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by Orysia Tracz, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, November 21, 1999
Published by InfoUkes Inc., Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, www.infoukes.com
You know how a wound sometimes still hurts even though you thought it had
healed long ago? The scar may be barely visible, but it tingles, burns, and
smarts at the oddest moments. I have a scar like that on my soul, and ten
years later it still aches.
None of my relatives died in the Great Famine in Ukraine during 1932/33. The
millions who starved in that genocide by famine lived in central and eastern
Ukraine, under Soviet rule; my parents and their families were in western
Ukraine, under Polish rule. Yet when the 50th anniversary of that nightmare
was marked in 1983, I mourned as if the dead were my own.
It would have been painful enough just remembering such an event, and
honouring the millions of innocent dead who starved while there was plenty
of food around -- unavailable just to them. What made the 50th commemoration
of the Great Famine such an ugly experience was the deafening silence and
disbelief of the majority of the Canadian media and the reaction of a
certain segment of society. The various editors, columnists, and producers
did not believe -- or did not want to believe -- that the famine actually
happened, that it was deliberately orchestrated to forcibly starve the
Ukrainian population so adamant in remaining Ukrainian and non- Communist,
and so resistant to Stalin's collectivization.
Not only did they not believe, they stonewalled and tried to ignore the
event itself and its anniversary. For the media, Ukrainian issues were not
"politically correct" in 1983. Simultaneously, the pro-Soviet segment in
Canada did all it could not only to deny that the famine happened and was
man-made, but to vilify and defame the Ukrainian survivors and their
community for even daring to bring it up. Often, this was the group the
media believed. The campaign, bolstered by the Soviet embassy, was so
malicious that a decade later remembering those events still hits a raw
nerve.
While other tragedies of human history and of our own inhumanity to each
other in this century were covered often by the print and electronic media,
the Famine did not count. Because of Soviet disinformation, with a few
exceptions it had been ignored for those fifty years. The fear of that
Soviet system was so pervasive and so paralyzing, that some survivors of the
Famine -- even those with no family at all left in Ukraine -- still refused
to have their experiences recorded fifty years later in Canada. On this gruesome anniversary, the Ukrainian community in most Canadian cities
fought an uphill battle in getting the newspapers and television stations,
especially the CBC, to inform the public about this almost unknown genocide.
"Too academic," "too historical," not newsworthy enough," "we can't mark
every anniversary that comes along" and "that issue has been well-covered in
the past" were the replies of a Winnipeg Free Press city editor to inquiries
why events related to the anniversary were not reported.
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Only one letter to the editor was printed at the time, even though many had
been sent in. It took a whole month of inquiries at first, then downright
badgering by angry individuals before the Winnipeg Free Press printed three
articles about the Famine [April 9, 1983]. Ironically, after all that, one
of the articles carried the headline "Famine in Stalin's Russia [sic]." A
separate box carried the statement:
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Few events of such enormity have attracted so little public clamor or more
press apathy that the government-programmed famine which led to the
extermination in 1932-33 of 8 million people in Ukraine. The Free Press was
a party to this apathy -- in the years immediately after the famine and in
efforts this year to publicize its 50th anniversary. Editors took for
granted it was a matter best left to history books and academics, ignoring
much significant new research on the subject. Readers have noted the
shortcomings. These pages acknowledge it.................................
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NOTE: To read the rest of the article by Orysia Tracz click on:
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http://www.infoukes.com/history/famine/tracz/
by Orysia Tracz, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, November 21, 1999
InfoUkes Inc., Etobicoke, Ontario, Canada, http://www.infoukes.com
FOR PERSONAL AND ACADEMIC USE ONLY
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