Tomorrow night at 9PM EST (Tuesday February 14th) PBS will air another showing of its Frontline special on ‘Sex Slaves’ from 2006 that featured young girls taken from Ukraine and funneled through Europe as sex trade workers. We’ve covered PBS re-airing this broadcast before, and if you aren’t able to catch it it is also available on YouTube:
and Google Video:
While I just missed it’s week long showing on PBS’s POV program, you can still watch the English Surgeon online for the next little while (as we’ve reviewed before).
The POV program also contains:
‘Ancestors in the Attic’ aired tonight on Global an episode about a man trying to look up his Ukrainian roots at the WWI internment camp in Spirit Lake, Quebec:
Growing up as a Ukranian-Canadian, Jerry Bayrak always faced prejudice. But he also heard whispers that his family dealt with even worse when they first arrived in Canada. No one would ever tell him anything about those early days. All Jerry’s Mom would reveal was that she grew up in a small town called Spirit Lake, near Montreal. But it wasn’t until Jerry began digging that he discovered that Spirit Lake was actually a World War I internment camp. Now, with the help of Ancestors in the Attic, Jerry begins a dramatic search to discover the truth about Spirit Lake and about one of the darkest chapters in Canadian history.
The issue of Ukrainian internment is one that still remains a secret in Canadian history. From Wikipedia:
The Ukrainian Canadian internment was part of the confinement of “enemy aliens” in Canada during and for 2 years after the end of World War I, lasting from 1914 to 1920. About 5,000 Ukrainian men of Austro-Hungarian citizenship were kept in twenty-four internment camps and related work sites, also known, at the time, as concentration camps. Another 80,000 were registered as “enemy aliens” and obliged to regularly report to the police. Those interned had whatever little wealth they owned confiscated.
There also exists other witness accounts, even CBC radio covered Spirit Lake. In addition there were other camps, including Fort Henry and Kapuskasing in Ontario.
Last year, the government announced it will provide a grant of $10 million to the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko to establish an endowment fund to support initiatives related to the First World War internment experience that predominantly affected the Ukrainian and other East European ethnic communities in Canada.
Earlier this Spring I was lucky enough to catch this great documentary called The English Surgeon at HotDocs, an intimate portrait of a brain surgeon working in an ill-equipped Ukrainian hospital and dealing with the moral and ethical issues that often exist between doctor and patient relationships.
It was an amazing movie to see, and it ended up winning the HotDocs festival. When the movie was released on DVD it was only available in England but I was lucky enough to have some friends bring it over and it has been a pleasure to watch again. Here is a trailer of the movie and some screenshots (click on them for a larger image):
Edit: I’m happy to report that now the DVD is available to all on their official site and finally comes in NTSC format which can be played on North American DVD players. It’s about 16 pounds to purchase, but with the pound coming down recently now is a great to come to buy it!
Edit #2: While the entire movie can now be found on YouTube, it would be great to support the author and buy the DVD.
I found this on YouTube, a great video done by some students in Portland, Oregon. Their assignment was to learn about a genocide, and they chose the Holodomor. Great job!
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