Sisters team up to launch Holodomor curriculum website (10/08/06)

Sisters team up to launch Holodomor curriculum website

MENDHAM, N.J. - A gavel struck on October 8, 1986, as a U.S. commission created by Congress began its first hearings on the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933. Twenty years later, two sisters from northern New Jersey are striking computer keys and clicking digital cameras in their determination to ensure that this groundbreaking commission report is brought, literally, to everyone's desktop.

Members of the Ukrainian community know that teaching the facts about the Holodomor has been a painfully slow process. This secret war against the Ukrainian nation - that claimed more lives than all the soldiers killed in World War I - has been the target of suppression, starting with the deceitful reporting of Walter Duranty over 70 years ago and continuing most recently with the gutting of the budget for the Holodomor memorial complex that is planned for Kyiv, capital of Ukraine.

Anna and Lara Chelak have been immersed in this issue since their middle school years, when they attended an international conference at Columbia University titled "The Man-Made Great Famine in Ukraine of 1932-1933." They heard Dr. Siriol Colley, Prof. Mark von Hagen, Dr. James Mace and many others speak of this genocide and they also heard how the Holodomor has been the target of a massive cover-up.

"I couldn't understand how this could be," said Lara. "The Internet gives us such open access to information. I couldn't imagine a world where the news was controlled by so few."

Lara and Anna Chelak had been immersed in the Internet world since an early age. They started their own websites at the age of 10 and were self-taught in advanced web publication programs by the time they entered high school. This enabled them to take the senior honors computer programming class during their freshman year at West Morris Mendham High School, where they are both high honor roll students in the International Baccalaureate program.

And it was here that their computer teacher, Brenda DeRogatis and IB coordinator Dr. Kathy Kremins prompted them to share their Holodomor resources with the rest of the class.

This gave them the bold idea of bringing Holodomor curriculum resources not only to their own school, but to make it available as a teaching aid for any school system.

Lara, who made her first commercial "Dollz" website (the cyber equivalent of paper dolls that can be dressed in various outfits) at the age of 10, started the website construction and Anna organized some friends to start the long process of converting photo images of approved Holodomor curriculum materials into digital word documents that can be searched on the Internet.

"The site is www.genocidecurriculum.org. It shows President [Bill] Clinton mandated not only a memorial but also education about of the 100 million victims of Communist genocide" said Lara, 18, a senior in high school. "And we are starting with the Ukrainian Holodomor" whose roots can be traced back to Soviet policies in the 1920s.

Anna, 16, a junior in high school, has already converted over 1,200 pages into Internet-ready script. "So far we have completed the first and second interim reports to congress by the Ukrainian Famine Commission." Anna has had the help of some of her friends who have also learned the process for high-speed conversion.

Lara explained that this new process is not easy. "We did a lot of research on Optical Character Recognition programs to find the best one. The Internet is so cool because you can actually download trial versions to test different manufacturers."

"After that, we had to try different angles, lighting and exposures for the camera to see what combinations worked best with the program because a minor change in angle meant 50 corrections per page instead of five," she explained.

Anna says the final report will be up within a week and then there will be three volumes of Holodomor survivor testimony from the U.S. Commission. "Much of that is in Cyrillic, which is a read option in our program. Following that, there are state-approved curriculum guides from Illinois, New York and New Jersey that we will be putting on the Internet."

"There are some websites already that have lots of Holodomor information but, as far as we know, this is the first time that state-approved guides which are out of print will be published on the Internet," Anna noted.

Lara and Anna also ask that any readers with more state-approved curriculum resources contact them at www.genocidecurriculum.org. "We know the UNA [Ukrainian National Assciation] and related organizations have done a lot and we will try to publish all that we receive," said Anna.

Lara and Anna Chelak are members of the UNA Branch 88 and also members of the Iskra and Syzokryli dance groups. They are also Soyuzivka camp regulars for the past 10 years, the last three as counselors. They are also graduates of the Roma Pryma Bohachevsky dance workshops.

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