Toronto Ukrainian Festival 2010 is this weekend

Update: Take a first look at the festival with videos from opening day

image From the official website:

Discover Ukrainian culture in Canada and share the Ukrainian spirit at North America’s Largest Ukrainian Street Festival. This is your opportunity to experience Ukrainian culture and hospitality at its best. As always there will be non-stop entertainment with Ukrainian performers from the Greater Toronto Area, Canada, the USA and Ukraine which will include dancers, vocalists and musicians. Don’t miss the YOUTH segment on the grand stage at Jane Street! And if you wish – join the dancing at the evening ZABAVA/Street Dance on both Friday and Saturday.

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Festival Hours:  Friday September 17, 2010   5pm – 1am

Saturday, September 18, 2010   9am – 1am

Sunday, September 19, 2010   11am – 7pm

Annual Festival Parade:  Saturday, September 18, 2010  11am – 12 noon with Festival Marshal Ken Kostick

Festival Location: Bloor West Village, Toronto, between Jane St. and Runnymede Rd. Ride The Rocket, Take The TTC!

Main Stage: View our performer biographies, click here.

Festival Map & Program: View our Festival layout, attractions and performance times, click here.


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We outed Ken Kostick back in April as of being Ukrainian descent. We’re not really sure if anyone else noticed, so we’ll take that as the festival organizers are readers of our site 🙂

Ukraine’s Music Sensation MAD HEADS XL perform at a special launch party tonight at ‘My Place’ 2448 Bloor St. West and perform for the public Saturday night as well.

For more information check out the official website & Facebook event page. You can also read my review of last year’s festival. See you there!

Thousands of Hasidic Jews attend annual pilgrimage to rabbi’s Ukrainian tomb [Article]

From the European Jewish Press:

UMAN (AFP)—Nearly 24,000 Hasidic Jews, most of them from Israel, attended the annual pilgrimage to the grave of a venerated 18th-century rabbi in central Ukraine Thursday, officials told AFP.    

Hundreds of men clad in typical black garb prayed, chanted and danced in the Uman neighbourhoods close to grave of Rebbe Nachman, a key figure in the Hasidic branch of Orthodox Judaism.  

"Celebrations are going on normally, no one is complaining, neither the pilgrims nor the locals," said Petro Payevsky, deputy mayor of this city about 200 kilometres (125 miles) south of the capital Kiev.  

Uman has become a permanent fixture in the Hasidim’s annual Jewish New Year celebrations since Nachman breathed new life into the Hasidic movement 200 years ago.

Nachman, who died in 1810, promised he would save those followers from Hell who came to his grave on Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, which this year started at sunset on Wednesday.

Read the rest of the article

The pilgrimage was illegal during the Soviet Union, but after Ukraine’s independence in 1991 the ban was lifted along with openings of Jewish schools and synagogues.

Montreal Ukrainian Festival 2010 is this weekend

The official Opening ceremony for the Montreal Ukrainian Festival 2010 will be held on Saturday, September 11, 2010, at 12pm at Parc de l’Ukraine. The site will be open to visitors on Friday evening, September 10, 2010, at 6pm.

Friday September 10th 2010 6pm – 10pm (BEER GARDEN)

Saturday September 11th 2010 10am – 10pm

Sunday September 12th 2010 10am – 5pm

The Montreal Ukrainian Festival will showcase performances by various Ukrainian, Canadian and Quebec artists, singers, dancers, comedians and choirs.

Throughout the day, festival-goers will be able to browse through many kiosks featuring Ukrainian cuisine, folk art and crafts, local businesses and information booths.

To keep the young ones entertained, the Montreal Ukrainian Festival will offer a supervised children’s area with games, face painting and other fun activities.

 

Directions

Parc de l’Ukraine is on the corner of 12th Avenue and Bellechasse across from St-Sophie’s Ukrainian Church


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Directions via Public Transport (STM)

  • Joliette Metro station (green line)
    Take the 67 bus (St-Michel) north until Bellechasse. Walk 1 block east.
  • St-Michel Metro station (blue line)
    Take the 67 bus (St-Michel) south until Bellechasse. Walk 1 block east.
  • Beaubien Metro station (orange line)
    Take the 18 bus (Beaubien) east until St-Michel Blvd. Walk 1 block south to rue de l’Ukraine, then 1 block east.
  • Rosemont Metro station (orange line)
    Take the 197 bus (Rosemont) east until St-Michel Blvd. Walk 1 block north to Bellechasse, then 1 block east.

SBU secret police detains historian researching Polish, Nazi and Soviet occupations in Ukraine (Updated)

Via press release:

Toronto, September 9, 2010 On September 8, 2010 six representatives of Ukraine’s Security Service (SBU) detained at the Kyiv train station, Ruslan Zabilyj, Director of the National Memorial “Prison at Lonsky”. The Memorial is a recently opened museum to the victims of repressions at the Lonsky prison in Lviv, Ukraine, where thousands of Ukrainian political prisoners suffered under Polish, Nazi and Soviet occupations. Mr. Zabilyj is a historian, who oversees the Memorial, and serves as a researcher and archivist.

Mr. Zabilyj had just arrived in Kyiv on the train from Lviv. He was detained and held incommunicado for some fourteen hours at the SBU headquarter at 33 Volodymyrsky Street in Kyiv. He was not formally charged. However, he could not leave voluntarily and was not permitted to use his telephone. His inquisitors refused to identify themselves by name, but did inform him that his detainment was pursuant to instructions from SBU Director Valerij Khoroshkovsky, himself. Further, it was suggested to Mr. Zabilyj that it would be better for him if he quit his position at the Memorial, to think of his family, and cease contact with foreign scholars. He also was told to provide evidence that his research does not involve state secrets. He also was told that a list of those with whom he shared state "secret" archival information is being compiled.

A personal notebook and two compact disks were confiscated and not returned upon his release. Moreover, the SBU said that a criminal case against Ruslan Zabily has been started.

SBU repressive measures were not limited to Mr. Zabilyj alone. Today, the local SBU in Lviv blockaded the National Memorial and prevented entry to employees and visitors. In this regard as well, it is to be recalled that in 2009 the SBU agreed to transform the prison on Lontskoho Street in Lviv and to have it converted into a museum. The National Memorial opened its doors in June, 2009 and is today a museum/memorial and research center.

Attempts to intimidate Mr. Zabily were unsuccessful. Today, Ruslan Zabily filed a complaint against the head of the SBU: "I demand from Mr.Valery Khoroshkovsky an explanation with regard to the action of the SBU officers and to immediately return my private property – the computer and external drives. They contain only copies of historical documents, my research, and personal information. I appeal to you, dear journalists, to together help stop the censorship and pressure, put on history and historians.” He also demanded that his employees and research staff be allowed to return to their offices at the National Memorial.

This is not an isolated incident. It continues a pattern of intimidation by the SBU since Victor Yanukovich took control of Ukraine in late February 2010 and mimics tactics used by the Putin regime in Russia. The targets of this new policy have been journalists, academics, students and even clergy.

The Canadian Conference in Support of Ukraine (CCSU) deplores this reversion to Kremlin tactics, calls on the Canadian government to serve notice upon the Yanukovich regime that abuse of democracy and human rights will not be tolerated. We call on our fellow Canadians to speak out in defense of Mr. Zabily and the National Memorial “Prison at Lonsky”. Only through concerted action on the part of governments and NGOs alike can Mr. Zabily and all others seeking to defend and advance academic freedom, democracy, and civil society in Ukraine know that the world is watching and is standing with them.

They recently held a press conference to discuss these matters to the media as well:

Update: Here is another link to the story.

Millions of Ukrainians as slave laborers under the Nazis in World War 2

Last week a Pennsylvania resident Olga Yurechko, 90, wrote to her family and friends before she died a couple of weeks ago a very touching memorial about her life in Ukraine, as a slave laborer under the Nazis in WW2 and emigrating to America:

"I was born on Aug. 6, 1920 in a paradise where the wheat fields swayed like a golden ocean, and each stalk of wheat struggled to stand upright under the weight of its ripened grains. That is where I first saw the sun’s radiance. That is where I took my first little footsteps. That is my beloved land — my Ukraine. Within that paradise, I was born in a little village named Vilshanitsha.”

…

"As I was finishing my last year in school, my father suddenly died. My world was turned upside down, and the people I thought were good and decent people who might help us instead took advantage of my mother and me. With my father gone, they came and took many of our belongings and left us near starvation. This, my dear family and friends, was the forced collectivization of private lands and property by the communist regime.”

…
"And then the war began. During this horrendous, war-torn time, I was taken to Germany as a slave laborer. I was forced to work in a large restaurant run by a German mistress and her teenage children. The work was long, hard and dirty. But worse than any of that, this is where I experienced their vile hatred for me, because my mistress’ husband had recently been killed on the Russian front. She and the children constantly tormented me, as if I were the cause of their loss. It was so terrible that I didn’t want to live. I tried to escape, but was caught by the authorities. I didn’t know what was going to happen, but fortunately they did not return me to the family that brought me such misery. Instead, I had the good fortune to be assigned to a different family. Although I was still a forced laborer, the work was much easier, and they treated me well. After the war ended, the allies opened refugee camps to accommodate the many displaced people still in Germany. I moved into one of these camps, where I met and married my husband. Three years later, our son was born.”

There were reportedly 6 million forced labourers under the Nazi regime abducted from Ukraine during WW2, known as the Ostarbeiter (Eastern workers):

Former Soviet civil workers primarily from Ukraine. They were marked with a sign OST ("East"), had to live in camps that were fenced with barbed wire and under guard, and were particularly exposed to the arbitrariness of the Gestapo and the industrial plant guards.

Degraded as Untermensch (sub-human), many workers died as a result of their living conditions, mistreatment or were civilian casualties of the war, under Hitler‘s policy of Lebensraum: the conquest of new lands in the East. They received little or no compensation during or after the war.

Olga like many other thousands of Ukrainians received refuge in the USA:

The Displaced Persons Commission Act signed by President Harry S. Truman on June 25, 1948. More than 100,000 Ukrainians benefited from this act of the 80th Congress of the United States when they immigrated to the United States. During four years of its existence, the Commission created by this act was able to process, transport, and provide visas for 370,000 persons, allowing them to enter the United States.

The Ukrainian Museum of Archives in Cleveland has a virtual exhibit on these Displaced Persons.