LETTERS TO THE EDITOR (04/09/00)

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Kuropas should pay a visit to Cuba

Dear Editor:

I never miss Dr. Myron Kuropas' thought-provoking columns in The Ukrainian Weekly. I happened to be on vacation in Cuba when the January 23 issue arrived. After reading Dr. Kuropas' article I realized that the author has never visited Cuba and therefore does not really know what is going on there now. Although American citizens are not permitted to travel to Cuba, journalists may obtain special permission to go there. l strongly urge Dr. Kuropas to visit Cuba and see this country for himself, instead of drawing on very old and tired clichés about this country.

From first-hand experience I can say that Cuba is changing and moving slowly towards a market economy. Tourism is booming in this beautiful country, now home to a variety of Canadian and Spanish hotel chains. Joint ventures initiated by Mexican, Italian, and Israeli companies are on the increase. Cuba's population is highly educated, with some Cubans speaking four languages fluently. People are kind and hospitable, and their love of children is remarkable and exceptional. Family ties are strong.

That is why I am both shocked and surprised that the little Cuban boy Elian, following his traumatic experience at sea, is being made to live with strangers in a foreign country, and has become a political football and pawn of unscrupulous strangers. He should have been returned to his father immediately. According to international law, the United States has no right to keep Elian - this is ordinary kidnapping with political overtones. Furthermore, this little boy has suffered a profound trauma and should be seen by a psychologist. He can get professional help in Cuba for free.

Elian's mother apparently was misled by her boyfriend and did not have enough common sense not to take her small child on a hazardous journey in a leaky boat. For her foolishness she paid with her life.

And what of Elian's future in the United States? The thrill of receiving lots of toys and another trip to Disneyland will not last for long. Soon he will be "free" to experience an inferior education, watch violence and sex on television, and observe how schoolchildren blast away at each other with guns.

Elian's loving family and his father's house in Cuba await him, so his American relatives in Miami should have no fear for either his safety or his well-being.

Halina Szymonowicz, M.D.
Montreal

FDR's shortcomings hurt Ukrainians

Dear Editor:

Some comments on the views (March 12) of Alexander Kuzma and Boris Danik. Mr. Kuzma in his long-winded defense of FDR basically rehashes the same propaganda that Mr. Danik gave us in his first letter. Essentially, FDR promised all Americans a bacon-and-eggs breakfast in the midst of the Depression, and he delivered! Those who don't agree with this are labeled "right-wing idealogues-crusaders" who are jealous of the "New Deal" and are always denigrating it as the "raw deal."

These two authors don't seem to realize that not all critics of FDR are "right-wing" anything. It's not FDR's mixed bag (capitalism with socialist safeguards) that bothers me. Its his unprecedented (for an American president) violation of human rights! No other U.S. president put more innocent American citizens and their families into concentration camps, depriving them of their property, assets and civil rights. FDR has been accused of being a war criminal for this as well as for his complicity in the Pearl Harbor massacre. The entire post-war Ukrainian immigration of displaced persons and their descendants are lucky that FDR died when he did for this brought an earlier end to the disgraceful "Operation Keelhaul" that forcibly returned refugees to Stalin.

The tragic histories of Japanese Americans, Italian Americans, and German Americans have been well documented. The plight of Ukrainian Americans has barely been scratched although Dr. Myron B. Kuropas alludes to it in his history of the Ukrainian National Association.

I recall the story a Ukrainian American Catholic priest told me about how the FBI visited and warned him that his sermons were being "monitored" for Ukrainian patriotic content which they considered to be "subversive." He was told to stick to the gospels and to forget about the ongoing martyrdom of the Ukrainian people. Mr. Kuzma's time would be better spent declassifying anti-Ukrainian FBI files instead of worrying about FDR's reputation.

Mr. Kuzma berates Dr. Kuropas for not showing enough respect and homage to Gandhi, Martin Luther King Jr. and to Rukh. However it was George Orwell who eloquently asked what good would a million Ukrainian Gandhi types do in the face of Stalinist terror such as in 1933? Indeed our people have produced (maybe overproduced) their share of Gandhi and King types. These types do succeed in achieving change in capitalist countries, but are useless in murderous totalitarian regimes.

The USSR collapsed because its elite lost its fanatical fervor and nerve in resorting to mass murder on a grand scale using the formula handed down by Stalin. See the book "The Uses of Terror" by Borys Lewytsky for an understanding of how the Communists could have maintained perpetual power. When the Soviet elite didn't have the stomach to massacre the thousands of Germans dismantling the Berlin Wall (they still had the will to commit small massacres, like in Lithuania), it was clear their end was near.

Mr. Danik admits that Soviet spies successfully infiltrated the German high command and FDR's inner government, but claims this was insignificant. Let me give him a clue. Germany lost the war, and the United States lost its top secret atomic bomb to Stalin. Soviet espionage had nothing to do with any of this? Yeah, right!

He also maintains that FDR did not give away Eastern Europe to Stalin. Isn't it odd, however, that when the Western powers told Stalin that he overstepped the deal by taking Austria and Greece he quickly backed off. The Western powers didn't give a hoot about the Slavic nations and gave Stalin a free hand in terrorizing them.

Actually, this may have been fortuitous for Ukrainians because who knows what would have been left of our nation had the Communists not diluted their terror on others. Suffice it to say, prior to Communist occupation, few of our neighbors respected us. After experiencing pan-Slavic Russian communism, Poland's traditional antipathy changed and it eagerly became the first country to recognize independent Ukraine.

In conclusion, both of these authors have overreacted in a partisan way to Dr. Kuropas critiques of FDR's shortcomings, and have neglected to consider how those shortcomings have hurt both Ukrainians in Ukraine and Ukrainian Americans.

Jaroslaw Sawka
Sterling Heights, Mich.

| Home Page |