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First example of hoax in 1933 Nazi
Press propaganda. Note soldiers in
white smocks are wearing Tzarist-era
style army caps, long out of issue by the
1930s. Source of the Nazi press fakes
were the 1921-1922 Russian famine.

Cover photo of ‘The Great Famine in Ukraine: the unknown holocaust’ is, in

actuality, from the 1921-1922 famine.

Another fake from the Hearst Press,
1935. The girl is Russian and the photo is
stolen from a 1922 emigre Russian Red
Cross booklet published in Europe.

The harvest despairs as hoax uncovered

Award winning ‘documentary’ on Ukrainian famine rewrites history

Special to the Tribune

An internationally award-winning film
designed to expose Soviet “‘disinforma-
tion’’ has itself been challenged as an
elaborate hoax.

Harvest of Despair, an emotionally
charged hour-long documentary, is sup-
posed to depict the deliberate genocide
by famine of 7 to 10 million Ukrainians
between 1932-33 by the Soviet govern-'
ment. The film also charges the Soviets
with a deliberate cover up of the events,
supported by Western diplomats and
journalists.

The film’s producers, backed by a
number of right wing Ukrainian national-
ist groups, have been on the hustings
lobbying for the *‘famine”’ to be included
in school courses. They were in Toronto

— November 17, to sponsor a special meet-
ing at Toronto Board of Education to
acquaint trustees and educators with
their allegations.

However the filmmakers, along with a
panel of anti-Soviet ‘“‘experts’’, were left
scrambling to explain why virtually none
of the visual props from the film actually
portray 1932-33 ‘‘famine’’ scenes in Uk-
raine.

Doug Tottle, a Winnipeg journalist and
researcher, called the film ‘‘a poorly re-
searched collage of largely fake ma-
terials’’. He pointed out that an accom-
panying book, compiled by the editors of
the Ukrainian Weekly, a U.S. publica-
tion and suggested school reading, is also
based on spurious materials.

The cover photo of The Great Famine
in Ukraine: The Unknown Holocaust,
showing a line of emaciated children, is
taken from a 1922 bulletin, published in
Geneva by the International Committee
for Russian Relief. The remainder of the
book is also traceable to 1922 sources,
Tottle told the meeting.

‘Virtually all of the starvation pictures
and footage used in 1932-33 deliberate
famine propaganda are traceable to ma-
terials recorded from 1917-1922. This in-
cludes five decades of right-wing books
published on the subject’, he charged.
At least 90 per cent of the photographs
from the film date to this period, Tottle
said.

The 1921 famine occurred mainly
along the Volga River, hundreds of miles
from the Ukraine and is attributed to nat-
ural causes including the Civil War and
persistent drought.

Orest Subtelny, a history professor at
York University tried to defend the use
of the earlier photos to the meeting.

**You have to have visual impact’’, he
said. ‘*You want to show what people
starving from a famine look like. Starving
children are starving children’’.

Following Tottle’s exposure, all of the
1932-33 footage in the film was itself later
admitted to be fraudulent by one of its
researchers who claims he originated the
idea for the film.

10 e PACIFIC TRIBUNE, DECEMBER 3, 1986

Marco Carynnyk, who was “‘let go”’
from the project, is quoted in the Nov. 20
issue of the Toronto Star saying “very
few photos from °32-33 that appear in the
film are authentic as well.

The Star article goes on to say that
Carynnyk is suing in the Supreme Court
of Ontario for breach of contract and in-
fringement under the Copyright Act.

Made in 1983, Harvest of Despair, has
won seven international awards and is
rumored to be nominated for an Oscar. It

was made under the auspices of the

Ukrainian Canadian Committee and the
World Congress of Free Ukrainians, and
produced by the Ukrainian Famine Re-
search Committee of the St. Vladimir In-
stitute of Toronto with National Film
Board support.

In a subsequent press release, Tottle
who has researched the faking of the
°32-33 famine propaganda for the past
three years and whose work is to be pub-
lished in the new year, charged that the
misrepresentation of materials in the film
is not an isolated incident.

PRO-NAZI SOURCES

In addition to the film and the book, a
course outline of suggested famine ma-
terials for the schools turns out to include
similar misrepresentations.

The recommended list includes
publications by a Ukrainian fascist
organization, the Ukrainian National
Association which had measures taken
against it during World War II by the FBI
for its pro-Nazi stance. The UNA’s jour-
nal Svoboda was once banned from entry
into Canada during the war because of its
Nazi sympathies.

The remaining materials in the dis-
tributed course outline are basically writ-
ten by right-wing Ukrainian nationalist
groups themselves or by professional
anti-communist academics.

The most extensively cited ‘‘Ameri-
can’’ witness in the outline is ‘“Thomas
Walker’? the man who never existed,
says Tottle. Walker was the alias of a
professional swindler and escaped con-
vict from Fort Leavenworth, who faked
a series of accounts of non-existent trav-
els to the Ukraine in 1934.

They first appeared in a British news-
paper the same year. According to the
newspaper accounts some of the photo-
graphs were taken by a British tourist in
Belgorod. Belgorod is in Russia, not Uk-
raine. :

The pictures actually came from Rob-
ert Green, who later sold his faked arti-
cles along with a series of pictures he
stole from 1921-22 sources, to the pro-
Nazi Hearst newspapers in the United
States, including the Chicago American
which printed his stories in Feb. and
March of 1935.

Louis Fischer, a writer for the Nation,
and the New Republic, immediately ob-
served the fraudulence of Walker’s al-

leged travels and pictures, and exposed
Walker in an article appearing in the
March 13, 1935 issue of the Nation.

Walker was later extradited back to
the States by the U.S. government in the
summer of 1935. The July 13 and 16 New
York Times revealed Green’s alias of
Thomas Walker and covered his trial for
passport fraud noting that he was re-
turned to Leavenworth. prison to finish
the sentence interrupted by his 1921 jail
escape.

‘Walker’ was never heard from again.
According to Tottle, his most prominent
fake, a picture of a young girl, holding a
starving child on her lap, is taken from a
1922 emigré, ‘‘Russian Red Cross’ bul-
letin.

This picture he states, along with
Walker’s entire series, has been used
since 1935 to falsely illustrate famine
genocide interpretations of the Soviet
difficulties of 1932-33.

During the 1930s, Walker’s fakes were
sometimes claimed by German and other
right wing ‘‘famine writers’’ as having
been taken by totally different photo-
graphers in totally different years and
season.

A frequently cited ‘‘famine expert’,
Dr. Ewald Amnende in his 1935 book,
Human Life in Russia, used many
Walker fakes in the book’s own collec-
tions of contrived materials.

Human Life in Russia was recently
republished in 1984 by Ukrainian
nationalists in Montreal as supposed
‘evidence’ for the current cold war
famine genocide campaign.

At the Toronto meeting, Subtelny,
forced to admit the fraudulent material in
Harvest of Despair, countered Tottle’s
allegation by citing Amnende’s book as
an example containing bonafide pictures.

Tottle also points out in his release,
that a significant number of the -film’s
witnesses have questionable credentials.
They include former German Nazis anda
key Ukrainian Nazi collaborator.

‘‘Witness’’ Hans von Herwarth re-
mained in German service when the
Nazis. took over in 1933. According to
the American historian, Dallin, Her-
warth’s former ‘‘Russian experience”’
was utilized by Hitler. He served as a
recruiter in occupied Soviet territories
for the fascist military.

‘Similarly the film’s witness, Andor
Henke became a Nazi diplomat and was
involved in attempts to recruit Belorus-
sian nationalist exiles to aid in Hitler’s
invasion of the Soviet Union.

UKRAINIAN COLLABORATOR

Metropolitan Mystyslav, head of the
Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the
United States, another witness, served
the Nazis during their occupation of Po-
land initially as the editor of the Nazi
funded propaganda organ, Volyn.

When the Nazis later wanted to set up

~ and almost all the still used in Harvest

a controlled ‘‘church’’, Mystyslav,
whose real name is Stepan Skrypnyk —4@
newphew of the ‘‘pogromchik’’ leader
Simon Petliura of 1918-20 infamy — was
authorized by the Nazis as leader of the
new Autocephalous Orthodox Church, —
in their‘General government. He entered
a monastery as a lay man emerging 4
‘‘bishop”’ in a history making record of @
few weeks! x
Furthermore some of the ‘evidence
given by the film’s witnesses appears 10
have been tampered with. For example
Carynnyk’s original tape of his intel
views with Malcolm Muggeridge and
Soviet defector Lev Kopylew wer
shown at the St. Vladimir’s Institute 12
the spring of 1983.
In the original Kopylew denied the
famine was deliberately planned, al
though he claims incidents of over exu
erant grain collecting by lower officials:
This portion of Kopylew’s interview
with Carynnyk was slashed from Har
vest of Despair, to avoid upsetting the
producers’ famine genocide applecatt.
Can this be related to Carynnyk’s suit
against Harvest of Despair’s produce!
for copyright infringements?
Not only is all the ‘1932-33’ foota

Despair fraudulent, not to mention the
suggested “famine book”’ given out freé
to teachers, but the film’s official bf”
chure has also been challenged. | |

Evidently trying to distance himself u
from the production’s scandalous |
predicament, Carynnyk admitted in the .
same issue of the Star that even the film > }
brochure photo does not portray 1932 |
33. According to Tottle’s release it pot
trays a Russian girl from the 1921-22 |
events. :

The Toronto School Board will decide
within the next two months whether!
include teaching about the famine as
of the schools’ regular curriculum.
charge is expected to be headed by N
Crewe who attended the Nov. 17 ™
ing along with Alex Chumak W
chaired.

The Ukrainian Canadian Com
failed to get their proposal past the
nipeg School Board when_ ee
approached it in 1983. The famine 1S co 8
tained as part of a pilot world studi 2
program which uses both the famine ate
legations and Soviet govern™
sources. ine

However the real story on the fare :
is yet to appear. When Tottle he
proached both the Toronto Star 200 4. 7
Globe on Nov. 20 to offer further does |
mentation of fraud in the film, the paren, q
said they weren't interested. They 3.5 |
however, published excerpts of 4 P ee |
statement by the film’s produc
defending their fraud. Are we exe :
iencing a 1986 coverup of the fam
genocide hoax?

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