Category Archives: news

Feds’ witch hunt isn’t punishing real war criminals [Article]

From the Toronto Sun:

The government has been after Oberlander since 1995, along with other Ukrainian-born individuals conscripted to work for the Germans in WWII, often as prison guards, some on pain of death to their families if they deserted, as some did.

None of the mostly Ukrainian-Canadians now on lists was ever proven to have been a Nazi sympathizer — just that they’d been conscripted, and hadn’t declared this connection, when they entered Canada.

In fact, there is no hard evidence that any of them “lied” to immigration authorities on entering Canada, just the “probability” they didn’t tell the whole truth. In fact, most records have long since vanished.

All major Nazi war criminals have been convicted or have died. Only small fry are left, and evidence is frail that any are war criminals.

Ukrainians conscripted as teenagers by Nazis have tended to be branded as suspect war criminals by the media, which overstates their “crime.”

Anyway, Oberlander is once again a Canadian citizen, and with luck his ordeal is over.

[Toronto Sun] via UkeMonde

British Columbia drops Holodomor bill, ignores KGB spies in province

Two weeks ago NDP MLA for Surrey-Whalley Bruce Ralston introduced Bill M 207 for Holodomor memorial day, similar legislation which has already passed elsewhere. The Victoria Times Colonist has confirmed that the bill is officially dead – along with every other NDP bill put in front of the majority Liberals:

the Liberals had good reason to cheer on election night. By defeating the NDP at the polls on May 12, Campbell had steered his party into a third straight government majority.

If the NDP doesn’t do a better job of getting some scandals to stick to government, they’ll continue to be ineffective and government will continue to roll out an unopposed agenda, Pilon said.

“I think it speaks to the arrogance of this government, and they are incredibly confident,” he said. “It seems like the Teflon premier rides again.”

BILLS THAT FAILED

The NDP Opposition tabled its own bills, but none received Liberal support, so none passed. Their proposals included:

– Memorial: Designating the fourth Saturday in November as Holodomor Memorial Day, to recognize the famine that killed millions of Ukrainians during Soviet occupation.

Read the rest of the article

It’s quite sad that politics has got in the way of paying tribute to this crime, but this is the same government who’s helping keep KGB spies in Canada. If you were wondering, yes Lennikov is still hiding in a Lutheran church and continues to receive sympathetic press – but don’t be fooled by the propaganda.

[Victoria Times Colonist]

Luxury project to be built on the site of a First World War-era internment camp [Article]

From the Globe and Mail:

To be built on the site of a First World War-era internment camp, the Hotel in the Garden project will raise a few eyebrows – not just for its guests, but also for a public unfamiliar with Canada’s early attempts at mass civilian internments.

Below the dreary parking lot where the Hotel in the Garden will eventually stand are limestone foundations from a 19th-century military fort. Those walls once penned in civilians from Eastern Europe deemed enemy aliens. The internees were waiting to be shipped to remote work camps.

“This was a black spot on Canadian history,” explains Lubomyr Luciuk, a professor at the Royal Military College in Kingston and chairman of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

After some prodding from the Ukrainian community, the city is making sure the developer showcases the history of the site as a prominent part of the luxury hotel.

“It took me 25 years to convince the government what happened,” says Mr. Luciuk, “but now we are going to hallow the memory of innocents who were held and dispersed through this site.”

Close to 9,000 civilians were forcibly held at 24 camps across Canada, and New Fort was Toronto’s collecting ground for detainees who were shipped to wilderness camps with electrified fences, where they would build roads and railways for no pay.

Descendents of internees have had a difficult time getting their story told – author Peter Melnycky contends that in the 1950s and 1960s, Archives Canada intentionally destroyed records of the internments. But in 2008, the federal government established a $10-million First World War Internment Recognition Fund to educate the country about this dark period.

“There is nothing negative about history,” says the owner of HK, a company with four boutique hotels in New York. “Bad things happen, but they are part of life. What is important is that you recognize it. The plan now is to erect a plaque, but we are more than happy to do more. The more communities involved, the better. We’d like to make Toronto’s diversity very much a part of this project. Finally we are going to create life at this site.”

Read the rest of the article

[Globe & Mail]

Huddersfield exhibition on the horrors of the Ukrainian genocide [Article]

From the Huddlesfield Examiner:

A talk and exhibition about the Holodomor of 1932 and 1933 was brought to the town this week.

It was a tragedy which claimed the lives of millions of people; some estimates put the death toll as high as 14m.

“The famine in Ukraine was brought on to decrease the number of Ukrainians and replace the dead with people from other parts of the USSR and kill the slightest thought of any Ukrainian independence.”

Read the rest of the article

The Holodomor has not yet been recognized in the UK federally, despite passing resolution in Keighley and Rochdale Borough last year.

[Huddlesfield Examiner]

Man who coined the term: Destruction of the Ukrainian nation as the classic example of Soviet genocide

From the Montreal Gazette:

Dr. Raphael Lemkin’s name and words are better known. He fathered the term “genocide” by combining the root words – geno (Greek for family or race) and – cidium (Latin for killing) then doggedly lobbied the UN’s member states until they adopted a Convention on Genocide in December, 1948, his crowning achievement.

Likewise overlooked were Lemkin’s views on communist crimes against humanity. In a 1953 lecture in New York City, for example, he described the “destruction of the Ukrainian nation” as the “classic example of Soviet genocide,” adding insightfully: “The Ukrainian is not and never has been a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion, are all different … to eliminate (Ukrainian) nationalism … the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed … a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order … if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priest, and the peasant can be eliminated then Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation … This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of the destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.”

Yet Ukraine’s declaration that the Great Famine of 1932-1933 (known as the Holodomor) was genocide has secured very little official recognition from other states, Canada one of those few. Most have succumbed to an ongoing Holodomor-denial campaign orchestrated by the Russian Federation’s barkers who insist famine occurred throughout the U.S.S.R. in the 1930s, did not target Ukrainians and so can’t be called genocide. They ignore key evidence – the fact that all foodstuffs were confiscated from Soviet Ukraine even as its borders were blockaded, preventing relief supplies from getting in, or anyone from getting out. And how the Kremlin’s men denied the existence of catastrophic famine conditions as Ukrainian grain was exported to the West. Millions could have been saved but were instead allowed to starve. Most victims were Ukrainians who perished on Ukrainian lands. There’s no denying that.

Read the rest of the article

Written by Lubomyr Luciuk

[Montreal Gazette]