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HELEN MURAL, Junior Vice-Presicent UNWLA, Contributing Editor, OUR LIFE DISPLACED PERSONS DISCUSSED DURING AMERICAN FEDERATION OF INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTES CONFERENCE To fully express the richness of my experience over the week end of June 10th as the represen tative of the UNWLA at the Conference of the American Federation of International In stitutes held in Clevei ird. Ohio I must' write in a personal vein in order to bring- close to all members of the Jr. League the sentiment deeply felt by myself. Acting as your representative at this Conference, it is my duty to convey to you what you would have experienced had it been possible tor you to attend. Before I tell of the formal opening of the AFII Conference at a dinner held at the Hotel Al- Jerton Friday evening, June 10th, it would be well for us t > under stand first what the AFII repre sents.- I learned very quickly that the AFII is a national associa tion with branches throughout the United States whose princi pal purpose is the integration of foreign born peoples with the American way of life. It is a non-sectarian, and non-political social service organization which is financed through the Com munity Chest. The International Institute has long been known for its aid to immigrants in solv ing problems of citizenship, hous ing and schooling. At present the Institutes main issue is the im migration. and resettlement of Displaced Persons. Whether we realize it or not, the Institute plays a vital role in the lives of our foreign born pa rents and even more so in the lives of you and myself as sec ond generaion Ukrainians. For not only does the Institute at tempt to solve the myriad prob lems confronting the immigrant, the Institute has, generally speaking, successfully publicized the case of the “foreigner’’ be fore the American public. Even more important, through its ef forts to propagate and assimilate the culture of all nationalities, the Institute has shown the for eigner and his off-spring that his heritage should be placed on dis play for appreciation, and not hidden in a closet with a feeling of degradation! However, dinner awaits at the hotel and I must not tarry too long. The dinner is only a half- hour late as compared to several hours, the custom in Ukrainian circles. ЛГі-ss Irene Trembly was the lucky girl whose name was drawn to attend the dinner with me as a representative from Br. 60. Together we arrived and were immediately greeted at the door with “there are several people from Philadelphia looking for you/’ The introduction to Miss Elizabeth Campbell, the Executive Director of the Inter national Institute of Philadelphia and Mr. Max Fran.zen, Publicity Director foi* the same Institute, was the beginning of meeting a series of outstanding people. Mrs. Helen Lototsky, our Pres ident, works with Miss Campbell and Mr. Franzen at the Institute in Philadelphia, and in her usual fashion made certain that your representative would be enriched and guided by their acquaintance. Before a gathering of dele gates from 26'cit'i'e's as far W est as San Francisco and as far East as Boston, Louis Seltzer, Editor of the Cleveland Press acted as toastmaster. He introduced elo quently the Honoroable Ugo Carusi, Chairman of the Disp« Persons Commission, Washing ton, D. C, who spoke informally and to the point on the National Displaced Persons Program. Al though 205,000 D. P.’s are- to be* admitted into the United States by June 30, 1950, only 36,000 D. P s have arrived thus far. .Dif ficulties in setting up this vast program has kept the movement, until recently, at a slow pace; however, Mr. Carusi anticipates the movement to increase appre ciably in the months ahead In May, almost 20,000 embarked. Of utmost interest to me \as Mr. Carusi's comment that he has stopped worrying about the D.P. and has started worrying' about “ourselves'.” Whatev-er problems have been created by the immigration of the D.P we have created ourselves he assert ed. He went on to explain that the first flood of assurances came from relatives and friends of the unfortunate people caught in Eu rope. This was only a passing- (Continued on page 8) Culture — not without politics By JULIA DOBRIANSKY Address delivered at the Ukrainian Women’s World Congress, held in Philadelphia; November 12 and 13, 1948 (Continued) So long as the Ukrainian people were and are deprived of the opportunity and basic right to determine themselves politically, so long were and are their energies diverted from the expanding frui tion of their cultural aspirations. When a Val.uyev proclaimed that “there never was, is not, and never will be a Ukrainian language,” the brazen ess, arrogance, and gross untruth of his proclamation expressed only the fact of Russian political domination over Uk raine. When a Grabski shamelessly declared that “within, twenty- five years there will not remain a sign of the Ukrainians—all of them will have been converted into Poles,” the vile audacity, chau vinism, and proven fallacy of his declaration were predicated upon Polish political suzerainty over West Ukraine. When Stalin order ed the ousting of Hrushevsky and other notable scholars from the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences in Kiev because of their objective studies on East European history, the sole strength of the order rested on contemporary Russian communist control of Ukraine. In all of these cases, and many, many more, the political is seen tc determine, curl), and even stultify the cultural. Yet, despite all these, the battle-Held remains and the ceaseless war persists. More, in the very course of this strife to balance the political elemeir. with the cultural, Ukrainian culture has preserved itself and, un der dire circumstances, has even expanded. In the face of repression issuing from foreign political domi nation, the culture of the Ukrainian people has in diverse ways nevertheless continued to develop. Its most striking characteris tic, radiant and in full loom especially during the periods of inde pendence, is its basic Western orientation. As Voltaire, Herder, Dickens and countless others at all familiar with the culture of the Ukrainian people well understood, it has been at one with the ends of Western culture. The sacred dignity of the individual person, the opportunity for responsible individual expression and creative ness, the liberty of critical and constructive criticism, government ■by popular consent, and the just protection of person and property have not only been advanced and observed as ethical standards in actual practice, but received their sublimest expression in the per petual works of Ukraine’s foremost poets, scholars, art;sts and writers. Franko, Shevchenko, Lessya Ukrainka and a host of oth ers symbolize these fundamental attributes of Western culture, and no repressive edicts, decrees or proclamation can erase their indelible marks on world culture. Animating all this is the invincible religious spirit of the Ukrainian people that no amount of atheistic communist propaganda and censure can possibly ex tinguish. When one stops to consider the extremeties to which Ukraine’s traditional enemies pursued their nefarious programs of cultural repression, it is nothing short of miraculous that this persevering people were able to maintain and expand their culture. There- is much truth in the saying that under the most doleful conditions* the finest emerges. For, recall, that it was in a Siberian prison t-hat Ukraine’s national poet, Shevchenko, produced some of the noblest: hnes in world literature. . Yet, despite the abundant richness of Uk rainian culture glowing in the political darkness overhanging the Ukrainian nation these many centuries, one reflects on how mncli more could have been produced in an atmosphere of political calm tranquility had the Ukrainian people the effective power of sel»:- determination. Instead, the immeasurable flow of energy and tal ent necessarily devoted to- the age-long righting of that maladjust ment of the political and cultural relationship ran at the expanse of a direct canalization into the arts, sciences and scholarship. This has been an incalculable loss for Ukraine, for Europe, and in the end, for the world. It provides, however, a stern and unforgettable lesson that for the cultural component to reach its maximum level, the. political one must necessarily be righted. Down through the centuries, the determination of the Ukrain ian people to achieve this balance has been irresistible. Today, ш these darkest hours of their existence as a nation, with Soviet mass murder, genocide, slavery and maximum repression at their peak, the Ukrainian people remain steadfast in. this determination which manifest itself in diverse ways. Each of these ways bears its re spective relation to the longed-for achievement of a proper bal ance between the political and the cultural. The gallant struggle of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army, currently combatting the com munist hordes throughout Eastern. Europe, is today .the foremost way. The 200,000 Ukrainian D.P.’s who refuse to be eh snared unto death by Soviet tentacles and persevere to. preserve the books, manuscripts, historic "pieces and other valuable contributions of Ukrainian culture constitute a further important manifestation of this entrenched determination. The countless Ukrainians in the Soviet concentration camps, who sternly resisted the barbaric re gimentation of political Bolshevism ancj, should their day of long- awaited freedom arrive, might well unleash unanticipated energies in the final destruction of this world cancer symbolize a. still further way. nd finallv, the millions of Ukrainians and their de scendants strewn about the free world also reflect this inextric able determination. (To be concluded)
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