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Zenia Chernyk, Board Chair, Ukrainian Federation of America
Ihor Gawdiak, President, Ukrainian American Coordinating Council
Philadelphia, PA and Washington, D. C., Tuesday, July 29, 2003
Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell, Co-chairman of the U.S. Helsinki
Commission, has just introduced the Ukraine Famine Senate Resolution, S.
Res. 202, into the United States Senate, where it has been referred to the
Committee on Foreign Relations.
Your help is urgently needed to show support for this resolution because
although 2003 marks the 70th anniversary of Stalin's genocide against the
Ukrainian people, many people are today still unaware of this tragedy. This
terrible deed must become a part of the common knowledge of all people
and not just those of Ukrainian descent. It needs to be recorded in general
history text books at all levels.
We urge all Ukrainian-Americans to directly communicate with the
Senate--urge your own Senators as well as other Senators to co-sponsor
Senate Resolution #202. Senators may be contacted at their local or their
federal offices. Phone calls and emails are the most effective way of doing
this. For Senate telephone numbers, contact the Capitol Hill switchboard
at (202) 224-3121 or (202) 225-3121.
You can also write: Sen. ___________, U.S. Senate, Washington, DC
20510. Contact information -- including Senate e-mail addresses-- is
available at the Senate's website:
http://www.senate.gov/general/contact_information/senators_cfm.cfm
For further information, you may call any of the following: Ukrainian
American Coordinating Council offices: Washington, D.C.: (202) 737-6090
or N.Y.: (212) 505-1765; or in Philadelphia, the Ukrainian Federation of
America office: (215) 663-9191, or Orest Deychakiwsky, Helsinki
Commission, at (202) 225-3964 or e-mail: orest.deychak@mail.house.gov
Ihor Gawdiak, President, Ukrainian American Coordinating Council
Zenia Chernyk, Board Chair, Ukrainian Federation of America
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The following Dear Colleague letter from Senator Ben Nighthorse
Campbell is now circulating in the United States Senate:
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Senator Ben Nighthorse Campbell
U.S. Senate, Washington, D.C.
July 29, 2003
Dear Colleague:
Yesterday, I introduced S. Res. 202, regarding the genocidal Ukraine
Famine of 1932-33. The resolution would commemorate the millions of
innocent victims of this Soviet-engineered famine and support the efforts of
the Ukrainian government and parliament to publicly acknowledge and call
greater international attention to one of the 20th century's most heinous
crimes. The report of the Congressionally-created Commission on the
Ukraine Famine concluded in 1988 that "Joseph Stalin and those around him
committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-33."
Seventy years ago, a man-made famine in Soviet-dominated Ukraine
and bordering ethnically-Ukrainian territory resulted in the deaths of
millions
of Ukrainians - estimates range from between four and ten million. In his
seminal book on the Ukraine Famine, Harvest of Sorrow, renown British
historian Robert Conquest writes, "A quarter of the rural population, men,
women, and children, lay dead or dying, the rest in various stages of
debilitation with no strength to bury their families or neighbors." The
Stalinist regime -- and, for that matter, subsequent Soviet leaders --
engaged in a massive cover-up of denying the famine.
This famine was not the result of drought or some other natural
calamity, but of Soviet dictator Stalin's inhumane, coldly calculated policy
to suppress the Ukrainian people and destroy their human, cultural and
political rights. It was the result of purposeful starvation. Requisition
brigades, acting on Stalin's orders to fulfill impossibly high grain quotas,
took away the last scraps of food from starving families, including
children, often killing those who resisted. Millions of rural Ukrainians
slowly starved amid some of the world's most fertile farmland, while
stockpiles of expropriated grain rotted by the ton.
Please join me in remembering the innocent victims of the Ukraine
Famine. It is important that the world not forget this genocidal famine and
that we support Ukraine's independence and democratic development as the
best assurance that such atrocities become truly unimaginable.
If you are interested in becoming a cosponsor of the Ukraine Famine
resolution, please have your staff contact Orest Deychakiwsky
(orest.deychak@mail.house.gov) or Mike Peterson at the Helsinki Commission
at 5-1901.
Sincerely,
/S/
Ben Nighthorse Campbell, U.S.S.
Co-Chairman, U.S. Helsinski Commission
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