Turning the pages back... July 26, 1987 (07/20/03)

Turning the pages back...

July 26, 1987

Decades after the Great Famine in Ukraine (1932-1933), many still did not recognize that it occurred. As a partial solution to this problem, the U.S. Commission on the Ukraine Famine was established by Congress. On July 26, 1987, The Weekly reported that the public commissioners and staff of this U.S. government commission participated in a workshop at the O'Hare Marriot in Chicago. Ulana Mazurkevich (Philadelphia), Anastasia Volker (Warren, Mich.), Dr. Myron Kuropas (DeKalb, Ill.), and Dr. Oleh Weres (Sonoma, Calif.) were the four out of six commissioners who attended the June 19 session.

The purpose of the meeting was to investigate the progress the committee had made until that point and to set goals to be met in the next few months before its dissolution. The format and content of the future congressional report, the incorporation of the Famine into public school curricula in the U.S., the establishment of a national day for the commemoration of the Famine and the organization of a public relations campaign to increase public knowledge of the Famine, were discussed.

One of the suggestions made at the conference was that an audio recording of the oral history of the Famine collected by members of the commission should be made. The need to inform the public more widely about the Famine via TV, radio and press also was discussed. In order to incorporate information about the Famine into the school system, Dr. Kuropas spearheaded an educators' workshop in Chicago on the topic of the Famine, which was co-sponsored by the Illinois Ethnic Consultation and Illinois State Board of Education. At the commission meeting participants explored how other public commissioners could do the same in their home states.

Though the U.S Commission on the Ukraine Famine no longer exists, its spirit continues. Currently, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America is striving to have a monument erected in Washington to keep in our collective memory those who were starved to death in Ukraine during the Famine-Genocide imposed by Stalin.

Source: "Famine commission holds workshops in Chicago to assess progress," The Ukrainian Weekly, July 26, 1987, Vol. LV, No. 30.

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