The Holocaust was genocide, so too the Armenian Genocide, and yet somehow not the Ukrainian Holodomor (the artificially created Famine)?
A letter has come to us from France which raises doubts as to whether Europe has really learned the terrible lessons of the Holocaust and other mass-scale instances of genocide in the last century.
Ukrainians in France, themselves citizens of that country, are asking Ukraine to help them in their struggle against anti-Ukrainian forms of negation.
The Professor of Contemporary History at L'Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot - Madame Annie Lacroix-Rize, denies that the Famine of 1932-1933, organized by Stalin, really happened.
This shameful position of negation has aroused legitimate and well-founded protest from associations representing the stand of around 75 000 French citizens of Ukrainian origin.
Since July 2005, neither the Minister of National Education of France, nor the Head of L'Université Paris 7 - Denis Diderot have responded to their numerous letters and have refused to meet with representatives of the French-Ukrainian associations.
In this tense situation a meeting finally took place on 2 February 2006 between a representative of the Committee for the defence of democracy in Ukraine and a government official of the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs, however it achieved nothing.
Representatives of French citizens of Ukrainian origin are calling on Ukrainian civic organizations, as well as on political and parliamentary circles and associations to express their protest to the French Ambassador in Ukraine and ensure that an end is put to such disrespect to the memory of the victims of the terrible Holodomor and to the honour of the Ukrainian people.
Signed on behalf of numerous associations by Nicolas Cuzin and Frederic Hnyda
Comite' Ukraine 33 - Comite' de De'fense de la Démocratie en UKRAINE
15 rue de l'Espe'rance - 69003 - LYON ukr-33@wanadoo.fr [1] cddu-pdt@wanadoo.fr
From “Maidan”
Professor Annie Lacroix-Rize does not only deny that Holodomor. took place. She also attacks the Church, accusing it of having collaborated with the Nazis and having giving its blessing to mass murders. We find the logic baffling of this Paris professor who in her publication from 1996 “The Vatican, Europe and the Reich from the First World War to the Cold War” presents “academic” texts about the “Catholic army of Ukraine” and about what she alleges was the involvement of the Greek-Catholic Church in the Holocaust. Here it would be more appropriate to discuss the academic qualifications of the author and her disregard for historical facts. It is possible that she was unable to discover the evidence of the Metropolitan Andrij Sheptytsky’s having risked his own life to save the Lviv Rabbi David Kahane. If so, then Maidan can help her find a reasonably reliable historical source – the memoirs of the Rabbi himself.
However for us, what is also important in this issue is the position taken by the Ukrainian leadership. We know that President Yushchenko, while in France, was not deterred by the possibility of gossip from the anti-Ukrainian lobby from placing flowers on the grave of Simon Petliura. What about other State officials, in the first instance from the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, who should be defending Ukraine’s interests? Is it of no concern to them that defamatory remarks are being spread about the State and the nation that they represent? Are they waiting until the President is called a sympathiser of black-hundred pogroms, before they begin, with the grace of dinosaurs, to react?