The return.

There have been some interesting news items on the politics of memory front lately. These include the vandalization of a memorial to Stalin-era victims in Belarus and the destruction of a controversial Stalin statue in Zaporizhzhya, Ukraine, in what members of the Communist Party are calling a 'terrorist act'. Also in Ukraine, President Yanukovych has officially revoked the 'Hero of Ukraine' award that the former president Yushchenko gave posthumously to Stepan Bandera (a controversial WWII partisan leader).

But there's another story I want to discuss in a bit more detail. In recent weeks, some members of the Ukrainian Canadian community are protesting the new Canadian Museum of Human Rights because the Holocaust (along with the First Nations) will have its own exhibit among 12 thematic 'zones'. Although other tragedies (such as the Holodomor) will be heavily emphasized, their stories will be integrated into the thematic zones rather than given their own space. Many Ukrainians believe that this is an example of the museum elevating the suffering of one group over another.

This is a tricky issue to comment on. On the one hand, this exemplifies criticisms of the Ukrainian community's 'competitive victimhood' mentality. The Holocaust is the 'archetypal' genocide, and if done well, the exhibit could serve a strong pedagogical function - perhaps even confronting some of the debates over the uniqueness of the Holocaust and thus weaving in other stories of victimhood, including the Armenian massacres and the Ukrainian famine. Indeed, many believe that impunity for these crimes is what made Hitler think he could 'get away with his own genocidal policies - 'who remembers the Armenians/the Ukrainians?'.

On the other hand, perhaps the Ukrainians are right. Perhaps this museum should deal with a series of prominent genocides, both acknowledged and contested ones, as well as other forms of human rights abuses, but solely in a thematic way. Special exhibits could be dedicated to human rights abuses that have occurred on Canadian soil, such as the treatment of the First Nations, the internment of Ukrainian Canadians during World War I and of Japanese Canadians during World War II, and the residential schools system. If the reasons for a special Holocaust exhibit are sound, maybe it could focus on exploring the interconnections between and the influence of the Holocaust on how we understand a range of genocides.