IN THE PRESS: Toronto Sun and Les Kinsolving focus on Duranty's cover-up of Ukrainian Famine (11/23/03)

THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

IN THE PRESS

Toronto Sun and Les Kinsolving focus on Duranty's cover-up of Ukrainian Famine

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - An article titled "Seven million died in the 'forgotten' holocaust" appeared in the November 16 issue of The Toronto Sun. The article, written by Eric Margolis, the paper's contributing foreign editor, dealt with the fact that the Ukrainian Great Famine of 1932-1933 has been largely forgotten.

"For Jews and Armenians, the genocides their people suffered are vivid, living memories that influence their daily lives. Yet today, on the 70th anniversary of the destruction of a quarter of Ukraine's population, this titanic crime has almost vanished into history's black hole," Mr. Margolis wrote.

The article goes on to say that numerous other nationalities were affected by Stalin's reign of terror, including Don Cossacks, Volga Germans, Lithuanians, Latvians, Estonians and Poles. According to the article, Stalin's gulag held 5.5 million prisoners at the end of the second world war - 23 percent of them Ukrainians and 6 percent Baltic peoples.

Mr. Margolis went on to write:

"Among these monstrous crimes, Ukraine stands out as the worst in terms of numbers. Stalin declared war on his own people in 1932, sending Commissars V. Molotov and Lazar Kaganovitch and NKVD secret police chief Genrikh Yagoda to crush the resistance of Ukrainian farmers to forced collectivization.

"Ukraine was sealed off. All food supplies and livestock were confiscated. NKVD death squads executed 'anti-party elements.' Furious that insufficient Ukrainians were being shot, Kaganovitch - virtually the Soviet Union's Adolf Eichmann - set a quota of 10,000 executions a week. Eighty percent of Ukrainian intellectuals were shot.

"During the bitter winter of 1932-33, 25,000 Ukrainians per day were being shot or died of starvation and cold. Cannibalism became common. Ukraine, writes historian Robert Conquest, looked like a giant version of the future Bergen-Belsen death camp."

Mr. Margolis also pointed out: "The mass murder of 7 million Ukrainians, 3 million of them children, and deportation to the gulag of 2 million more (where most died) was hidden by Soviet propaganda. Pro-communist Westerners, like The New York Times' Walter Duranty, British writers Sidney and Beatrice Webb and French Prime Minister Edouard Herriot, toured Ukraine, denied reports of genocide, and applauded what they called Soviet 'agrarian reform.' Those who spoke out against the genocide were branded 'fascist agents.' "

The author concluded his article by writing that "the U.S., British, and Canadian governments, however, were well aware of the genocide, but closed their eyes, even blocking aid groups from going to Ukraine."

Subsequently, The Ukrainian Weekly has learned that Eric Margolis is scheduled to be honored on November 30 in Toronto at a banquet sponsored by the Canadian Friends of Ukraine for his long standing commitment to reminding the world about the famine.

In an article posted on the internet news site WorldNetDaily.com on November 15 and titled "Gray Lady refuses to cover own story," journalist Les Kinsolving commented on the fact that The New York Times did not cover the 70th anniversary commemoration of the Ukrainian Famine Genocide of 1932-1933, which took place this past week in New York City.

"The New York Times - which has one of this nation's largest staff of reporters - was invited to cover an international conference at Columbia University on November 10, but they never showed up," Mr. Kinsolving wrote.

He went on to say that, "Even though it was sponsored by Columbia's Harriman Institute and the Permanent Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations and the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, among others - the Times ignored this conference.

"Even though The New York Times' Moscow correspondent and 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner, Walter Duranty, was the subject of discussion - because he denied the man-made Great Famine in Ukraine of 1932 (or the Holodomor) in which Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin's Red Army starved to death between 5 and 10 million Ukrainian men, women and children. The Times refused to cover," Mr. Kinsolving wrote.

Mr. Kinsolving noted that even though New York Times publisher Arthur Sulzberger Jr. had commissioned the conference's chairman, Dr. Mark von Hagen, to investigate the case of Times reporter Walter Duranty, "neither Sulzberger nor anyone else from The Times appeared or reported."

Mr. Kinsolving also noted that an article that appeared in the Columbia Journalism Review - which said that Mr. Sulzberger Jr. and members of the Pulitzer Prize board have been inundated with letters, postcards, faxes, e-mail and phone calls demanding that Walter Duranty's prize be returned or revoked - quoted Andrew Barnes, chairman and chief executive officer of the St. Petersburg Times and a seven-year member of the Pulitzer board, as saying that, "The whole thing is just odd."

Mr. Kinsolving wrote in response: "And I say: Much, much more odd - and outrageous - is that any newspaper official and Pulitzer Prize Board member would deem it 'odd' that tens of thousands of American citizens have protested the honoring of a Ukrainian-holocaust denier. Do the subscribers and advertisers in the St. Petersburg Times see nothing wrong with acceptance and honoring holocaust denial?"

Mr. Kinsolving's article quoted further from the Columbia Journalism Review: "'It's an extraordinarily difficult thing to recreate the historical and intellectual context in which many of the Pulitzer jurors were working,' says David Klatell." Mr. Kinsolving countered by saying: "Why is it extraordinarily difficult to recreate what the excellent book 'Stalin's Apologist' so excellently recreated? What the real difficulty for the Pulitzer board members really seems to be is their outrageous reluctance to embarrass the mighty New York Times for its 70-year cover-up of a Times liar named Walter Duranty."

Additionally, Mr. Kinsolving attended the international conference at Columbia University and asked three questions of its chairman.

In his article, Mr. Kinsolving wrote that his first question to Dr. von Hagen was as follows: "What could be more important as a specific goal of this conference than calling on The New York Times to immediately repudiate Duranty's Pulitzer - as the Washington Post repudiated Janet Cooke's Pulitzer Prize for her monumental lying?"

- compiled by Andrew Nynka

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