Justice For All!

By Dr. Myron Kuropas

Will Communist war criminals ever receive the same justice as Nazi war criminals?  No.  The world has forgotten.  

One has to admire the Jews. They never forget.  And the American taxpayer is helping keep the memory alive.  The U.S. Holocaust Museum, located next to the Washington Monument in Washington, D.C., is a prime example.  Federal sources supply $47.3 million of the total $78.7 million budget which supports a staff of 400 employees. Even though the U.S. has an enormous budget deficit, no politician dares suggest reducing this federal largesse.  For the record, the original intent of the legislation, signed by President Jimmy Carter, was the inclusion of Polish and Ukrainian victims of the Holocaust.  This goal has been totally ignored.

Another example of American taxpayer assistance for Holocaust remembrance is the infamous Office of Special Investigations, which is guilty of prosecutorial misconduct.  The closest OSI has come to an apology was to admit recently that it erred in the Demjanjuk case by having the wrong “predicate” in the original indictment, that is, “Treblinka” should have been “Sobibor”.  Oops.

The Israeli contribution to Holocaust memory has been show trials.  Adolf Eichman was found guilty. Ivan Demjanjuk was not.  These days, however, Palestinian terrorists are the prime Israeli target.  According to a recent issue of Haaretz, a leading Israeli gazette, the most recent “snatch” was that of a Palestinian engineer travelling in Ukraine. 

Factual and fictional stories about the Mossad, the fabled Israeli agency for intelligence and special tasks have always fascinated me. My favourite fictional author of late is Daniel Silva, whose hero in such thrillers as Death in Vienna, The Confessor, and Prince of Fire, is one Gabriel Allon, an Israeli agent charged with tracking and eliminating terrorists. 

Will Soviet-era criminals ever get their just desserts?  The world’s most horrific Communist mass murderers - Lenin, Stalin, Mao Zedong, Ho Chi Minh, Pol Pot - died in bed.   During their hey-day, they were celebrated by many academics in the West. 

What about Ukraine’s mass murderers?  Messrs. Kaganovich and Khrushchev were never brought to trial.  What about those old KGB criminals who are still living?  With Messrs. Putin and Yanukovych running the show, they too will die a peaceful death.  Besides, Sovietism is far from dead.  The players are different as are the costumes and stage settings.  But it’s the same basic show.

Perhaps our only hope for “justice” lies in other genres.  The most recent example is the spy thriller, Deliver Us From Evil, by David Baldacci, author of 18 best-selling novels.  Baldacci introduces us to Fedir Kuchin, a heinous psychopath dealing in narcotics, human trafficking, and arms sales.  Born in Ukraine, Fedir was once a high-ranking KGB officer organizing mass murders, but now lives under an assumed name in Canada. As Baldacci explains in his book, Fedir’s loyalty was never to Ukraine, but rather to the glory of the Soviet Union.  Two clandestine organizations are seeking justice for Fedir, because of his atrocities in Ukraine, the other for his nuclear arms sales to terrorists. Both want him dead.

As the story unfolds, members of the first organization, financed by a Ukrainian living in the West, are discussing life in Ukraine under Stalin.  “Have none of you heard of the Holodomor?” asks Mallory, the group leader.  Reggie, the heroine, explains, “Holodomor is Ukrainian for ‘death by hunger’. Stalin killed nearly ten million Ukrainians in the early 1930s through mass starvation. That included nearly a third of the nation’s children.”

When Dominic asks how that was possible, Mallory explains.  “Stalin sent in troops and secret police and they took all the livestock, poultry, food, seeds, and tools with particular emphasis on the Dnieper River region. Then he sealed the borders to prevent escape and replenishment of the stolen articles, and also to stop the news from getting out to the rest of the world.  No Internet then, of course. Entire towns starved to death; nearly a quarter of the rural population of the country perished in less than two years.”

“Why did he do it?” asks Dominic. 

“You ask why Stalin killed?” snapped Mallory. “Why does a snake bite? Or why does a great white shark devour its prey with nearly inconceivable savagery.  It was simply what he did on a larger scale than almost anyone before or since.  A madman.”

“But Stalin was also a madman with a motive,” interjects Reggie.  “He was trying to wipe out Ukrainian nationalism. And also to prevent farmers from resisting collectivization of agriculture.  It is said that there is not one Ukrainian living today who did not lose a family member through the Holodomor.” 

Amazing, right?  If non-Ukrainian fiction writers are accurately describing the Holodomor today, can ideologically constipated university academics be far behind?  We can only hope.