THE THINGS WE DO...: Our memory project - before it's too late (11/30/03)

THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

Our memory project - before it's too late

"No, I don't want to. And I can't. I just can't. After all I've lived through, I want to remember the good times, happiness, mostly now. My heart could not bear remembering and retelling all that. ..."

The elderly woman thanked me for asking her to record her recollections of the Holodomor (the Famine-Genocide of 1932-33), but declined. There had been the Holodomor, then the war, then the Displaced Persons' camp and the fear of repatriation, then emigration, settling in a new land, and the deaths of her husband, son and grandson. She wanted to experience only the good times with her grandchildren, and have no thoughts other than happy ones. While her husband was alive, the two of them sat and kept an "aural" journal, as she called it; they reminisced. But now he's gone, and she does not want to dredge up heart-wrenching memories.

But someone must. Those experiences, those memories are history. In the introduction to the 10 testimonies of survivors which I translated for the special Holodomor issue of Canadian American Slavic Studies (Vol. 37, No. 3, fall 2003) I wrote: "All the statistics, documents, and studies in the world are worthless without the first-person accounts, without the survivor and eyewitness testimonies of those living through an event. There can be no history without the stories of the individuals who were there."

This applies to any place and time: first emigration from Ukraine, pioneer times, the mines and mills, World War I, the inter-war years, the Pacification, the Holodomor, World War II - and all that entails, UPA, the underground, repatriation, exile to Siberia and Central Asia, Soviet persecution and imprisonment, the Displaced Persons camps, immigration to North America, Soviet times and Polish post-war times for those who remained back home, dissident experiences...

Ukrainians sure have experienced more than enough "history" in their lives.

Take out that tape recorder, or video camera, have some coffee or tea, and sit down with your parent, or your elderly relative or friend, and ask a few questions. What is Baba's first memory? When did Dido start school? Where did they live? What did they eat? What songs did they sing? How many siblings were there? How did they wind up in America, or Canada? That will get them started. It is much easier than expecting them to write their story down. For most, that is too intimidating, or just too difficult. The tape recorder can just be there, ready to be turned on at any time.

If they realize that the family is interested in their life, and they are told how important it is to the family and to the community, the elderly will be encouraged to tell their stories. It will be difficult for them to remember and relive the horrors. But the good times will also be remembered. Each ordinary life is important, is part of a greater whole - and is not that ordinary. It will be better and easier to tell the stories in small segments, over time. The tape can then be transcribed, typed out in Ukrainian, and translated into English.

A booklet can be prepared for the family, and can include photographs and maps. This can remain a private project for the family, or can be expanded into a genealogical record, or an actual book.

So many times I have heard people express regret that they did not listen to the stories, and did not write them down or tape them. "And now it's too late ..."

Recording and documenting people's experiences is at a peak right now. There are many memory projects. The Library of Congress has its "American Memory: Historical Collections" for the National Digital Library. The Dominion Institute in Canada, in partnership with The Globe and Mail newspaper, has "The Memory Project" to provide Canadians with a venue to share oral histories on the Canadian experience; this includes separate sections on "Passages to Canada" and "Peace and War." The CBC (Canadian Broadcasting Corp.) has begun "Canada's War: The Lost Colour Archives," and is asking for wartime diaries, films, photos, letters, to create a documentary to coincide with the 60th anniversary of D-Day.

The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association (UCCLA) has initiated the "Roll Call Project," to contact the thousands of Canadian families who are the descendants of Ukrainians and other Europeans imprisoned as "enemy aliens" during Canada's first national internment operations of 1914-1920. The UCCLA's webpage is www.uccla.ca. In Ukraine, a number of books on wartime and Holodomor experiences have been published. Over the decades, many books in the diaspora covered the same topics.

The Concordia University Chair in Canadian Jewish Studies in Montreal launched the "Memoirs of Holocaust Survivors in Canada" project, to enable them to bring these testimonies to a wider audience. "Therefore, at irregular intervals, time and funds permitting, we are making these memoirs available in two forms: a small number of copies will be photocopied and deposited in relevant libraries and Holocaust Centers; in addition, the memoirs will be posted on the Internet at the following address: http://migs.concordia.ca/survivor.html. This is an ongoing project..."

When I see these and other memoirs about the Holocaust, and how widely they are distributed, I cannot help but think about how few there are about the experiences of Ukrainians during the 20th century. There is a dearth of English-language material, and this is specifically what is needed both for general readers, and for academia. With English as the lingua franca, Ukrainian material must be available in excellent English translations. Our stories must be out there, published by mainstream publishers and distributed accordingly. The self-published, poorly edited and translated material does no one a service, and barely sees the light of day. Sporadically, over the decades, some memoirs have been collected in the community, but these have been stored locally and by now have been forgotten. Of course, there have been excellent publications in English by Ukrainian academic presses - more power to them, and may there be many more. My comments are intended to cover the individual, non-academic books.

This may be a naive and optimistically cockeyed view, but why can't the way a few Polish combatants' memoirs have been recently. Why would a Holodomor survivor's story not be as mind-gripping as a Holocaust survivor's? There may have been resistance (to put it kindly) in the mainstream publishing industry to the Ukrainian experience, or possibly good material had not been submitted up to now (giving them the benefit of the doubt). Now that the Duranty/Pulitzer/Holodomor issue has hit the fan, maybe Ukrainians will be "in" for a while.

Our Ukrainian schools and youth and other organizations could take this on as a project, to go into the community - after training - to family and the elderly, to tape the life stories. These could then be transcribed, edited and translated by qualified personnel. This project could be coordinated nationally and internationally by one of our major umbrella organizations, university chairs, or foundations.

What a project for cooperation and coordination among the many groups. Surely a philanthropist or a foundation could fund this project. And American and Canadian granting agencies could be approached, because these are the memoirs of the citizens of these countries. A memoir series could be published - in translation; it could also be posted online. The Ukrainian version could also be published and posted online, for the benefit of those in Ukraine and those learning the language anywhere.

This would be a learning experience for us all, while the result would be a teaching experience for the world. We need this individual documentation of Ukrainian 20th century history.

We must do this before it's too late.

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