MP Wrzesnewskyj Writes
TDSB Chair
Excerpt
from letter to John Campbell, Chair,
…
It is my understanding that the Ontario
Ministry of Education has approved the TDSB’s Grade 11 course entitled
Genocide: Historical and Contemporary Implications. As someone who has devoted
a considerable amount of time to addressing human rights issues in the former
Soviet Union and who has organized, financed and led fact-finding missions to
devastated Somalia and the Darfur region of Sudan, I applaud the introduction of
a full-credit course which will allow students to study, explore and confront
genocide, war crimes and crimes against humanity. It will provide young
students with a historical context of the horrific consequences of travelling
down the path of intolerance or a belief in racial or religious superiority.
… I am a founding member and serve on the
executive of the All-Party Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide
and Crimes Against Humanity, whose first chair was Senator Romйo Dallaire. We
often engage in discussions about the importance of education in the prevention
of future crimes against humanity.
I have also had the opportunity to lecture
and engage on the issue of genocide with
The first category of genocide is the most
primitive and common form of genocide; this form of genocide, which predates
written history, I call the “hurricane of hatred” when one tribe descends upon
another with the intent to massacre the other tribe’s members. In the 20th
Century, the world was frozen by a lack of political resolve when a
“hurricane of hatred” descended upon
The second form of genocide, “genocide by
attrition,” appeared as a contemporary of human civilization and written
history. Typically, this form of genocide entailed a city state’s population
being surrounded militarily, allowing hunger and disease, that is, “genocide by
attrition.” In the 20th Century, the world stood by as Stalin
encamped “Europe’s breadbasket” in Ukraine, [and] millions of peasants were
starved through a “genocide by attrition” all the while grain produced on these
fertile fields was being exported to the West. This particular “genocide by
attrition” not only deserves special note as it had the largest number of
victims by this form of genocide, but also because there continues to be “Holodomor
genocide denial” by the
Finally, there is the third category of
genocide of which there is only one horrific example, “the Holocaust.” A
genocide by which politicians engaged not just soldiers, but highly educated
engineers and scientists in its meticulously planned “Final Solution.”
While I applaud the introduction of a course
by the TDSB that “investigates examples of genocide in the twentieth and
twenty-first centuries,” I am perplexed and disturbed that one of the greatest
mass murders in European history and the most horrific example of “genocide by
attrition,” the 1932-1933 Holodomor (Famine Genocide) in Ukraine, a
famine master-minded and carried out by the Soviet regime under Joseph Stalin,
is not explicitly mentioned along with the “Holocaust, Armenia, and Rwanda”.
This is especially worrisome as there is no lack of “holodomor/genocide”
deniers in
… A number of constituents, who are also your
constituents, have raised concerns with me… I have also been contacted by Mr. Marco
Levytsky, Editor of Ukrainian News, a national Ukrainian Canadian newspaper,
seeking answers to the following questions:
1)
Why was the Holodomor omitted from the list of genocides to be
explicitly studied?
2) Are there any plans to rectify this omission?
3) If so, is the TDSB willing to work with the Ukrainian Canadian community to
rectify this omission?
I
would ask you to review the issues and concerns that I and many others in
Bruce
Davis, TDSB Trustee
(Ward
3 Etobicoke-Lakeshore)
Marco Levytsky, Editor & Publisher Ukrainian News
Hon. Yoine Goldstein, Chair,
All-Party
Parliamentary Group for the Prevention of Genocide and Crimes Against Humanity
Hon. Raynell Andreychuk, Senator
Gerard Kennedy