Ukrainian Canadian Congress Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Exhibits at the Canadian Museum for Human Rights

Topics regarding Holodomor, Internment, Oppression under Totalitarian Regimes and Human Rights Legislation/Conventions to be included in the CMHR exhibits 24 June 2013

Acronyms: UCC = Ukrainian Canadian Congress, CMHR = Canadian Museum for Human Rights ACCE = UCC Advisory and Coordinating Committee on Exhibits at the CMHR UCRDC = Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Centre HR = The Holodomor Reader, B. Klid and A. Motyl, CIUS Press 2012

I) General considerations and Human Rights Legislation/Conventions.

(1) Displays should be prominent, short, to the point and catch the eye of the average/casual visitor to the CMHR.

(2) Displays should take into account that many of the visitors will be youth and children.

(3) Options/instructions/directions to additional, more detailed information should be at hand including access to visual presentations (films, photos, art work) as well as textual materials (quotes, articles, books).

(4) The UN Universal Declaration of Human Rights (http://www.un.org/en/documents/udhr/ ), the UN Convention on the Prevention of the Crime of Genocide (http://untreaty.un.org/cod/avl/ha/cppcg/cppcg.html ), the Geneva Conventions, which comprise four treaties, and three additional protocols, that establish the standards of international law for the humanitarian treatment of war. (http://www.ppu.org.uk/learn/texts/doc_geneva_con.html , http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Geneva_Conventions ) And the Canadian Charter of Rights and Freedoms (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_Charter_of_Rights_and_Freedoms ), should be principal and prominent displays at the CMHR, along with information on the history of these documents and the reasons for their adoption.

(5) Information should be included on the history of the development of Human Rights law internationally and in Canada, including the Rights of Indigenous and Other Minorities (e.g. International Law and the Rights of Minorities by Patrick Thornberry, Clarendon Press, 1993, and http://www.ohchr.org/Documents/Publications/MinorityRights_en.pdf )

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II) The Holodomor

“The Holodomor” denotes the genocide 1 perpetrated by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin’s Communist regime against the Ukrainian population of the USSR.

(1)The Holodomor should be included permanently and prominently in the CMHR. It should be presented in the context of attempts by the Communist regimes of the USSR, particularly that of Joseph Stalin, to subjugate the Ukrainian nation and remove the threat of its independence from Moscow’s rule. Thus, the presentation of the Holodomor should include the invasion and ultimate occupation of The Ukrainian Peoples’ Republic by the Red Army in 1918-1920, the Famine of 1922-3 in which millions died, the suppression of the non-communist political and intellectual leadership of Ukrainian society, including the Ukrainian Churches, during the 1920s and 1030s and the subsequent “great terror”. The Holodomor reached its apex in the intentional starvation of millions of rural Ukrainians in 1932-33.

(2) It should be stressed that the Holodomor was aimed not only at Ukrainians of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, but also at Ukrainians living in other parts of the USSR, particularly the Kuban region of the Northern Caucasus.

(3) The Holodomor was the culminating act in the Soviet Communist Party’s attempt to subjugate the Ukrainian nation to its will and to integrate and assimilate it into a Russified body politic. [ Raphael Lemkin, the father of the UN Convention on Genocide, gave the first succinct Western characterization of the Ukrainian genocide in his 1953 paper “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine,” in which he analyzed the crime in terms of the UN document. ]

(4) The presentation of the number of fatalities attributed to the Holodomor should include, besides the estimates of direct mortality from starvation in the Ukrainian SSR and the population loss from famine of Ukrainians in other areas of the USSR, the mass executions of Ukrainian villagers and national elites and the lives lost during deportations as well as confinement in the Gulag (Soviet concentration camps). It should be emphasised that more than half of the victims were children.

(5) Published Soviet census data of 1926 and 1937 should be displayed. They show that during the 12 year period, the Russian population of the USSR increased from 77.8 millions to 93.9 millions, that is an increase of 16.1%, while the number of Ukrainians decreased from 31.2 millions to 26.4 millions, that is a drop of 16.3%.

(6) The conversation between British PM Winston Churchill and the Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin, during Churchill’s visit to Moscow in August 1942, at the height of WW II, should be featured prominently on two accounts: (i) Stalin indicates that the number of victims was "ten millions". (ii) It shows that Churchill knew about this great crime and that this made a lasting impression on him, so much so that he raised it with Stalin at the height of WWII, (actually before the battle of Stalingrad, when the tide turned against the Germans).

1 To date, the Holodomor was recognised as a Genocide by the Parliament of Canada and by 15 other countries, namely Australia, Brazil, Columbia, Ecuador, Estonia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Ukraine and the USA.

2 (7) The disinformation campaign, suppression and denial of the Holodomor tragedy by the Soviet regime before the collapse of the USSR in1989, should be presented, as also the suppression of information about the Holodomor by various European and other governments, including, in particular, the governments of Great Britain, the US, Germany, Italy and Poland.

(8) The failure by the League of Nations to act, despite the appeals from Ukrainian communities outside the USSR should also be noted (e.g. HR p. 163).

(9) Selected testimonies by survivors and witnesses of the Holodomor, particularly Canadians who lived through the Holodomor in their youth, should be exhibited in audio- visual form. In addition, testimonies by Western witnesses should be included, such as those of Malcolm Muggeridge, Gareth Jones, and Harry Lang (cf. HR) as well as former Soviet activists such as Lev Kopelev, who participated in the grain requisitions in Ukraine (cf. film Harvest of Despair ). Letters from Ukraine, statements by Ukrainian-Canadians and Canadian politicians published in Canadian newspapers and recorded in government papers in the federal and provincial capitals should be presented.

(10) Visitors should be able to view films on the Holodomor (or segments thereof), particularly Canadian-made films such as “Harvest of Despair” (which is available in English, French, Spanish and Ukrainian) and “Genocide Revealed” (available in English and Ukrainian). Such films, as well as books on the Holodomor, should be available for purchase at the CMHR shop.

(11) Highlights of current research on the Holodomor, based on recently accessible Soviet archives, should be made available to interested visitors. [For relevant material, the Ukrainian Holodomor researcher Ludmyla Hrynevych of the Institute of History of Ukraine (National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine) and the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium, which is based at the UCRDC in Toronto, are good sources. We note that the CMHR already has access to assistance from Lesya Onyshko of the National Memorial in Commemoration of Famines’ Victims in Ukraine in Kyiv, Stanislav Kulchytsky of the Institute of History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine, and Andrea Graziosi of the University of Naples. ]

(12) A Resource list of current online resources, publications, DVDs is available for program and education staff, prepared by Valentina Kuryliw, Director of Education of the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium and Chair of the National Holodomor Education Committee of the UCC, upon request. The materials are age appropriate for Canadian educators and students.

3 III) The Internment of Ukrainians and others during the WW I period (1914-1920)

The following should be considered for inclusion in the CMHR exhibits on the Internment:

1. The Pre-War context - Negative attitudes of Canadian citizens towards Ukrainian immigrants to Canada prior to World War I, as reflected in Canadian newspapers and statements by Canadian politicians. Indications of “whites to whites” racism.

2. Canada’s international treaty obligations prior to World War I under the Hague Convention – civilian rights during periods of war were to be respected.

3. History of the initiation of the Internment programme by the Government of Canada from August 7, 1914 onward.

4. War Measures Act 1914 – The War Measures Act has only been implemented three times in Canadian history: World War I (against Ukrainians and other East Europeans, most originally from Austro-Hungary), World War II (Japanese, Italian and German Canadians), and the October Crisis of 1970 (Quebecois during FLQ Crisis). This is an important cross-generational point of discussion for the CMHR, why did this happen again and again?

5. Nature of War Measures Act – Discussion about the State sanctioned deprivation of rights including disenfranchisement, restrictions on freedom of speech, movement and association, internment, deportation and confiscation of accumulated wealth.

6. Legislation, including Orders-In-Council, that was passed by Parliament to make possible the implementation of the World War I Internment. Quotations from Hansard of the legislation and debates in Parliament on this issue.

7. A map indicating the location of the 24 internment camps, including the two family camps, with the number of internees indicated (including the two family camps).

8. Audio/visual presentations of interviews with internees, camp commanders, administrators and guards.

9. Photographs of the camps, internees, guards, commanders, etc.

10. Descriptions of the living and working conditions in the camps.

11. Articles in the Canadian press (and radio, if available) about the Internment programme, the inmates and the camps.

12. Arrest of “enemy aliens” – Description of how families were uprooted, property, valuables and money seized, the staggering economic losses suffered by the Ukrainian community and other communities, the labour exploitation of civilian internees and other human costs.

13. A discussion of the breach of Canada’s international obligations under the Hague Convention by the use of “civilian internees” for hard labour. Unlike in other

4 Allied countries, in Canada the internees were used to develop Banff National Park and Parks Canada, in logging, steel and mining industries and for other projects of the government and private companies.

14. Continuation of the Internment Camps beyond the November 11, 1918 Armistice. Operation of the camps, some closing as late as 1920, some two years after the war ended. Many of these were used in the hinterlands to create new communities largely for government purposes.

15. Who benefited? Articles regarding the demand for “forced labour” internees from municipalities, companies and the national parks, all of which benefited from internment labour. A description of how this benefit has never been accounted for is an important consideration.

16. Service of Ukrainian Canadians in the Canadian Armed forces in WW I; the VC award to Philip Konowal.

17. Consequences of the Internment programme for those affected, and on subsequent Canadian internment programmes (during WW II, the FLQ “crisis” in Quebec, etc)

18. War Times Act 1917 – In effect until 1920, authorized the disenfranchisement of all citizens naturalized after 1902, persons born in an enemy nation and persons who spoke a language of an enemy nation. Discussion of the imposition of these anti-democratic processes after World War I needs illumination.

19. Statistics on the number of individuals, by national origin, that were either deported, or had their civil liberties curtailed during this period. Information on the number that died during internment. Indication of the number and percentage of internees who were Canadian citizens.

20. The efforts of the Ukrainian Canadian Community to seek redress for the internment, and the failure to obtain a formal apology from the Government of Canada for the WW I internment (in contrast to the apology made to the Japanese community for their WW II internment).

21. Discussion about Redress: 1987 – Ukrainian-Canadian community initiates a campaign to acknowledge World War I internment, 2005 a Bill acknowledging the internment of Ukrainians received Royal Assent in Parliament and in May, 2008 representatives of the Ukrainian-Canadian community together with the Government of Canada create an endowment fund known as the Canadian First World War Internment Recognition Fund managed by the Ukrainian Canadian Foundation of Taras Shevchenko as legal custodian of the fund for 15 years.

22. Films and Books – Yuri Luhovy’s film on the Internment, “Freedom Had a Price”, should be available for viewing (in whole or in segments) and purchase at the CMHR. Other films, such as “Jajo’s Secret” and “Under the Secret Mountain”, are now being made and should also be available at the CMHR. Numerous books and articles have been written about the Internment, including fiction, non-fiction and poetry; they should be available to the public at the CMHR.

5 IV) Oppression of peoples in countries ruled by totalitarian regimes.

A major socio-political phenomenon of the 20 th century, which persists in some countries to this day, was the emergence of totalitarian regimes. The most prominent totalitarian regimes were the Soviet Communist regime under Lenin, Stalin and their successors (1917 – 1989), the Communist Party and regime in China under Mao Zedong (1935 – 1976) and the German Nazi regime under Adolf Hitler (1933-1945). In the case of Communism, there were many offspring and/or satellites of the Soviet and Chinese regimes, so that totalitarian Communism at various periods ruled in most of Eastern Europe as well as Central and Eastern Asia.

These totalitarian regimes 2 were based on radical ideology and the concept that countries must be ruled by a single Party of adherents to this ideology, deemed by its proponents to be “the only true way” and that the population under their rule must be persuaded, or coerced by force and terror if necessary, to accept rule by the Party and its ideology.

All civil, commercial, economic and government institutions were taken over by the totalitarian regimes. People that were real, potential, suspected or imagined opponents of the ruling Party and its ideology, for whatever reason (including religious belief), were deemed to be enemies that were subject to eradication, including physical destruction by various means, such as execution, torture, starvation and overwork in concentration camps.

The Soviet and Chinese Communist regimes were founded on extremist ideology, based on the imposition of total state ownership of all property, enterprises, factories and state control of all societal institutions, the military and the police forces. No deviation from this state of affairs would be tolerated.

The ideology of the Nazis was based upon racism. In Nazi ideology the Germanic or “Aryan” peoples were deemed to be a superior race that was destined to rule over Europe. Other races, particularly the Slavic peoples were deemed to be Untermenschen (sub-humans) whose destiny was elimination or servitude under the “superior” German race. The Jewish people, in particular, were relegated to a category that was slated for total destruction.

Many, perhaps a majority of Canadians, particularly young people, know little about the totalitarian scourge, which did huge damage to humanity and resulted in millions upon millions of deaths, mostly of innocent men, women and children. For this reason it is important that totalitarian regimes and their legacy be presented in the CMHR exhibits.

2 Authoritative references on Totalitarianism include “ The Origins of Totalitarianism (1951) by Hanna Arendt. Revised ed.; New York: Schocken, 2004 (includes all the prefaces and additions from the 1958, 1968, and 1972 editions), “Totalitarian Dictatorship and Autocracy” by Zbigniew Brzezinski and Carl J. Friedrich, Cambridge: Harvard University Press (1956) and The Devil in History by Vladimir Tismaneanu, University of California Press 2012.

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The CMHR should have the topic of totalitarian regimes well represented in its exhibits, both visual, audio and electronic, including the following:

(1) An explanation of what a totalitarian regime is, with examples of currently extant ones, such as North Korea (or, as it officially styles itself the “Democratic People's Republic of Korea”).

(2) An interactive map showing the totalitarian states 3, the dates of their existence as totalitarian states, the estimated number of people killed by these totalitarian regimes and the names of their rulers.

(3) Bibliography of principal books on totalitarian regimes, in electronic form accessible from the CMHR web site, but also brochures available for visitors free of charge or for purchase at a nominal price.

(4) Explanation, with examples, of how a group of fanatical adherents of radical ideologies were able to take over a country and turn it into a totalitarian police state, and how they were able to “export” or impose their totalitarian system on other countries. 4

(5) Description of the use of terror 5 by the totalitarian regimes: executions, torture, starvation and concentration camps. Interactive maps of concentration camps of the various totalitarian regimes, the Nazi death and labour camps, the Soviet forced labour camps, called “Gulags” 6 (the Russian acronym for “Chief Administration of Corrective Labour Camps and Colonies”), the corresponding camps in Communist China and its offspring 7, in Cuba and in other totalitarian states.

3 These include Nazi Germany under Adolf Hitler and its client states, the Soviet Union under Lenin, Stalin and their successors, and its satellites (East Germany, Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary, Romania, Bulgaria, Albania), China under Mao Zedong and its client states (Vietnam, Cambodia, North Korea) and others. A useful reference on this subject is The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression by Stéphane Courtois et al., Harvard University Press, 1999. 4 A good reference on the imposition of totalitarian Communist regimes in Central and Eastern Europe by the USSR is Iron Curtain: The Crushing of Eastern Europe, 1944-1956 by Anne Applebaum, McClelland & Stewart, 2012. 5 The use of terror by both the Nazi and Soviet Communist regimes against the peoples of Poland, Ukraine, Belarus, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Russia and others is well presented in the book Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Timothy Snyder, Basic Books, 2010. 6 Examples of scholarly works on the Soviet Gulags are Alexander Solzhenitsyn The Gulag Archipelago , Harper & Row, 660 pp., ISBN 0060803320, Anne Applebaum Gulag: A History . Doubleday. ISBN 0767900561 (2003), Lynne Viola, The Unknown Gulag, The Lost World of Stalin's Special Settlements Oxford, 2007, 9780195385090, For a bibliography on the Gulag see: Selected Bibliography of Historical Works on the Gulag compiled by Wilson Bell and Marc Elie, published in Gulag Studies , 2008. See, also, Alexander Yakovlev’s A Century of Violence in Soviet Russia . Yale University Press, 2002. ISBN 0300087608, 7 Forced labour concentration camps still exist in various totalitarian (or semitotalitarian) states, such as North Korea. A compelling account of the fate of one inmate of a camp in North Korea, and the only one known to have been born in a North Korean Prison Camp and to have escaped from it, is given in the biography of Shin Donghyuk, entitled Escape from Camp 14 : One Man’s Remarkable Odyssey From North Korea to Freedom in the West by Blaine Harden, 2012, ISBN 9781101561263.

7 The Nazi system of death and forced labour camps will undoubtedly be well documented in the Holocaust pavilion at the CMHR, and the information and bibliography on this subject is known to the CMHR researchers, so it will not be dwelt upon in detail here.

The Soviet system of concentration camps, was set up in the 1920s and lasted to the years of Gorbachev’s “perestroika” (reconstruction) in the late 1980s. The total number of prisoners that went through the Gulag numbered over 15 millions and their slave labour was an important contribution to the Soviet economy. This is well documented in many scholarly works and archival evidence that became accessible after the fall of the USSR as well as memoirs by survivors or witnesses 8. A large proportion of the Gulag prisoners died from overwork, exposure, lack of adequate food and lodging, disease, physical punishment or execution.

(6) As mentioned, the German Nazi regime categorised various people as being “superfluous” and slated for death or slave labour. The Jewish population of Europe, at least that part of it which fell under Nazi German rule, was largely exterminated by mass shooting by Nazi “Einzatsgruppen” and by gassing, most of them during the period from 1941-1944. Other groups, such as the Roma (Gypsies) were similarly treated. Even Germans deemed by the Nazi regime to be “worthless” or “enemies of the Reich” were subject to extermination including the so-called “euthanasia” programme.

Slavic populations (which included Ukrainians, Poles, Belorusians, Russians, and others) were characterised as “untermenschen” (sub-humans) and were slated for extermination or reduction to the status of servant/slaves of the German “master race”. This anti-Slavic program was only partially carried out, largely by starvation of over two millions of Red army prisoners of war, by incarceration in concentration camps and the killing and execution of hundreds of thousands of people who were deemed to be involved in or supporters of anti-Nazi activity, mostly in Poland, Ukraine and Belarus. (Only a small portion of the Russian Federal Soviet Socialist Republic was occupied by the Germans during WW II and that mostly for a relatively brief period of time.)

There is a very large body of work (books, articles, films) that deal with this topic. A good overview, with cited sources, is Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (Basic Books, 2010).

Once the tide of WW II turned against the Germans in 1942, and a shortage of labour for the German war industry became severe, the Germans instituted a system of de-facto slave labour in camps, war industries and food production in which the Slavic Untermenschen were the majority of the workers Thus, over two millions of Ukrainian men and women, termed Ostarbeiter (“eastern workers”), were requisitioned for such work by the Nazi regime. This was the largest number of any nationality.

There is a considerable body of published work, including memoirs, on this subject. The UDRDC has audio and video interviews with Ukrainian Canadians who were “ost- arbeiters” in Germany during WWII. In addition the UCRDC has a number of interviews with Ukrainian Canadians who were incarcerated in Nazi concentration camps but managed to survive.

8 Anne Applebaum Gulag: A History . Doubleday. ISBN 0767900561 (2003)

8 (7) Ethnic Cleansing: The Soviet communist regime of the USSR, under the rule of Joseph Stalin, together with the newly installed satellite communist regimes in Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and Romania carried out a massive programme of ethnic cleansing during the immediate post WW II period. Thus, the borders of the new Poland were shifted West and North at the expense of German territories. Over 9 million Germans were forcibly deported from the territories of Silesia, East Prussia and other areas (which were given to Poland and to the Russian Soviet Federative Socialist Republic), as well as from Czechoslovakia and other countries.

In addition a “voluntary” exchange of Polish and Ukrainian population was carried out in 1945 and 1946, with about a million Ukrainians removed to the Soviet Ukraine from their ancestral lands in the south and east of the new Poland and over a million Poles removed from Western Ukraine to Poland. The remnants of the Ukrainian population in Southern and Eastern Poland, over 150,000 people, were deported by the communist government of Poland in 1947 to the (formerly German) regions in the West and North of the new Poland. They were dispersed in small groups among the Polish population with the intent of their rapid assimilation.

(8) It should be pointed out in the CMHR exhibits that though some Nazi perpetrators of crimes against humanity were tried and punished after the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945 (the Nőrnberg Trials, trials by the US, British, French and Soviet occupation authorities in post-war Germany as well as some trials by the authorities of the Federal Republic of Germany, France and Israel), no perpetrators of corresponding crimes against humanity by operatives of any of the totalitarian Communist regimes have been tried and punished (with the exception of the trials of some Cambodian Communist - Khmer Rouge - leaders, which is currently under way in Cambodia; to date, only one person, Kang Kek Iew, has been tried and sentenced to life imprisonment http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cambodia_Tribunal ).

(9) The exposition of the crimes of totalitarian regimes at the CMHR, particularly those of the Soviet Communist and Nazi German regimes, is of particular interest to Ukrainian Canadians, since many are victims or descendants of victims of the Soviet Communist and Nazi German oppression.

Many Ukrainian Canadians who had been prisoners in the Gulag or Nazi concentration camps have written memoirs.

Some examples of memoirs of Soviet Gulag camps are:

Nicholas Prychodko One of the Fifteen Million , Little, Brown and Company, 1952, 236 p.

Danylo Shumuk, Life sentence: Memoirs of a Ukrainian political prisoner , Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Study, 1984, 401 pp., ISBN 978-0-920862-17-9.

There are Canadians still living that have spent many years in the Soviet Gulag, such as Hryhoriy Herchak of Tpronto, who spent over 25 years in the Soviet camps.

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Some examples of memoirs by Canadians who survived Nazi concentration camps are:

Rev. Semen Izyk Smiling Through Tears Published by Progress, Winnipeg, MB 1994.

Stefan Petelytsky Into Auschwitz, for Ukraine Kashtan Press, Kingston, 1999. (Available on-line: http://www.uccla.ca/In%20Auschwitz-Petelycky.pdf )

Michael H Marunchak Dying and living in Ebensee: recollections of prisoner No. 120482 The Ukrainian Weekly, May 5, 2002, No. 18, Vol. LXX http://www.ukrweekly.com/old/archive/2002/180218.shtml :

Rev. Jurij (George) Kowalsky Saved by the Blessed Virgin St. Josaphat Ukrainian Catholic Cathedral, Edmonton, 2008, ISBN 978-1-4401-5848-3 sc, -5847-6 (e-bbok)

See also: Petro Mirchuk In the German Mills of Death Vantage Press, 1976.

(10) The presentation of the oppression of Ukrainians by the Soviet and Nazi regimes at the CMHR should be illustrated by the S. Nowytski documentary film “Between Hitler and Stalin. Ukraine in WW II. The Untold Story” produced by the UCRDC in 2003. This should be supplemented with additional material, particularly interviews with Canadians, who lived through the horrors of Nazi and Soviet rule in their younger years.

The film “between Hitler and Stalin” should be available for viewing in segments and its entirety at the CMHR and it should be available for sale at the CMHR shop.

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