from my Israeli guide who spoke beautiful Ukrainian, which he had learned from his Ukrainian cellmate while [they were] in a KGB prison.

Millions of Ukrainians and Jews from Ukraine were forcibly transported to Nazi Germany during World War II. Today more than 600,000 people who are still living in Ukraine are former prisoners of concentration camps and ghettos, or were slave laborers.

For that reason Ukraine is taking an active part in the negotiations on fair compensation to the Nazi victims. We are grateful to the president of the World Jewish Congress, Edgar Bronfman, who during a conference in London about Nazi gold, declared that he believes that all those who survived the Holocaust must be regarded as victims, irrespective of their nationality.

So that a similar tragedy can never happen again, the history of the Holocaust must be learned and extensively explained. The inter-ethnic conflicts that, unfortunately, are taking place in the world at the turn of the century show that mankind lacks tolerance. That is why the lessons of the Holocaust remain highly relevant today.

We welcome and support the idea of annual forums, an idea expressed by Elie Wiesel. Ukraine is ready to participate actively in the realization of this idea, as well as to become a member of the international task force.

Today's forum has inspired me to propose another important idea - to conduct an analogous commemorative forum on the victims of man-made famine in Ukraine during Stalin's era.

It was not until Ukraine gained its independence in 1991 that serious and unbiased research and interpretation of the history of the Holocaust began in our country. Today the Institute of Political, Ethnic and Nationality Studies of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine is dealing with Holocaust research.

We pay close attention to the teaching of the history of the Holocaust in Ukraine. We are adhering to the provisions of relevant Council of Europe documents that require the history of the Holocaust to be taught in the educational establishments of European countries as an event of modern history that influenced the development of the continent and of the world in general.

The government of Ukraine supports the initiative of the Jewish Confederation of Ukraine on the creation of a Ukrainian Museum of the Holocaust in Kyiv. We hope for the support of world Jewish organizations in this matter.

We are also ready to summarize and publish the results of our research on the Holocaust in Ukraine, which to some extent could be considered as a Ukrainian version of the Swedish project of "Living History."

Ladies and gentlemen: The current transformations in Ukraine's socio-political life have radically changed the life of the 480,000-strong Jewish community in our country, a community that makes a noteworthy contribution to the strengthening of independent Ukraine.

Despite economic hardships, we are doing our best to create adequate conditions for the revival and development of national minorities, in particular the Jewish one. The ethnic policy of an independent Ukrainian state is based on inter-ethnic harmony and ethnic diversity. Such a policy corresponds to the highest international standards in the area of human rights.

In recent years the Jewish movement has become an influential force in Ukrainian society. About 300 Jewish communities and organizations have been organized in 100 cities and towns of Ukraine. More than 70 synagogues are functioning. Only in an independent Ukraine did thousands of Hasidic pilgrims get the opportunity to freely visit holy places in Ukraine, such as Uman, Medzhybizh, Vyzhnytsia.

The president and the government of Ukraine strive to accelerate the return of religious premises and property to religious communities and organizations including Judaic ones. In the complex process of restitution, the majority of artifacts and properties have been returned to the Jewish community as the one that most suffered from the Holocaust.

We have done and will continue to do everything so that the ideologies of totalitarism, dictatorship, xenophobia and anti-Semitism never have a place in Ukraine.

Ladies and gentlemen: In the past Ukraine had become a refuge for one-third of the world's Jews. Everlasting values of Judaism originated in Ukraine. It was in our country that the unsurpassed works of Jewish philosophy, literature and art were created, and the political ideas of [Jewish] national liberation took root and spread. It's enough just to name Zeev Zhabotinski, Sholom Aleichem, Chaim Bjalik, David Oistrakh and Vladimir Horowitz.

By the Lord's providence two talented and unique peoples were brought together to live in peace and in good neighborly relations. There is much in common in the historical destinies of the Ukrainian and the Jewish peoples. And history, as it is well-known, is the best teacher. So, we will always remember history's lessons and do everything possible so that the ideas of democracy, tolerance and the mutual respect of nations succeed.

Thank you for your attention.

The above translation from the original Ukrainian was provided by the Embassy of Ukraine in Canada.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 19, 2000, No. 12, Vol. LXVIII

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