Why is the Museum covering up Communist crimes?

By Oksana Bashuk Hepburn

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Vujko Ilko has been visiting Winnipeg, the home of the controversial Canadian Museum for Human Rights. He attended the Ukrainian Canadian Congress public meeting designed to cast some light on the status of the Museum’s treatment of the Holodomor.

“How was the weather in Winnipeg, Uncle Ilko?” I ask as an opener.

“Left me as miserable as the UCC dog and pony show.”

“Why, Unc?”

“Because it’s the 11th Hour, that’s why. For UCC to win a case for a fair and equal treatment of the Holodomor would require more than a call to raise money and to write letters to MPs. That should have been a tactic years ago when they first had a whiff that the Museum was not honouring its commitment to the proper treatment of the famine genocide. It seems that it’s been determined for some time now to highlight the crimes of the Nazis while covering up those of the Communists.”

“Back up Vujko. What happened during the especially arranged tour for UCC in early February?”

“The UCC was skunked. Apparently it sent an indignant letter to the Museum but when asked for a copy, none was forthcoming. The UCC reports a most unsatisfactory treatment of the Holodomor. Dr. Clinton Curle, the man responsible for content, says the Holocaust will serve to illustrate the danger in today’s world: Germany had a constitution, etc.-etc., yet bad things happened. The same should be said for Ukraine at the time of the Soviets. It too had a constitution and an ideology that promised heaven on earth…”

“…but delivered hell.”

“Exactly! Yet this is irrelevant to the Museum’s Board. It treats the Holocaust as a unique occurrence; in an exclusive manner, and denies viewers equal access and comparison to the overwhelming crime committed by the Communists. Discrimination plain and simple.”

“The battling against the Nazis is everywhere, as if they still were a threat. Recently, CNN repeated over and over that Neo-Nazis were behind the shooting of a prosecutor in the US. Turns out this was wrong but beating the dead horse and fear-mongering continues.”

“Exactly. The Nazi ideology has been dead some sixty years and is brought up whenever a bogeyman is needed. Meanwhile, Communists’ brutality keeps marching on but gets whitewashed. Lenin’s crimes are protected by silence, while the long-gone threat from Hitler gets ongoing and prominent exposure. The Museum is but a most recent and dangerous example.”

“Vujku, I read that Communism is the most avaricious and nasty ideology of the 20th Century; some 120 million dead world-wide and still at it. Why is Canada refusing to tell this story?”

“Clearly, influential people have an interest in exposing Nazi crimes and protecting those of Communism. Remember Lazar Kaganovych? He was Stalin’s No. 2 man charged with eliminating national identity in order to create a Soviet State. The Holodomor was but one instrument used in Ukraine where people refused to be Sovietized. There were others - mass exile to Siberia, executions - designed to free-up real estate for “deserving” apparatchiks. A Kaganovych grandson wrote that his grand pop has nothing to be ashamed of. Imagine someone saying Hitler has nothing to be ashamed of. Yet the Museum is determined to minimize Communist crimes.”

“Have the Museum’s decision-makers thought this through, Unc? The UCC says it submitted some 800 documents, but to no avail. There should have been a furor then and there.”

“Well, I don’t remember a furor then and today’s is rather late. But this doesn’t change the fact that the Museum’s Board is wrong in keeping the scale of both atrocities out of the public’s mind. There is no learning; no understanding that there was a ferocious clash of two deadly ideologies and two dictators. This gross omission leaves one with perception that one ideology was bad; the other was okay. Therefore, no appreciation that any ideology can be perverted and that absolute power is dangerous.”

“Exposure is everything. There’s a tempest in a teapot over Justin Beiber’s comment about Anne Frank and how, had she lived today, he hoped that she would have been a fan: an innocent comment. Yet monstrous Communist crimes get justified with tokenism.”

“And knowledgeable Canadians are upset.”

Vujku, did you hear that Minister Jason Kenney focused on the reconciliation between Ukrainians and Jews during his trip to Kyiv in March? He says he’s already spent some $400,000 in doing so.”

“Good grief! More agenda hijacking. First, the government funds an ill-conceived museum that enrages Canadians, then gives money to work on “reconciliation”? Who got the contract?”

“UCC should find out and tell us.”

“It would tell us a lot. But they don’t seem to strike at the root of problems, just hack away at the branches. The town-hall meeting offered several ways forward – some old, some new: public non-confidence for the Museum’s Board; bringing a complaint to the Canadian Human Rights Commission; and even a legal process for reneging on a written commitment.”

“I’m worried that it may not go forward with these ideas, Vujku.”

“Worry about that and Canada’s future. The Museum’s position reflects a “we and they” trend that is not being nipped in the bud by the very institution meant to provide balance in our society. That’s shameful.”

“Folks should call UCC and Minister Kenney’s office to find out who is getting the nearly half-million dollars to work on “reconciliation”. A press release explaining who in the Ukrainian community initiated and supports this “reconciliation” and who got the money would be a good step.”

“And sign the UCC petition to reverse the unequal treatment of the Holodomor. Miracles do happen at the 11th Hour.”