Both are monumental. Both are getting funds from the public purse and both will be unveiled later this year in Ottawa.
One is sited on the very same spot where the other was supposed to be, a controversial location for being within sight of the Supreme Court. Added on are complaints about its design and very purpose. Called the “Tribute to Liberty,” it’s really a memorial to the many millions of victims of Communism, worldwide.
Ottawa’s other monumental project has not attracted much attention, and no protest. It’s the National Holocaust Memorial.
For the record, I support both projects simply because my parents were victims of the Nazi and Soviet regimes in occupied Ukraine. But I have trouble with a taxpayer-funded memorial shaped in the form of a Star of David, a uniquely Jewish symbol. Such a monument seems to exclude, by design, millions of non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust.
Concerns about whether Canada’s Holocaust memorial was going to be inclusive were raised years ago and seemingly addressed in the affirmative by Tim Uppal, MP, whose private member’s Bill C-442 championed this project. On May 17, 2011, he offered this reassurance: “The intent of the monument is to offer a tangible reminder of the millions of lives that were lost during a dark era of hatred and violence… This memorial is meant to be inclusive to all victims and survivors of the Holocaust and is not specific to any religion or background.”
More recently, on January 27, Minister of Canadian Heritage Shelly Glover elaborated: “…the monument is meant to be a place to mourn, remember and honor all victims of the Holocaust… it was designed with inclusivity in mind. …[it] is formed from six triangular volumes signifying the triangles used by the Nazis and their collaborators to label the various victim groups of the Holocaust, notably Jews, political and religious prisoners, homosexuals, Roma, Sinti and Jehovah’s Witnesses.” An interpretive exhibit located within the monument, she added, will “include information on the various groups of victims targeted by the Nazi regime.”
No informed person denies Jews were the most immediate and principal victims of the Nazis. They were certainly not, however, the only ones. Poland, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia suffered millions of civilian deaths during the second world war. The vast majority of those victims of Nazi oppression were Christians of various denominations. Furthermore, the list of victim groups as identified in the minister’s correspondence is far from comprehensive. Correcting this matter would seem to be easy, involving an informed discussion between all stakeholders and those responsible for making choices about the educational and commemorative contents of the National Holocaust Memorial’s exhibits. That hasn’t happened. Indeed who those decision-makers are seems to be something of a secret.
Just over a decade ago, in Vancouver, British Columbia, I met a Holocaust survivor and Ukrainian nationalist. Those whose knee-jerk reaction is to dispute any possible pairing of these two categories would benefit from reading his memoir, “Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine.” The Nazis branded Stefan Petelycky with the number 154922, indelibly marking him as their victim. He was targeted because he was a member of the Organization of Ukrainian Nationalists, committed to the struggle for Ukrainian independence.
Speaking about the last days of the war, Mr. Petelycky told me how he lay on a pile of tangled corpses stacked beside the crematorium in the Ebensee concentration camp. Fatefully, he was rescued on May 6, 1945, Ukrainian Easter Sunday that year, a personal resurrection from the Golgotha, or place of skulls, that had been his bed. Years later, he would remark on how, as he lay dying, he had paid no attention to who the other victims with him were, for be they Hungarians or Jews, Poles or Russians, they had suffered as one. He remembered them that way, all victims together.
Out in Winnipeg, Manitoba, the Canadian Museum for Human Rights remains contentious because it elevates the historical experience and suffering of one community above all others. Why would that mistake be repeated in our nation’s capital if we still have a chance to make it right? Why not accept the counsel of a Holocaust survivor, who was also a victim of Communism, and ensure that all of Hitler’s victims are hallowed? That would set Canada’s National Holocaust Memorial apart from the many others found around the world, making it truly unique.
Prof. Lubomyr Luciuk teaches at the Royal Military College of Canada. Among his recent publications are “Jews, Ukrainians and the Euromaidan” (Chair of Ukrainian Studies, University of Toronto, 2014) and a co-edited volume, “Famines in Modern European History” (Routledge, 2015).