A UKRAINIAN REPLY

New Times, a weekly maga- zine published in the Soviet Union, a few weeks ago received a letter from a schoolgirl in Canada. She had read a pam- phlet issued by the “Canadian League for Ukraine’s Libera- tion” and was worried about the Russification of the Ukrainian people.

She said, “As I understand it, the Ukrainian people are not able to speak in their own language for fear of Russian per- secution, that they are made to speak and receive their school- ing in Russian, and that you have destroyed their national libraries (such as the one in

Kiev in 1964). I also learned that _

the churches have been de- stroyed, and that it is a crime to pray in front of children.”

An editors note commented:

“Of the 2,685 newspapers and magazines appearing in the Ukraine, 2,200 are published in Ukrainian (before the revolu- tion there was one Ukrainian language paper). About 3,000 books in the Ukrainian language were published in 1965, some in editions running into millions. There are a score and a half theatres playing in Ukrainian. And we could go on and on— but perhaps readers in.the Ukra- ine, or in other Soviet Republics for that matter, would like to reply to Miss Barnes through our columns?”

Reply they did.

Two weeks later there were already four letters from Soviet readers. The first was from the manager of the Republican Lib- rary of the Ukraine who points out that before the revolution there was not a single book in Ukrainian among the 80,000 books in the library. Of the two million books now in the libra- ry she says:

“We have exhaustive collec- tions of books, documents and

Hoch

Your review of Hochhuth’s play “Soldiers” (See Tribune March 11) currently playing in Toronto is far too generous and optimistic about its value as a commentary on history and a “challenge to our consciences”. One gets the impression that he has fallen victim to the cam- paign of hoop-la and whoop-de- do that accompanied the world premiere in English on a Toronto stage.

Hochhuth’s play is a distor- tion of history and a thinly dis- guised attempt to make Nazi Germany the victim of the war instead of the evil conspirators of the most monstrous crimes ever. perpetrated on mankind. The burden of the play is to ab- hor the bombing of German ci- ties, to slander the Soviet Union with the fabrication that the 4,000 Polish officers murdered in Katyn forest was carried out by the Soviet army and further that Churchill was implicated in the accidental death of Polish pre- mier Sikorski to please Stalin.

What was’ Nazi Germany and the Hitlerite war machine doing during the months covered by Hochhuth’s (1942-1943) and when the bombing of Germany was reaching its full intensity? German troops were occupying nearly all of Europe with brutal

repression of all human dignity _ MARCH 22,'1968—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Page 8 __

aa ee Wr oe © oRnl ae ke eae MAUDQAY

Gxt val

scientific monographs on the history of the Ukraine and on the scientific and cultural deve- lopment of the Ukrainian peo- ple.

“Ours,” she says, “is by no means the only library in Kiev. In fact, Kiev now boasts more than 1,000 libraries . . . And the Ukraine as a whole counts some 30,000 public libraries . . . Be- fore the revolution it had only 3,153 libraries.”

“All these facts,” she con- tinues, “testify to the cultural growth of the Ukrainian people, the triumph of the Leninist na- tional policy, the efforts made to satisfy the intellectual re- quirements of the people.”

She adds an interesting P.S.: “The League for Ukrainian Liberation asserts that our lib- rary was destroyed in 1964. The truth is that one of our four de- positories was temporarily clos- ed for repairs that year, but the library itself continued to serve readers without interruption.”

The next letter from a reader in Krivoy Rog, in the Ukraine Says:

“The name of the organiza- tion which issued the pamphlet Deborah Barnes read astonishes ‘me—‘League for Ukraine’s Libe- ration.” From whom and from what does it want to ‘liberate’ us? From the gains brought us by 1917? The very thought makes one laugh. I live in the Ukraine and I can tell Deborah that Ukrainian is spoken and used everywhere, on the radio and in the press, in the cinema, in books in official documents . ...

“In our country national dis- tinctions are vanishing in the sense that we hold Ukrainians, Russians, Byelorussians, Lat- vians and people of other natio- nalities equal and none enjoy an advantage over the other. All have the same rights. And all of

and “conscience.” On June 9, 1942 they destroyed the Czech town of Lidice by killing all the inhabitants or subsequently let- ting them die and then used bulldozers to obliterate the town site. And all this because the Czech resistance had killed one gauleiteer, (Heydrych), at Ora- dour Sur Glane in France they herded the women and children (600 of them) into the town church and set fire to it. Any who tried to escape were shot. The diabolical cremation ovens and gas chambers were opera- tion at full capacity in the in-

‘famous camps of Belsen, Trib-

linka, Maidenek, Auschwitz and many others.

These places were efficiently killing and burning their. inno- cent victims at the rate of 3,000 a day and kept up for four years until they had reduced to ashes four and a half million people. Indeed, the Nurenburg trials re- vealed that some of the camps had a killing capacity of 25,000 a day. They had three million armed men on Soviet territory, looting, raping, murdering and burning in a spree of carnage that defies the imagination.

If the bombing of any Ger- man city shortened the war by one day it was fully justified.

Hochhuth works the slander of Katyn forest charges to the

zt” eh Eth

us are united by a single con- cept — citizens of the Soviet Union.”

Another letter is from a Uk- rainian working in Kazakhstan in a big iron and steel mill. This is how he puts it:

“You can’t imagine all the dif- ferent languages spoken here at the Temir-Tau project. But the common language is Russian. The Ukrainians speak with the Kazakh, the Byelorussian with the Tatar, the Uzbek with the Georgian in Russian...

“It is nice of Deborah to want to see justice done to the Ukrai- nians, but if she is really con- cerned about injustice perhaps she would be better to write to Washington about the Negro problem.”

The other letter is from Mol- davia. The author says:

“I am a Ukrainian born in the town of Svatova, Lugansk Re- gion, and now living in Kishinev, where I work as a doctor’s as- sistant in the Municipal Sanit-

‘ary and Epidemiological Station.

Never have I been persecuted in any way. I studied in my native Ukrainian language, went to Uk- rainian or Russian theatres by choice. I speak both Ukrainian and Russian. We Soviet. people love Russian — the language spoken by our great Lenin. _

“Let Deborah Barnes know that the Soviet people live in a family of equal Soviet republics free from all oppression or per- secution, Let her not believe any of the vicious, lying claptrap to the contrary.”

The Canadian organizations like the “League for Ukraine’s Liberation” will probably con- ‘tinue to circulate their lying pamphlets, but these letters sure indicate how far off the mark they are and why they should be ignored by the Canadian people.

hth apaliging for

maximum, and thereby reveals the true purpose of his concoc- ted play. The alleged murder of 4,000 Polish ‘officers at Katyn was first made by Germans retreating from the Soviet Union. It was then picked by Sikorski and Polish emigre gov- ernment in London. Sikorsky

_and the Polish army on British

territory were political allies of German fascism and dreamed of fascist victory over the Soviet Union and a return of their wealth and privilege in a post- war Poland.

The Katyn charge was a slan- der and lie conjured by the Nazis to help cover their crimes. Furthermore the Nazis commit- ted hundreds of Katyns through- out Europe and particularly on Soviet territory. In France alone they killed 29,000 innocents as hostages. The Katyn “method” became standard practise. Can-

_adian soldiers who took part in

driving the Nazis from France, Italy, Holland and Belgium can tell of first hand experiences, First, the innocent and unarmed prisoners are forced to dig a common grave and pile the ex- cavated earth on one side, and then made to stand on the para- pet with their backs to the ma- chine gunners who cut them down like animals in a slaugh-

ter house.

February 21 was a day of ter- ror for anti-Vietnam war de- monstrators in West Berlin. The city administration, under the guidance of Mayor’ Klaus Schuetz, organized a pogrom- style attack on supporters of the Vietnamese people’s struggle.

The full extent of the violence was hushed up for a while but -has now leaked out.

At the height of the rioting, a mob closed in 6n a young blonde girl and screamed: “cut her hair off, beat her to death!” A score of hands grasped at her clothing, the crowd kicked and struck her as she stumbled to the pave- ment.

The German newsmagazine Der Spiegel reported that, “Any- thing that looked like a student came under the swinging fists.”

A journalist on the scene, Kai Hermann, protested at an assault on a bespectackled young man and himself was beaten un- conscious. Screams of “beat him to death” resounded until Her- man lay motionless and bloody on the pavement.

A clergyman, Pastor Gerd Boettcher, saw another group beating a young girl. When he attempted to intervene, he was severely beaten to screams of:

It is no honor for Toronto to host such a fabrication of feign- ed injustice.

If the willy Churchill was guilty of any bias in his war- time leadership of the western allies it was in his fervent hope that somehow the Empire would emerge intact and unscathed by the total war. Hitler proclaimed to the world, on June 22, 1941 when he sent his mercenary army crashing across the Soviet frontiers: “The outcome of this battle will determine the course of history for the next thousand years.” Let us hope that in this proclamation he was right and that fascism is never again per- mitted to become a world power.

The boring dialogue between Churchill and the Bishop of Chichester, (Dr. Bell) that is suposed to indicate the British “Crisis of. Conscience” over the policy of bombing German cities is also misrepresentation. There was no crisis of conscience in Britain, chrisitian or otherwise. There were mass meetings throughout Britain demanding the opening of the second front and hastening the total defeat of Nazi Germany.

I agree entirely with your re- viewer’s political sketch of Hochhuth. What a pity he did not leave it at that.

Hochhuth is an apologist for

’ stration

“you’re a communist pig too!”

The West German _ govern- ment is blaming the action on Mayor Klaus Schuetz who at- tempted to ban a demonstration of some 12,000 students, against American policy in Vietnam. When overruled by the courts, he called on citizens of West Berlin to stage a counter-demon- in support of U.S. policy.

About 50,000 of the counter- demonstrators were civic em- ployees released from work and brought in busloads to John F. Kennedy Square, where Mayor Schuetz called on them to show the left-wing students that ‘Ber- lin is no playground for extrem- ists;. we will not let our free Berlin be trampled underfoot.”

This rally was organized by the West Berlin Senate, the Springer newspaper trust and extreme right-wing groups.. It turned out to be in the true style of former Hitler Propagan- da Minister Goebbels’ mass ral- lies, which drew an estimated 150,000 Berliners into the streets, and was compared to “Crystal Night” in 1938 when denuncia- tion of Jews was first tran- slated into nationwide persecu- tion.

the present West German re- gime. His piece is in line with their efforts to become “like one of us.” They even wanted to join with Canadian veterans commemorating the battle of Dieppe two years ago.

On May 9, 1945, a day after

‘the surrender of the Nazi armies

in Europe, I was on duty in the German city of Oldenburg. A German officer approached me with outstretched hand and said: “Now we are brothers, we can join together and fight Soviet Russia.” One wonders in wit- nessing some of the events in West Germany and West Berlin today whether the Nazi influ- ence has yet been brought to a complete end. :

If there should be any skep- tics among your readers who might doubt the charges con- tained herein, may I refer them to a book obtainable in Metro libraries: “The Nuremberg Trials” by two German authors: J. Heydecker and J. Leeb. These writers have chronicled a full account of the Nazi horrors.

If author Hochhuth wishes. to portray for today’s generation the morals of that holocaust that is too politely referred to as a war, let him first describe the conscience, or better the lack of conscience of Nazi Germany.

Leslie Hunt.

Another ‘Crystal Night’