1987: A LOOK BACK: Ukrainian community in the U.S. (12/27/87)

1987: A LOOK BACK

Ukrainian community in the U.S.

The Ukrainian community in the United States sounded the alarm in March when it was learned that CBS would broadcast a made-for-TV docu-drama, "Escape from Sobibor," that depicted the guards at the Nazi death camp as being exclusively Ukrainian. Letter-writing campaigns were begun and many phone calls were made to CBS and the sponsor of the movie, Chrysler. Groups such as the Ukrainian American Professionals and Businesspersons Association of New York/New Jersey, the Ukrainian Heritage Council, and the Ukrainian National Center: History and Information Network (UNCHAIN) demanded that either the word "Ukrainian" be deleted from references to the guards, or that a disclaimer be broadcast with the film stating that it is not historically accurate to imply that all the guards at Sobibor were Ukrainians.

Ukrainian Americans became even more dismayed when they learned that the movie was to be used as an educational tool through the CBS Television Reading Program. The references to "Ukrainian guards" or simply "Ukrainians" in the script handed out to 750,000 students all over the country were even more numerous than in the film's dialogue, thus buttressing the erroneous notion that all the guards were of that one nationality.

Frustrated by CBS's and Chrysler's irresponsibility and unresponsiveness, Ukrainians held public protests in New York, Philadelphia, Chicago and Washington, and threatened to boycott all Chrysler products. CBS and Chrysler, however, would only go so tar as to note in a disclaimer that aired along with the docu-drama that the film contained some "prejudicial ethnic references."

Only in Pittsburgh were Ukrainians successful in obtaining an appropriate disclaimer. There, the station manager of the local CBS affiliate came on the air to tell viewers (in part): "Some, but not all the guards were Ukrainian. This show should not lead anyone to conclude that Ukrainians, as a people, were prejudiced or genocidal. Ukrainians, like many other ethnic groups, suffered greatly during World War II."

Finally, the Delaware Chapter of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America on June 4 filed suit against CBS and Chrysler for unspecified monetary damages. Furthermore, the suit stated that CBS should lose its broadcast license for airing a TV program that it knew was prejudiced, insensitive and misleading. CBS "used the governmental license and monopoly of the public airwaves to conduct the campaign [against Ukrainians], and denied plaintiff or others any opportunity to respond or correct ... public prejudicial attacks."

In other community developments, at a meeting of representatives of the two central organizations of Ukrainian Americans - the Ukrainian American Coordinating Council and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America - as well as members of non-aligned groups, the UCCA rejected mediators' proposals for new by-laws and the convocation of a Congress of Ukrainian Americans at which a united central representation would be established. The UACC had agreed to the compromise suggested by Bishop Basil Losten of the Stamford Ukrainian Catholic Eparchy. UCCA representatives, however, said they would not agree to new by-laws, but only to amendments to existing UCCA by-laws, and that they would not disband the UCCA to create a new body, but instead were calling on the UACC and other groups to participate in the already planned 15th UCCA Congress to be held September 16-18, 1988, in Washington.

Thus, the negotiations fell apart, and the meeting ended with intermediaries stating that talks would resume at such a time as conditions for re-establishing a unified central body improve.

Luckily, the disunity was nowhere in evidence on December 13 as a coalition of various Ukrainian groups participated in a Washington demonstration organized by the Ukrainian Human Rights Committee of Philadelphia and the UCCA on the occasion of General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's arrival in the U.S. for a summit meeting with President Ronald Reagan.

There were other positive developments that affected the Ukrainian American community, among them the following:

The U.S. State Department in February released its special report on the plight and struggle of Ukrainian Catholics. Titled "Soviet Repression of the Ukrainian Catholic Church," the reports noted that "no institution has suffered more [under Soviet repression] than the Ukrainian Catholic Church."
In April, a Congressional delegation that visited the USSR confronted high-ranking Soviet officials on human-rights abuses. Rep. Steny Hoyer of the U.S. Helsinki Commission presented a list of 154 political and religious prisoners from Ukraine to Ukrainian Communist Party chief Volodymyr Shcherbytsky during their meeting in Kiev. Still others lists of political prisoners and divided families were presented to officials in Moscow.
Ambassador Richard Schifter, assistant secretary of state for human rights and humanitarian affairs, took up the issues of religious freedom for Ukrainians, particularly for Ukrainian Catholics, as well as the continued incarceration of dissidents and restrictions on human contacts when he visited Moscow in mid-April. He gave a list of 253 religious prisoners, including many Ukrainians, to Konstantine Kharchev, chairman of the State Committee on Religious Affairs.
President Ronald Reagan delivered his annual Captive Nations Week address at the Ukrainian Catholic National Shrine's parish hall on July 24. Though he toned down his references to Soviet Union, he said he was eager to see the day when Ukrainians in the USSR who are members of the Catholic and Orthodox faiths "will again be free to gather and worship in churches like this." He also noted the case of Petro Ruban, a Ukrainian imprisoned in the notorious Perm special-regimen camp 36-1.
On October 14, on "Capital to Capital: Human Rights," the second of a series of debates between members of the U.S. Congress and the Supreme Soviet aired on ABC-TV, Sen. Daniel P. Moynihan of New York and Rep. Steny Hoyer of Maryland spoke forcefully about human rights violations in the USSR. Despite several rather humorous "technical difficulties," Sen. Moynihan managed to get across his point about the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the context of the upcoming Millennium of Christianity. "Can't you let the Ukrainian Catholic Church become a legal Church?" he asked. Meanwhile, Rep. Hoyer called the USSR the "chief violator of human rights."
Two recently released Ukrainian political prisoners, Danylo Shumuk, a staunch nationalist who served some four decades in prisons, camps and exile, and Yosyp Terelia, a leading activist of the clandestine Ukrainian Catholic Church, as well as two Georgian rights activists, brothers Eduard and Tenghiz Gudava, testified before the U.S. Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. Their testimony on October 22 drew one of the largest crowds ever at a Helsinki Commission hearing.

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