A Righteous and Necessary Crusade

Walter Kish

Last week, I was finally able to view on video Roman Polanski’s Oscar winning film “The Pianist”, a gritty survival saga that recounts the experiences ofWladyslawSzpilman, a reknowned Jewish pianist in Warsaw during the Second World War.Overcoming incredible odds, he survives the best efforts of the Nazi killing machine to exterminate Warsaw’s – and Poland’s – considerable Jewish population.The film pulls no punches in graphically depicting the atrocities committed, many based on the personal recollections of Polanski, himself a survivor of the Krakow ghetto.

This week I also finished reading an interesting if eclectic book by the name of “Everything is Illuminated” by a young New York Jewish writer Jonathan SafranFoer.The book, part documentary and part mystical fiction, recounts the author’s pilgrimage to Ukraine in search of his parent’s ancestral village of Trachimbrod near the city of Lutsk, and a mysterious woman name Augustine who saved his grandfather from the Germans during the Second World War.The book explores the history of the shtetl through a mythological lens that culminates with its destruction by the Germans in 1941. It careens between the extremes of both comedy and tragedy, confronting painful truths and moral dilemmas in the process.

Both the book and the movie, as well as being notable artistic creations, are prime examples of how the post-war Jewish community has succeeded in ensuring that history and posterity does not forget the genocidal injustices perpetrated against their race during and prior to World War II.Books on the subject abound, while the film industry has led the fray with such memorable movies as Schindler’s List, Sophie’s Choice, Playing For Time and Sunshine.

Numerous museums, memorials and observances have been dedicated to ensure that the lessons of the Holocaust are not lost on future generations.

I cannot help but be awed by the dedication and the efforts of the Jewish community in promoting Holocaust awareness.It is undoubtedly a righteous and necessary crusade.

At the same time, it saddens and grieves me to see how little the world knows of our own Ukrainian Holocaust, and how little effort we have made as Ukrainians to publicize and bring our own tragedy to light.During two very decisive and tragic decades in the 1930s and 1940s, tens of millions of Ukrainians were starved, executed or killed at the hands of Russian Communists or German Nazis.Millions were forcibly displaced and exiled from their homes and native land.Where are the books, novels, documentaries, feature films, memorials and commemorations that testify to these atrocities? Where are the Ukrainianauthors, artists, filmmakers, journalists and politicians who should bear witness to these historical crimes?

In the diaspora, there have been some efforts made in recent years, particularly in publicizing Stalin’s infamous artificial famine of the 1930s. However, it seems that to most Ukrainians, the events are just too painful to recall and relive, and hence are best left to fade away into history.Compared to the Jewish Holocaust, there is very little literature or information in the public domain on what one can rightly call one of the greatest crimes against humanity of all time.

What is more galling is that since Ukraine became independent over a decade ago, we have had available the vast resources of our own nation state, yetthe Ukrainian government has shown great reluctance to expose these historical crimes, especially those of the Soviets.Small token memorials and statues have been erected to the victims of both Nazi and Stalinist terror, though by their very limited size and scope, they are more an insult than an honour to those they purport to commemorate.The Nazi party was long ago discredited both morally and legally, yet the Communists in what used to be the Soviet Union are still accorded legitimacy and freedom of operations.Incredibly, they have not been held accountable for the death and misery they caused over the past century.It is only by a full and broad exposure of the truth that we can ensure that such cancers are not allowed to fester in the future.

It is the moral duty of the Ukrainian community and especially the Ukrainian government to make the truth of the Ukrainian Holocaust known to the world, and to ensure that the evils of both fascism and communism are never allowed to take root again anywhere on this shared planet of ours.