Ukrainian Canadian

A few worth while responses have been posted in the same publication that broke the story on ‘Irvington students ditch communist theme’. In the article, a student who’s grandparents survived the Holodomor appealed to his classmates not to use a communist-themed t-shirt and they agreed to scrap the idea. Some very positive feedback resulted:

Can you imagine this happening with swastikas? I doubt it. That is because our educational system has done an excellent job in teaching about the horrors of Nazism. It has, however, failed to teach about the atrocities suffered under communist regimes.

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There are currently two bills in the Legislature that would amend the New York State Education Law to include other genocides: Bill S3356 in the Senate and Bill A6690 in the Assembly. Unfortunately, Sen. Suzi Oppenheimer, D-Mamaroneck, chair of the Education Committee in the Senate, is blocking their passage. The incident in Irvington is a glaring example of precisely why the passage of these bills is so important. Our government representatives and our school officials need to be held accountable in making sure that our children learn about the true nature of communism. Contact your representatives at  www.nysenate.gov and  www.assembly.state.ny.us and urge them to support passage of these bills.

Oksana Kulynych, committee chair of Educators for the Study of the Ukrainian Genocide-Holodomor.

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As well as:

The principal of Irvington High School is to be commended for not allowing students to use a pro-communist slogan and picture of a hammer and sickle for their Color Wars competition. In all likelihood the students had no intention of offending anyone and cannot be blamed. However, simply telling the students to change the theme is completely insufficient. It is our educational system that must be held accountable for teaching about the reality of communism.

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I call upon the Board of Regents, superintendents of school districts as well as our government officials to ensure that our students learn about the devastating role communism has played in the lives of so many people. It is only through education that we can work to erase the indifference that allowed the atrocities of communism, such as the Ukrainian Genocide-Holodomor of 1932-1933, to occur.

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Very good stuff!

From New York’s Lower Hudson Valley:

The class vote was part of the school’s Color Wars, to take place next month. A T-shirt was to feature a hammer and sickle on the front and “Isn’t it Time You Joined the Party” on the back.

If that phrase made you smile, it was meant to. The students were intending to be funny, even envisioning a party hat perched on the sickle.

If it didn’t, not everyone saw the humor.

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“I just thought it was very inappropriate and offensive,” said 17-year-old Michael Schur, a senior whose relatives died in Ukraine under Stalin’s rule and whose mother complained to the principal.

Now the design has gone the way of the Soviet Union, and the juniors have substituted a video game figure, Mario, the intrepid Italian plumber outfitted in red and blue.

“We wanted to do something that was a little bit witty, smart humor,” said the class president, Isabel Garcia. “We thought we were being original.”

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Some of Schur’s family escaped from Ukraine as Stalin forced the collectivization of farms in the 1930s, resulting in millions of deaths. The famine is known to Ukrainians as the Holodomor.

Would Jews find anything about a swastika to be funny? asked Schur’s mother, Sonya.

But communistic images — from the red star to likenesses of Che Guevara and Mao — have a history of chic, radical or otherwise. Trace it to the intelligentsia’s flirtation with communism in the early part of the last century or the counterculture revolutionaries of the 1960s.

Once Schur complained, the principal, Scott Mosenthal, told Garcia that the juniors would have to reconsider.

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As for Schur, did he persuade his schoolmates to view the hammer and sickle differently?

“In the end I really don’t think I made my point,” he said. “I just aggravated a bunch of people.”

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We think it’s very commendable Michael, way to stick up to yourself!

Tomorrow at 5pmET on FOX News, Glenn Beck will air his first documentary ‘Revolutionary Holocaust, now: Live Free or Die’ on his show to ’set out to correct progressive lies’, as announced on his national radio show:

A groundbreaking hour long special where Glenn Beck takes us back in time to examine the roots of socialism and communism and the evil that followed. We all know about the horrors of the holocaust where the pure evil Hitler inspired claimed the lives of millions of innocent people. But most do not know about the millions upon millions of lives lost in a different genocide of the Ukrainian people under the Stalin regime. This special also takes a look behind the iconic fashion symbol of Che Guevara showing that the myth doesn’t tell the story of the man who was a blood thirsty killer. We meet a family who saw first hand what a monster the man was. They know the cost of communism and you will too when you hear their story, and who can forget about Mao Zedong? A leader responsible for 70-million deaths during his reign. All communist. All killers. We will show you things you’ve never seen but need to. a

An impressive line-up of Holodomor experts:

• Edvins Snore, the director of ‘ The Soviet Story’
• Taras Hunczak, is a professor emeritus at Rutgers University
• Jonah Goldberg, author of Liberal Fascism
• Nigel Colley, great nephew of Gareth Jones

Watch it on Canadian TV:

• Bell ExpressVu – Ch. 507
• Rogers Digital – Ch. 181
• for other TV subscribers you’re on your own to find FOX news, often abbreviated ‘FOXNC’ on TV Guide listings

You might even be able to watch it online live!

I flipped on a Mad Men marathon yesterday on TV and came across a scene that caught my attention:

I did a quick search on it and the character Paul Kinsey (played by Michael Gladis) has a love for Ukrainian food after all:

Q: What’s up with Paul and Ukrainian food?

A: I did a movie in Russia and didn’t realize how Russian I look, even more specifically, how Ukrainian I look until I was over there. Even though I’m mostly Irish, I do have some Ukrainian or Russian heritage. I don’t know if it was a reference to that. It’s also an inside joke with one of the AMC executives, Vlad Wolynetz, who’s Ukrainian. And I think it’s just a hilarious go-to pick-up line.

The great nephew of Gareth Jones, Nigel Linsan Colley recently discovered his great uncle’s diaries exposing the Holodomor touring Ukraine in the 30’s and delivered a speech to the United Nations in New York last week:

Last week, 180 newspapers across the world, from the Washington Post to the London Times reported the remarkable story of Gareth Jones and his graphic eyewitness accounts of his off-limits trek into Ukraine during the height of Moscow’s starvation of that country. Today, we call it the “Holodomor.” Gareth’s accounts are preserved in his journalist’s diaries which probably now represent the only surviving contemporary independent western verification of that genocide. These precious diaries are currently on display in the Wren Library at Cambridge University, where Gareth had been a student. They sit side by side with memorabilia of other illustrious alumni including Sir Isaac Newton’s personal annotated copy of ‘The Principia’, in which he proposed his fundamental mathematical Laws of Motion.

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Thanks to the interest generated in 2003, much of the world has been made aware of the true circumstances of the Holodomor but it saddens me to report that although the world press ran the story last week, including a whole page in the London Times, conspicuous by its absence was the NYT.

All the NYT Pulitzer prize winners are being besmirched by the infamous acts of one rogue journalist. Isn’t it time Mr Sulzberger that as publisher of the NYT you should do the decent thing and return his Pulitzer? You owe it to your own paper’s reputation, and your readership, to live by your famous motto and publish ‘all the news that’s fit to print’.

Truth, an an informed public, are the linchpin of a free society

What does all this mean, today? Well, let me first take you back even further to the past. One hundred and seventy years ago, a Frenchman, Marquis de Custine published a book detailing his travels in Russia. Among the observations was this: “Russian despotism not only pays little respect to ideas and sentiments, it will also deny facts; it will struggle against evidence, and triumph in the struggle!”

Truth, and an informed public, are the linchpin of a free society. The campaign in Russia to resurrect Stalin, to whitewash his inhuman crimes, is well under way. There are disturbing signs that his rehabilitation will not only be poorly opposed but may even be facilitated by certain media around the world. Gareth Jones is a shining example of honest journalism, a benchmark to be aspired to by today’s media. It is thanks to efforts of many around us that the Holodomor is slowly, but surely, being accepted as the apogee of Stalin’s terror. I believe that Gareth was viciously murdered by the Soviet secret police. It was what the Frenchman Custine warned about, the Russian struggle against evidence. Just as decades later journalists and others who sought to uncover Moscow’s crimes before a trusting world, would also be murdered. No one is asking you to risk your lives. But do risk a little of your time and energy to uphold principle, honour and the truth. To make sure that despotism does not triumph.

Thank you very much.

[ Gareth Jones Memorial]