Lubomyr Luciuk addresses challenges facing the Ukrainian diaspora (12/12/04)

Lubomyr Luciuk addresses challenges facing the Ukrainian diaspora

by Roma Hadzewycz

EAST HANOVER, N.J. - "What role for the Ukrainian diaspora now?" was the topic of a presentation by Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, professor of political geography at the Royal Military College of Canada in Kingston, Ontario, who was the featured speaker at a recent gathering of the Ukrainian American Professionals and Businesspersons Association of New York and New Jersey.

"In the name of the Father, the Son and the Holy Spirit," he began, noting that he would focus on the different challenges faced by succeeding generations of Ukrainians - the fathers, the sons and the succeeding generations.

First he spoke of the generation of his parents. His own father, Dr. Luciuk said, was a "Banderivets," an adherent of the nationalist movement headed by Stepan Bandera; his mother was a slave laborer taken by the Nazis during World War II to work in Germany. Both were members of a generation that believed in the Ukrainian cause and struggled against the Poles, Soviets, Nazis and then the Soviets once again; they became post-war refugees. Like others of their generation they believed that one day there would be a free Ukraine.

"Out of the refugee camps," Dr. Luciuk continued, "came a transformed generation." That generation, he said, had "a compulsive need to return home." In the meantime they organized themselves and sought to replace themselves. They taught their children to "never forget who you are" and effected a "migration of memory" from one generation to the next.

The next generation, is that of the son - the children of displaced persons (DPs). Dr. Luciuk recounted how he, a native of Kingston, Ontario, grew up at a time when "there was no Ukraine on the map." Very often, he recalled, "friends would say show us on a map" where this country is located. Thus, we were identified as "anything but Ukrainian": malorosy, Soviets, etc., he continued.

Later Dr. Luciuk began to research the history of Ukrainians in Canada - who had arrived in the country generations before his parents - and he learned about such things as Canada's internment camps and the activities of Ukrainian Communists. He unearthed a 1917 issue of the Whig Standard of Kingston that called internment a national humiliation and commented that, soon or later, there would have to be a reconciliation.

Dr. Luciuk also focused on the work of G.R. Bohdan Panchuk, whom he described as a hero and "probably the most important person of all those who helped refugees" and organized Ukrainian community life in Britain. It was Panchuk, he said, who saved members of the Galicia Division and helped fight forced repatriation of Ukrainians to the Soviet Union. He noted that he was most impressed with what Panchuk had written of his motivation: "I have but one gospel: do something."

As Prof. Luciuk was researching Panchuk's life, he said he learned a lot about the Ukrainian Canadians and Ukrainian Americans who worked to rescue the DPs, his parents' generation.

Another formative moment for Dr. Luciuk was the Deschenes Commission of Inquiry which was tasked with finding Nazi war criminals among the Baltic and Ukrainian communities. The Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, he recounted, was formed as a response to the Deschenes Commission. Its position was that any person suspected of war crimes should be brought to trial.

Later it became clear that the "thousands" of Nazi war criminals that allegedly lived in Canada could not be found, Dr. Luciuk stated. Indeed, the Deschenes Commission reported that the number of war criminals had been grossly exaggerated. Furthermore, the commission agreed that there should be a "made in Canada" solution in prosecuting war criminals.

The Canadian government said it would apply that solution and would hold criminal trials in Canada of suspected Nazi war criminals, the speaker continued. Ultimately, however, the government could not prove that a single suspect was guilty.

The position of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, of which Dr. Luciuk is not only an active member but also the research director, was that "any person suspected of war crimes should be brought to trial" - not just Nazi war crimes, but Soviet war crimes, for example.

Then, in 1993, the Liberal government initiated a new strategy: denaturalization and deportation (D&D), which Dr. Luciuk said was based on the U.S. model, whereby suspected Nazi war criminals are tried not for their crimes but for lying about their wartime whereabouts and activities on their applications for immigration.

One of the problems encountered was that Canada destroyed case files in the 1960s, so no files were available to review in the cases of persons subjected to the D&D procedures. The court decided that "on balance of probabilities" all refugees were asked the same questions, thus upholding the government's claim that "all refugees were screened exactly the same way and perfectly." Thus, the defense of persons accused of concealing their activities during World War II is severely hampered

Dr. Luciuk concluded this portion of his talk by pointing out that "no effort has been made to identify any Soviet war criminals in Canada and the U.S."

Another issue we have to deal with, Dr. Luciuk continued, is the "Holodomor" - the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 - and those who continue to deny it. On May Day 2003, on the initiative of the UCCLA, postcards were sent to the Pulitzer Committee; this was followed up in October of the same year with a postcard campaign directed at The New York Times.

"The campaign was a success because Ukrainians around the world got involved." And, he noted, the term "Durantyism" has now become used to denote the type of dishonest "journalism" employed by Walter Duranty.

"It would have been remarkable if The New York Times caved in to us," Dr. Luciuk observed, "if the Pulitzer committee had revoked the prize." That was not something that the UCCLA expected would happen, but the postcard campaign, helped by a series of events in the news, did succeed in garnering a lot of news coverage in the print and broadcast media around the world, he noted.

Another issue that the Ukrainian community will have to face, and soon, is the 60th anniversary in May 2005 of the Great Patriotic War (as World War II was known in the Soviet Union) during which, as the Soviets always claimed, 20 million citizens of the USSR were killed. "Now the myth of 20 million Soviets will no doubt become the myth of 20 million Russians," Dr. Luciuk explained.

"But it was Ukraine that lost more of its population than any other nation," he underscored. "However, this is buried within the Soviet/Russian figure" of casualties. The government of Ukraine is not articulating the profound losses felt by Ukraine during World War II; therefore, "we need to begin to fight the Great Patriotic War." Ukrainians must push Ukraine to act, to set up its own inquiry into Soviet war criminals, to recognize the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists and the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA) and give them the same rights, including pensions, as other veterans receive.

The final part of Dr. Luciuk's talk referred to the children and grandchildren of today's adults. Many of the unresolved issues that faced their parents will face the younger generations. For example, Canada's minister of justice speaks of the "unfinished business" of war criminals in Canada - but only about Nazi war criminals.

Citing the case of Wasyl Odynsky, who has been denaturalized and now awaits deportation, Dr. Luciuk asked: "Why should we care about cases like Odynsky, [John] Demjanjuk and [Mykola] Wasylyk?" The answer: "for our children." Ukrainians are being targeted and smeared, and their families are being torn apart. He recalled how his young daughter once said to him: "Dad, I'm afraid of being a Ukrainian in Canada."

Another example of the perceptions that continue to plague Ukrainians pertains to the Holocaust. Dr. Luciuk recounted how when Stefan Petelycky penned his memoirs, "Into Auschwitz, For Ukraine," the Library of Congress would not describe it as a Holocaust survivor's memoirs because they said there is no such category as a Ukrainian Holocaust survivor - Ukrainians were not seen as victims of the Holocaust. Dr. Luciuk said publication of the book was held off and, finally, the author did have his book classified as a Holocaust memoir.

"The perception of us as a community," Dr. Luciuk underlined, "still is indifferent and even hostile." And that, he said, is the main challenge facing the Ukrainian diaspora.

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Dr. Luciuk is the author of "Searching for Place: Ukrainian Displaced Persons, Canada and the Migration of Memory" (2000) and the editor of "Not Worthy: Walter Duranty's Pulitzer Prize and The New York Times" (2004). His presentation before the Ukrainian American Professionals and Businesspersons Association of New York and New Jersey took place on October 2 at the Ramada Hotel.

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