LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (12/19/04)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

The real problem is Ukrainophobia

Dear Editor:

John-Paul Himka's letter to The Weekly (December 12) is, in a number of respects, simply bizarre. He suggests it is anti-Semitic for Myron Kuropas to have made mention of the "charge" that Jews were especially well represented in the Soviet secret police. Prof. Himka apparently thinks this inappropriate because the number of Jews in the secret police began to decline beginning in 1937-1938 and because Poles, Armenians and Latvians were also overrepresented in the Soviet secret police, and Dr. Kuropas never writes about them.

The war by the Soviet regime against the Ukrainian population, including the Holodomor and the various terror strikes, was waged principally, though certainly not exclusively, between the late 1920s and late 1930s. That is precisely when there was a very large number of Jews in the police, the pseudo-judicial and the pseudo-prosecutorial organs of the Soviet state in Ukraine. A relative who was a high school principal in Soviet Ukraine and a popular teacher of Ukrainian literature was "tried" and executed in 1930 for being too Ukrainian. Of the 16-some investigators, prosecutors and judges responsible for his murder by the state, a majority was Jewish. The same is true of those who participated in the state murder of Metropolitan Vasyl Lypkivsky in, I believe, 1937. How can the truth be anti-anything, much less anti-Semitic?

What is more, Leon Trotsky, one of the two founding fathers of the Soviet state, one of the two most criminal states in the 20th century, was Jewish. As was one of Stalin's two closest henchmen during the bloody 1930s, Lazar Kaganovich. As were a disproportionate number of those who built and ran the Soviet concentration camp system. We're not talking about perimeter guards at some camp, we're talking about people who created and managed this evil system. Again, how can the truth be anti-anything?

If, however, the issue is more one of political correctness regarding ethnic/

national identifications, i.e., that one should not identify the ethnicity of someone who is alleged to have done something wrong, then, pray tell, why is it that John Demjanjuk was a thousand times identified, both here and in Israel, as Ukrainian?

As to articles in the Jewish media about the elections in Ukraine, I just happened today to read an article in the Jerusalem Post (December 2 by Amotz Asa-El) and one in The Jewish Week ("Serving the Jewish Community of Greater New York," December 10, by Walter Ruby) on events in Ukraine. The Jerusalem Post article repeats some of the almost universally laudatory descriptions of the Orange Revolution and then responds with a "If only it were so." It then makes two points. That "Ukraine's claim for independence is tricky," and "whether or not a Ukrainian nation exists, insofar as Jewish history is concerned it will live forever, since no nation other than the Germans seems to have more Jewish blood on its hands."

The Jewish Week article reports on various Brighton Beach opinions of the Orange Revolution, which tend towards "Both Yanukovych and Yushchenko are thieves, but I prefer Yanukovych," and "I am sure both candidates are anti-Semites, but Jew hatred is worse in western Ukraine among Yushchenko's supporters. The Jews who remained in Ukraine owe a lot to Kuchma for keeping anti-Semitism pretty much under wraps for the 10 years he was in power. For that reason alone I think they should support Yanukovych."

Dear Prof. Himka, the problem today, as it has been for some time, is not purported Ukrainian anti-Semitism but rather actual Jewish Ukrainophobia. What are you, as a scholar in the humanities, doing to analyze and combat that?

Bohdan Vitvitsky
Summit, N.J.

President Bush: What would you do?

Dear Editor:

Imagine a scenario in which you lived down the street from a dysfunctional family, and, while on a walk, you happen upon the father beating his teenage daughter in the front yard. How would you react to the sight of the young woman's battered, crying face? How much stock might you put in her drunken father's assertion that nothing is the matter and that things really aren't as they appear? What if the drunk's brother-in-law, a guy you've watched football with a few times, comes outside and warns you this is none of your business and that you'd better not interfere in their "family's" affairs? What if you knew this hadn't been the first time? How might you reply to the woman if she had managed a brave plea for help between sobs?

Now imagine you are the United States (yes, the whole country) and Ukraine, one of your allies in the fight against global terrorism, is being blatantly abused by its so-called caretakers (the thugs of the outgoing Kuchma regime). How might you react to the regime's assurances that you, along with the rest of the free world, are mistaken - that everything is just peachy in Ukraine - after you had witnessed their treachery? What if next-door Russia proclaims that this situation had nothing to do with the West (i.e., you) and that you'd do well to mind your own business? What if this isn't the first time you have seen something of the sort happen in a state that had once been under Soviet control? What if the Ukrainian people courageously appealed to you for help from under the smothering layers of deceit and corruption - what would you tell them?

Here's what I'd do. I would not believe the drunken parent or the disgruntled regime. I would not trust the bullying uncle or the ex-KGB "comrade." I would unrepentantly stand up for what was right. I would say "Not this time!" and I would do everything within my power to aid and to protect the abused.

And so I'm calling President George W. Bush's hand - during the election he spoke of spreading democracy, upholding moral values and maintaining resolve in the face of those who seek to overthrow freedom. We're waiting, Mr. President.

Stephen Vitvitsky
Madison, Wis.

The Ukrainian Weekly welcomes letters to the editor and commentaries on a variety of topics of concern to the Ukrainian American and Ukrainian Canadian communities. Opinions expressed by columnists, commentators and letter-writers are their own and do not necessarily reflect teh opinions of either The Weekly editorial staff or its publisher, the Ukrainian National Association.

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