FACES AND PLACES: It had to happen sooner or later (02/15/04)

FACES AND PLACES

by Myron B. Kuropas

It had to happen sooner or later

Sooner or later Jewish leaders who have devoted most of their professional lives to combating "intolerance," and Holocaust deniers, would themselves prove to be intolerant deniers of other genocides.

That's what happens when everything that occurs in the world is viewed through a Judeocentric prism. That's what happens when you come to believe that the Holocaust is the greatest crime against humanity, ever. That's what happens when you labor under the delusion that only Jews were singled out for annihilation during the 1930s.

Abraham Foxman, chairman of the Anti-Defamation League of B'nai B'rith, and Rabbi Marvin Hier, director of the Simon Wiesenthal Center in Los Angeles, are self-anointed Nazi hunters. Both have accused Mel Gibson of harboring anti-Semitic thoughts and tendencies. Both are now in high dudgeon because Mel Gibson dared compare the Holocaust to the Holodomor.

It began when Peggy Noonan, former speech writer for Ronald Reagan, interviewed Mel Gibson for an article that appeared in the March issue of the Reader's Digest. Aware that Mr. Gibson had been accused of being a Holocaust denier, Ms. Noonan asked: "The Holocaust happened, right?"

"I have friends and parents of friends who have numbers on their arms," Mr. Gibson responded. "The guy who taught me Spanish was a Holocaust survivor. He worked in a concentration camp in France. Yes, of course. The second world war killed tens of millions of people. Some of them were Jews in concentration camps. Many people lost their lives. In the [sic] Ukraine, several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century, 20 million died in the Soviet Union."

Wrong answer, Mr. Gibson. You mentioned other people suffering, especially Ukrainians. Ukrainians! Good grief, Mel, don't you know that for Mr. Foxman and Rabbi Hier tolerance and sensitivity stops at the borders of Ukraine?

Mr. Foxman was outraged. Protesting Mr. Gibson's statement, he complained: "At the very least it was ignorant, at the very most it was insensitive. And you know what? He doesn't get that either. He doesn't begin to understand the difference between dying in a famine and people being cremated solely for what they are."

It's Mr. Foxman who doesn't get it. Ukrainians died because of what they were. They did not die quickly. They were not shot, hanged or gassed as were Jews. No, their deaths were savage, sadistic. They died slow, agonizingly painful deaths by deliberate starvation. The food they produced was taken away, literally snatched out of their mouths by order of Stalin. Ukrainians died because they were a problem. No Ukrainians, no problem.

Rabbi Hier sent a letter to Mr. Gibson complaining that the comparison with the Holodomor was insensitive. "Rather than showing understanding for what historians regard as the most telling example of man's inhumanity to man in the history of civilization, you diminish the uniqueness of the Holocaust by marginalizing it and placing it alongside people caught up in conflict and famine."

Right. Ukrainians, it seems, were merely "caught up" in the Holodomor. Like they were minding their own business and suddenly, out of nowhere, there's no food. No one planned it. It just kind of happened. Interesting concept from a man who began his letter to Mel Gibson by stating that he had spent his entire "adult life building an institution that promoted tolerance ..."

Was the Holodomor really a genocide? The United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of Genocide of December 9, 1948, had this to say: "Genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, an ethnical racial or religious group such as: a) killing members of the group; b) causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part) imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) forcibly transferring children of the group to another group."

The French Criminal Code defines genocide as: "The deed of executing a concerted effort that strives to destroy, totally or partially, a national, ethnic, racial group or a group that has been determined on the basis of any other arbitrary criterion."

Historian Martin Malia wrote that "the genocide of a 'class' may well be tantamount to the genocide of a 'race'... the deliberate starvation of a child of a Ukrainian kulak as a result of the famine caused by Stalin's regime 'is equal to' the starvation of a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto as a result of a famine caused by the Nazi regime."

There you have it. As people the world over commemorate the 70th anniversary of the genocidal destruction of some 7 million Ukrainians in a forced famine, two of the most visible individuals in the Jewish community dismiss it as unworthy of comparison to the Holocaust.

There are two reasons why Mr. Foxman and Rabbi Hier will never admit that the Holodomor was a genocide: it involved Ukrainians, a group that many Jews believe are born anti-Semites; admission would in some bizarre way diminish the Holocaust.

Fortunately, not all Jewish leaders are as arrogant, outrageously callous, and self-serving as Mr. Foxman and Rabbi Hier. Some years ago, the late David Roth of the American Jewish Committee testified before the U.S. Congress on behalf of the Ukraine Famine Bill. His testimony followed comments offered by a White House statement which, while admitting that millions of taxpayer dollars were being spent on the Holocaust Museum, opposed passage of the Ukraine bill because other groups would begin lining up for federal recognition of their genocides. Mr. Roth commented on that statement during his testimony, declaring: "It is outrageous to think that the death of 7 million Ukrainians is somehow less important than the death of 6 million Jews."

Back to Mr. Gibson. He needs our support. Ukrainians can thank him for remembering the Holodomor via e-mail: [email protected].

Myron Kuropas' e-mail address is: [email protected].

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