UCCLA commends film-maker Mel Gibson for championing truth (02/15/04)

UCCLA commends film-maker Mel Gibson for championing truth

TORONTO - Responding to actor/film-maker Mel Gibson's comments about the Holocaust and the Holodomor, as the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine is known, Dr. Lubomyr Luciuk, a spokesman for the Ukrainian Canadian community, said: "Mel Gibson seems to have been publicly attacked because he insisted on recalling all of the victims of the Holocaust, Jews and non-Jews alike."

"He has also been condemned for recalling the many millions of Ukrainians starved to death during the Holodomor," Dr. Luciuk continued. "This Famine was not the result of natural causes. It was man-made. For anyone to suggest that recalling those murdered during this Soviet crime against humanity somehow detracts from the Holocaust is preposterous. And to belittle the many millions so victimized, as was done by Abraham Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League, smacks of genocide-denial, or worse."

"It is, of course, anyone's right to focus grief on their own community's woes. But to make false comparisons and suggest that somehow those who died from hunger suffered less than those who died from gas is odious. We hallow the memory of all the murdered millions and we thank Mr. Gibson, a good Catholic, for having the courage of his convictions and for championing historical truth," said Dr. Luciuk, who is director of research for the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association.

During an interview with Peggy Noonan, published in the March issue of Reader's Digest, Mr. Gibson not only spoke of having personal acquaintances who bear the infamous tattoo of Auschwitz concentration camp inmates, but also of the need to remember all of the Holocaust's victims, while not forgetting the victims of Communism.

"In the [sic] Ukraine several million starved to death between 1932 and 1933. During the last century 20 million people died in the Soviet Union," he said.

For expressing such sentiments he was pilloried by Rabbi Marvin Hier of the Los Angeles-based Simon Wiesenthal Center and by Abraham Foxman of the Anti-Defamation League. (See "Quotable notes," The Ukrainian Weekly, February 8.)

"The Passion of the Christ," which will be released on Ash Wednesday, February 25, will be in theaters across North America.

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For more information on the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, readers may log on to www.uccla.ca.

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