GW ISSN 0001 - 0545 B 20004 F fieedmfa Indivicka/sf (left) Ukrainians and Afghans in Denmark protesting against Russian occupation of their countries. (right) Ukrainians in Great Britain demonstrating against genocide and persecution of freedom fighters of their fatherland. Verlagspostamt: Miinchen 2 January - February 1985 Vol. XXXVI. No. C O N T E N T S : Three More Victims of Russian Terror . 6 B. Ozerskyj The Situation in Ukraine and in the Empire 8 Z. Karpyshyn (USA) Developments in Europe and the USSR . 12 Dr. A. I lie (Croatia) Croats are not Y u g o s la v s ...............................16 V. Berko (Slovakia) The Political Situation in Slovakia . 19 Father Paul Marx The Forgotten Holocaust in Afghanistan . 20 Ex-prisoner on Trial for Memoirs . 21 Victims of Russian T e r r o r ...............................22 Statement of the European Freedom Council 24 Eric Brodin (USA) ‘1984’ for Over 25 Years in Cuba . 26 Slava Stetsko, M.A. ABN A ctiv ities.............................................................28 News and V iew s.............................................................34 From Behind the Iron Curtain .... 42 Book R e v ie w s .............................................................46 Publisher and Owner (Verleger und In­ It is not our practice haber): American Friends of the Anti- to pay for contributed materials. Bolshevik Bloc of Nations (AF ABN), Reproduction permitted but only 136 Second Avenue, New York, N. Y. with indication of source (ABN-Corr.). 10003, USA. Annual subscription: Zweigstelle Deutschland: Zeppelinstr. 67, 18 Dollars in the USA, and the equivalent 8000 München 80. of 18 Dollars in all other countries. Editorial Staff: Board of Editors. Remittances to Deutsche Bank, Munich, Editor-in-Chief: Mrs. Slava Stetsko, M.A. Filiale Depositenkasse, Neuhauser Str. 6, 8000 Munich 80, Zeppelinstr. 67/0 Account, No. 30/261 35 (ABN). West Germany. Articles signed with name or pseudonym Schriftleitung: Redaktionskollegium. do not necessarily reflect the Editor’s o- Verantw. Redakteur Frau Slava Stetzko. pinion, but that of the author. Manuscripts Zeppelinstraße 67/0. 8000 München 80, sent in unrequested cannot be returned in Telefon: 48 25 32. case of non-publication unless postage is Druck: Druckgenossenschaft „Cicero“ e.G. enclosed. Zeppelinstraße 67, 8000 München 80. THE PATH TRODDEN BY SAINTS Rev. Werenfried van Straaten’s sermon during a requiem for the late Patriarch Josyf Slipyj, which was held in St. Michael’s Church in Munich on Sunday, October 21, 1984. According to an old legend, Andrew the apostle blessed the hills around Kyiv and prophesied victory for Christianity in Ukraine. We know for certain that St. Clement, the third successor of St. Peter was banished by the Emperor Trajan to the Crimea, where he died a martyr and exercized an indelible in­ fluence on the Church in Ukraine. 500 years later, the banished Pope Martin I died a martyr’s death on the Ukrainian coast for the unity of the Church. Martyrdom for Christian unity has remained the glorious characteristic of the Ukrainian Church. It was the first Eastern Church to renew the union with Rome following the Great Schism with the Orient and it has repeatedly sealed its loyalty to the Apostolic See with rivers of blood and mountains of corpses. This witness through blood reached its zenith after the Second World War, when Stalin and the Moscow Patriarch forcibly integrated the Ukrainians unit­ ed with Rome into the Orthodox Church. Countless faithful, hundreds of priests and practically every bishop lost their lives through this unecumenical use of force, which those responsible in the Moscow Patriarchate still regard as having been a glorious page in the history of the Orthodox Church. Archbishop Josyf Slipyj survived the atrocities. Not through compromise but through maintaining unswerving loyalty. Even when he was offered the Patriarchal Seat in Moscow with the proviso that he renounce the union with Rome and the primacy of the Pope, he remained faithful and continued on his way of the cross which was to last 18 years. At the beginning of the Vatican Council his seat remained empty, while the representatives of Patriarch Alexej, who was in part responsible for the persecu­ tion, were present. There was a storm of protest. Pope John XXIII intervened personally. The unbending witness to his faith was set free on February 9th, 1963. From that day onwards he ran his Church in the catacombs and in exile from Rome up until September 7th of this year when he died at the age of 92 in the shadow of St. Sophia’s Cathedral which he had built. When the then Archbishop, Metropolitan of Lviv and sole survivor of the Ukrainian bishops (ten of them had been murdered or had died early in So­ viet gaols) was freed after an unjust, inhuman and arbitrarily prolonged im­ prisonment of 18 years and exiled to Rome, he received me straight away. From that moment onwards I was his admirer, his helper, his comrade-in-arms and his friend. He was a Prince of the Church with an iron character. His shattered and weakened body concealed an unbroken spirit. He was a brilliant theologian, a born scholar, and amongst all the Uniates, perhaps the most stubborn and able advocate of a pure Byzantine Rite. That made him a link with the Orthodox Church and the predestined leader of all the oriental Churches united with Rome. But he was a wholehearted spiritual leader also, who had left behind him 1 the beneficial traces of this activity as a priest in countless camps all over the Soviet Union. Each time when his influence became known, he was moved to another prison. Thus he had become a well-known symbol everywhere, outside Western Ukraine too and throughout the Soviet Union, not only for the dispersed Catholics but also for the genuine Orthodox Church which was to be found less among the prelates of the Moscow Patriarchate and more in the ca­ tacombs and concentration camps of Siberia. And because there exists alongside this holy Orthodox Church an unholy, Soviet dominated Orthodox Church, he finally also became an involuntary obstacle to an ecumenical rapprochement with Moscow’s official Church because it will never be possible for Rome to buy peace with the Russian Orthodox Church by betraying five million martyrs and faithful belonging to the Ukrainian Catholic Church. Cardinal Slipyj worked like a giant during his final 21 years in exile. Sub­ sequent generations will come to honour what he achieved for his exiled Church in the free world. I personally can testify to the way in which he begged, urged and requested me and “Aid to the Church in Need” to provide every con­ ceivable and possible assistance for his persecuted, bleeding and struggling Church in his homeland. He lived and died for this Ukrainian Church, in the East and in the West. To assure the continuation of this Church and only for that reason he accept­ ed the title of Patriarch in 1975 at the request of the Ukrainian synod of bishops and in expectation of legal confirmation by the Pope. As a faithful son of the Church who had to suffer more and longer than anybody this century for unity with the Apostolic See, he repeatedly sought this formal confirmation in letters and discussions and finally with the utmost vigour in his spiritual testament. He constantly explained to the ecclesiastical diplomats who were afraid of the atheist reaction that in the Eastern Church neither the Popes nor the world councils had ever created patriarchs of the individual branch Churches. He tirelessly drew attention to the fact that endowing such branch Churches with a patriarchal crown was always the fruit of mature Christian consciousness in God’s people. Many did not understand this point. Even the dying martyr was not granted his wish, although it was not for his personal glory but for the existence of his Church that he sought it. May what he wrote in his spiritual testament about this central problem remain forever in your thoughts: “The Patriarchate which was the vision of your faithful souls has be­ come a living reality for you and will remain so in future. In a short while the Patriarch for whom you are praying will depart this earthly life. The visible symbol, the personification of the Patriarchate in his person will no longer exist. But in your consciousness and in your thoughts a living and real Ukrainian Church bearing a Patriarch’s crown will continue to exist. That is why it is my last wish that you pray as before for the Patriarch of Kyiv, Halyc and all Rus, even if you have no name to include. The time will come when the Al­ mighty will send our Church a Patriarch and reveal his name. We already have our Patriarchate.” As we add our “fiat” at the passing of our beloved Patriarch Josyf Slipyj to-day, let us hope that the precious Ukrainian wheat seed which fell on Roman 2 soil forty days ago will not be wasted but will yield fruit in abundance. It is written that “the soul of this just man is in God’s hands. He tried him and found him worthy.” God sent him trials. He was led along a way of the cross, the like of which hardly any Cardinal before him had to follow. He did so with exemplary loyalty, without hate towards his persecutors, but also without evading the con­ sequences in instances where compromise or escape could have made life easier. He followed the Lord faithfully. Because “where Christ was, there also His servant should be”. He suffered unspeakably while a witness to Christ as a prisoner in the Soviet Union, just as the Lord had prophesied: “And you shall be my witnesses in Je­ rusalem and in all Judea and Samaria and to the end of the earth” (Acts 1,8).