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Letter to Arthur Sulzberger, Jr., Publisher, NY Times
By Volodymyr Kurylo, President,
United Ukrainian American Organizations of Greater New York
New York, NY, Thursday, October 23, 2003
Dear Mr. Sulzberger:
On November 15, 2003, thousands of Ukrainians and friends of Ukraine
and her people will participate in a "March of Remembrance" from
St. George Ukrainian Church on 7th Street - to St. Patrick's Cathedral.
At 11:45AM, they will begin to solemnly walk to honor the victims of
the Ukrainian Famine Genocide of 1932-1933.
November 15th and the "March of Remembrance" will soon be upon us.
In the days and weeks before the March, Ukrainians, friends of Ukraine
and her people, people who respect and expect truth in the media, "at a
time of their choosing", will assemble in front of & near your building to
bring attention to the seventy year old Duranty scandal and the NYT
reluctance to appropriately expose Soviet-era crimes and criminals.
Almost seventy years ago, the New York Times reported about a similar
march. Reading the reports about the "parade" of 1933, one gets a sense
of the battle waged between ideologies in the streets of New York while most
Americans "slept". Seventy years later, has much changed? Seventy years
later, will the New York Times dare to cover the "March of Remembrance"?
MR. SULZBERGER: "TEAR DOWN THIS WALL!"
On November 18, 1933, when 6000 Ukrainians gathered in Washington
Square in New York City, they knew something about evil. It took fifty
years and President Ronald Reagan to call the Soviet Union what it really
was.
On March 8, 1983, in his address to the National Association of
Evangelicals
he stated that the United States was at war with an "evil empire".
Soon after they declared their independence on January 22, 1918, Ukrainians
realized that their days of freedom were numbered. The banner of Russian
chauvinism, imperialism and oppression was now in the hands of hammer &
sickle wielding atheists. On November 19, 1933, the New York Times reported
that "Three hundred policemen, including a score of mounted men, were called
out to enable the marchers to reach the opera house and to conduct a meeting
there in peace". Why were three hundred policemen needed?
The Ukrainians were merely holding a "parade" from Washington Square to the
Central Opera House at Sixty-seventh Street and Third Avenue. On November
16, President Roosevelt embraced "Uncle Joe" Stalin by recognizing the USSR.
Ukrainians were merely "asking President Roosevelt to demand that the famine
in the Ukraine would be alleviated. The resolutions charged that the food
shortage was a result of a deliberate plot by the Moscow government to
starve the Ukrainian peasants into submission". Who could possibly object
to this urgent and merciful mission.
While Stalin's genocidal famine was starving millions, communists, disciples
of bolshevism were waging a battle for America's soul. On the morning of
November 18, 1933, they mustered 500 followers. "The first clash occurred
at the southern end of the square. There was a free-for-all fight, during
which Patrolman Edgar Denham.said he was beaten and kicked by Communists.
Patrolman Denham arrested a man who identified himself as Dolia Mishna".
"When the Ukrainian parade reached University Place and Ninth Street,
according to the police, a group of Communists attacked the marchers.The
police drove off the attackers and chased them through side streets. After a
melee five men were arrested. These prisoners identified themselves as Philip
Kaplan, a relief worker for the city.George Mitchell.Wayne Herman Helm.
Leon Zartarin.and John Henchiuk. Kaplan was charged with striking Detective
Thomas Jenkins of the alien squad, who was badly beaten and had cuts over
his eyes."
This was a relentless and devoted band of Bolshevik disciples who was
punishing Ukrainians for exposing the truth & trying to save their mothers,
fathers, brothers and sisters from intentional starvation, execution and
exile to Siberia. The New York Times continued its "blow by blow"
description: "At Twenty-eighth Street and Lexington Avenue the police again
dispersed a crowd of Communists who lined both sidewalks, jeering and
throwing bottles, sticks and brickbats at the marchers. Similar incidents
occurred at Thirty-fifth Street, at Fiftieth Street and at Sixty-sixth
Street.
At Sixty-sixth Street and Lexington Avenue Patrolman Frank J. Smith arrested
a man who said he was David Crotto.The policeman was badly beaten,
knocked down and kicked in the back by several men who tried to get his
prisoner away from him but he held on until another policemen rescued him.
Two others were arrested near the opera house on disorderly conduct charges.
They said they were Manuel Rivera and Edith Rubin. The complainant against
these two was Paul Papura who said he had been beaten."
"The police established lines all around the opera house, keeping a crowd of
yelling Communists at safe distance while the Ukrainians entered.When the
meeting was over, the Ukrainians left the opera house without being
molested". The Times described the arsenal of weapons American Communists
utilized in their fight against truth, against free speech and against the
right of peaceful assembly: "A large collection of iron pipes, chair rungs,
milk bottles, pop bottles and glass jars, some filled with liquids and
grease was taken from prisoners and found in the streets after the rioting".
In what appears to be a harbinger of some of today's "liberal" justice, we
learn that: "Arraigned in Night Court before Magistrate Goldstein, Rivera
was found guilty, but sentence was suspended. The complaints against Crotto
and Miss Rubin were dismissed".
Seventy years later, the New York Times still clings to Walter Duranty's
ill-gotten Pulitzer. Sig Gissler, administrator of The Pulitzer Prizes,
clings to the technicality that "As a matter of clarity, it is worth noting
that the 1932 award was for an explicit set of stories in 1931, which is
before the famine of 1932-1933 hit with full force".
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Fortunately, Leonard Leshuk, author of "US Intelligence Perceptions of
Soviet Power 1921-1946" (Frank Cass Publishers, London, 2003) offers,
as a matter of clarity, a document worth noting: Gordon Dispatch, 5 June
931, NARG 59 861.5017 LC/268. On page 76 of Mr. Leshuk's book,
we find:
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The US news media had a great influence on how those in the
intelligence agencies, and the policy makers, as well as the
general public, viewed the USSR. The reliability and
objectivity of US newspapers concerning the Soviets, as well
as their ethics and those of their reporters, can be judged
from the statement of Walter Duranty of the New York Times who
admitted to A.W. Klieforth of the US Embassy in Berlin in June
of 1931 that, '"in agreement with The New York Times and the
Soviet authorities," his official dispatches always reflect the
official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own'.
So, as a matter of clarity, can we state that Walter Duranty was awarded the
Pulitzer Prize for reflecting, in the year for which he won his prize, "the
official opinion of the Soviet regime and not his own"? As a matter of
clarity, it is worth noting that during the seventy years that have passed,
the New York Times has not summoned enough courage, commandeered enough
ethics nor evolved into sufficient morality to admit that it collaborated in
trafficking in the falsifications and denials of the most lied about and
concealed genocide in the history of man's inhumanity to man - the Ukrainian
Famine Genocide of 1932-1933 - the "Holodomor" - the "Hidden Holocaust".
Both the New York Times and Walter Duranty were probably relieved when
Soviet Foreign Commissar, Maxim Litvinov, in his January 3, 1934, response
to the attention drawn to the famine by Congressman Herman Kopelman of
Connecticut, for the sake of clarity wrote: "I am in receipt of your letter
of the 14th instant and thank you for drawing my attention to the Ukrainian
pamphlet.
There is any amount of such pamphlets full of lies circulated by the
counter-revolutionary organizations abroad who specialize in work of
this kind. There is nothing left for them to do but spread false
information and forge documents" and of course, defend themselves
against pipe-wielding American devotees of Bolshevism. Thank God that
Mr. Litvinov put all those nasty rumors to rest.
Mr. Sulzberger, the time has come to "tear down this wall", the wall that
has concealed a seventy year old scandal, the wall that has obscured the
crimes of Stalin and his henchmen, Lazar Kaganovych, Vyacheslav Molotov
and a legion of others. Americans must not be kept ignorant about the
millions of victims and the criminals who were responsible for crimes
against humanity.
During the height of the Ukrainian Famine/Genocide, Molotov and Kaganovych
created a draconian law to shoot starving peasants who stole even husks of
grain. In his 1998, article "Remembering Ukraine's Unknown Holocaust", Eric
Margolis wrote: "When OGPU failed to meet weekly execution quotas, Stalin
sent henchman Lazar Kaganovitch to destroy Ukrainian resistance.
Kaganovitch, the Soviet Eichmann, made quota, shooting 10,000 Ukrainians
weekly".
Mr. Sulzberger, the New York Times has been "comforting" and concealing
Soviet-era criminals for seventy years. Lazar Kaganovitch died in Moscow of
natural causes in 1991, at the age of 98. How could a man with so much
blood on his hands have eluded the appropriate, the moral, the just
condemnation of at least one of your prize winning journalists? Mr.
Sulzberger, the time has come to "tear down this wall" of deceit and to
issue an appropriate mea culpa.
The Jayson Blair scandal resulted in four full pages of atonement. How many
pages are the lives of over seven million innocent Ukrainians worth. How
many pages are seventy years of denials, falsifications and concealment
worth. It is not enough to quietly give back a Pulitzer accepted while
standing on the corpses of millions of innocent victims. Do the right
thing!
Letter Written By Volodymyr Kurylo, President,
United Ukrainian American Organizations of Greater New York
New York, NY, October 23, 2003
(917) 861-1574, vkurylo@aol.com
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