LETTER TO THE EDITOR (11/10/02)

LETTER TO THE EDITOR

Myron Kuropas must apologize

Dear Editor:

On September 22, Dr. Myron B. Kuropas made a blanket indictment, stating that "... practically every Ukrainian family had someone, somewhere, somehow, who was complicit in the debasement of other Ukrainians" in Soviet Ukraine. That statement cannot go out of my mind nor my heart.

When Morley Safer on CBS accused all Ukrainians of being "genetically anti-Semitic," I wrote a letter to him, to CBS and later contributed to the court proceedings filed by courageous Ukrainian Americans. I was compelled to these actions because I felt that my children and I were falsely accused of being "genetically anti-Semitic."

Dr. Kuropas' statement implies that my parents, their friends and numerous others who suffered persecutions by the Communists were in complicity with the Communists.

It is incomprehensible how Dr. Kuropas can make such a damning, irresponsible and false statement against those who suffered terribly in silence.

My family also was silent. However, their silence was not due to the complicity with the enemy, but because they feared that the lives of their loved ones would be in danger if they told the truth. It was the all-encompassing fear that kept them and millions of others silent.

The majority of people in present-day Ukraine still live in this all-encompassing fear, because they see their former tormentors still in power in independent Ukraine. This results in the feeling of hopelessness that Dr. Kuropas interprets as clandestine complicity with Soviet Communist government.

I am responding to Dr. Kuropas' accusation out of respect for the memory of my parents and millions of others who suffered. Dr. Kuropas seems not to understand the people he is writing about, or the past and present living conditions of these people. Probably he should spend more time on research and less on writing.

I never received any answers to my letters from Mr. Safer or CBS. But I hope to see a public apology by Dr. Kuropas to the millions of silent Ukrainians who were not complicit in the debasement of other Ukrainians.

Alla Lehky Heretz
Rutherford, N.J.

The Ukrainian Weekly welcomes letters to the editor. Letters should be typed (double-spaced) and signed; they must be originals, not photocopies. The daytime phone number and address of the letter-writer must be given for verification purposes.

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