Spokespersons for the Ukrainian Canadian community reacted with dismay to a recent report in the Canadian Jewish News (9 April 1999), entitled "Holocaust museum be derailed: Ukrainian-led effort could disrupt plans", by David Lazarus and Paul Lungen.

According to this article, the Canadian Jewish Congress has refused to co-operate with Canadians for a Genocide museum, which has been actively lobbing the federal government to provide permanent federal funding for an inclusive genocide museum in Ottawa, that would recall the many episodes of genocide and mass murder that have befallen many ethic, religious and racial minorities in this century and before, not only in Europe, but in Asia, Africa and other parts of the world, Led by Mr J B Gregorovich, who also serves as chairman of the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, the 20 constituent groups of the CFAGM, including representatives of the First Nations, Afro Canadians, Palestinians and other Canadian communities, invited the Jewish Canadian community to participate, only to be rebuffed.

Moshe Ronen, president of the Canadian Jewish Congress, has said that Prime Minister Jean Chretien has promised Jewish Canadians their own museum, that would apparently focus only on Jewish losses during the Second World War, excluding the millions of non-Jews who perished during the Nazi terror. A spokesman for the Simon Wiesenthal Centre, Sol Littman, decried CFAGM plants as being an attempt to "stymie" plans for a Holocaust (i.e. Jewish-only) museum, denouncing Mr Gregorovich of being guilty of "issue envy".

Commenting, Mr Stefan Petelycky, a Holocaust survivor, Auschwitz tattoo #154922, said:

"As a Canadian who survived the Holocaust, and in particular the Nazi concentration camps of Auschwitz, Mathausen and Ebensee, and who saw many of my friends perish there, Jews and non-Jews alike, I am very shocked to hear Mr Ronen's claim that Ottawa plans to remember only some of the victims and not others. That is unacceptable to me as a Holocaust survivor".

Speaking for UCCLA, Mr Gregorovich noted:

"We are in favour a federally funded genocide museum in our nation's capital, an educational and commemorative centre that would be inclusive, and would include the Jewish Shoah and the many other episodes of genocide that many people and nations suffered in this century and before, in Europe and elsewhere around the world. Our proposal in no way diminishes the Shoah or the impact of that terrible crime against humanity on the Jewish people then, or since. It is repugnant, however, for anyone to suggest that our shared efforts to recall the genocide of 1933 in Soviet Ukraine, or the tens of millions of persons slaughtered by the communists throughout eastern Europe, or in the killing fields of Cambodia, or the victims in Armenia, Bosnia, Rwanda an example of "issue envy". Persons making such comments seem to be intent on genocide-denial, Unlike them, we are not trying to exclude the memory of any genocide, nor give any war crime or crime against humanity precedence over any other. This is Canada. We live in a multicultural society, one in which we should all become more aware of the tragedies that befell of our nations and peoples before we came to find sanctuary in this great country. A genocide museum would not only educate us all about the horrors of the past but would, in our view, contribute to nation-building by making us all appreciative how fortunate we are to be able to live together in freedom in Canada".

For more information please contact:

Mr. J.B. Gregorovich, Chair, UCCLA (519) 323-9349

Also visit www.infoukes.com/uccla