Postcard recalls Raoul Wallenberg (01/23/05)

Postcard recalls Raoul Wallenberg

TORONTO - January 17 marks the 60th anniversary of the disappearance in Budapest of Swedish diplomat Raoul Wallenberg, who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews during the Holocaust.

Kidnapped by the Soviet secret police, SMERSH, Wallenberg was subsequently tortured and then murdered, reportedly in Moscow's infamous Lubianka prison (NKVD).

In 1981 Wallenberg was named an honorary citizen of the United States and in 1985 of Canada.

North America's Ukrainian community on January 17 launched thousands of postcards addressed to politicians, the media, writers and others, reminding them of Wallenberg's death and calling attention to the presence in North America, Western Europe and elsewhere, of veterans of SMERSH, the NKVD and KGB, who remain unpunished. The postcards were released by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association and the Ukrainian American Civil Liberties Association.

UCCLA Director of Research Lubomyr Luciuk, said: "We know that veterans of SMERSH, the NKVD and KGB are living in Canada, the U.S.A. and elsewhere in the West. Whether they are war criminals is for our judicial systems to determine but, undeniably, the various organs of the Soviet secret police were responsible for mass murder and even genocide, on a scale comparable to, and probably in excess of, what the Nazis did."

"These are people no one would want as a neighbor. As for how many there are we don't know and we have no intention of inflaming public sentiment by claiming that thousands of such villains are in our midst. One is too many."

"As for how they came to be here that, too, is an unresolved issue," Dr. Luciuk said. "Our immigration officials supposedly screened all post-war immigrants. Yet there are men and women in Canada who served in SMERSH, the NKVD and KGB. That is undeniable. Some have admitted to their involvement, even written books or given public interviews confirming that fact. Did they lie about their wartime activities when they came here? Again, we don't know."

Dr. Luciuk explained that "in Canada we are calling upon the minister of justice, the Honourable Irwin Cotler, who was amongst those who championed having Raoul Wallenberg made an honorary Canadian citizen, to investigate and then report publicly on his findings. Surely no one wants Canada or the U.S.A. to become havens for any war criminals, particularly persons who were members of or otherwise supported organizations that indulged in torture, ran concentration camps and murdered innocents by the millions. On the 60th anniversary of Raoul Wallenberg's sad fate let's make sure that neither the U.S.A. nor Canada remain haven for Soviet war criminals and communist collaborators."

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