pn873. Another, Oblique, Perspective on the Ukraine-Russia War

Steven and the Governor-General Patsy Reddy

My friend Steven and I were at Wellington Teachers' College together in the late 1950s. I think his perpective on the Russia-Ukraine war is important.  This is what he wrote to me:

"My letter is published in this week's Listener. I had and have the Ukrainian crisis on my mind and wrote this letter in a hurry. People here can afford to take a simplistic view of events far away, ignoring historical and geopolitical reality. The reward of old age is that I have seen all this before, 'There is nothing new under the sun'"

His NZ Listener letter reads:

Subject: Putin and Khrushchev  To: <listenerletters@aremedia.co.nz>

Putin and Khrushchev, Ukraine and Hungary, 2022 and 1956,  I can't help but see parallels.

I had arrived in New Zealand with my parents a few years before the Hungarian uprising. We followed events in Hungary closely and with concern. Students with hopes for a free, democratic, liberal society, rebelled and tried to overthrow the oppressive Stalinist regimes of Rákosi and Gerő. Khrushchev, the tubby little henchman of Stalin, the butcher of Ukraine, who ultimately denounced Stalin's atrocities, sent in his troops to squash the uprising, The world sang the praises of the brave Hungarian patriots, but did nothing to come to their aid.

My parents, both of whom miraculously survived concentration camps, my father more dead than alive, saw the dark shadows behind the uprising. They saw that secret policemen were hanged from lampposts, they saw that the very few Jews who had returned from the camps were attacked. They saw Fascist machinations behind the revolutionaries. They saw them as forces trying to restore the previous Fascist clerical order. 

My parents came to New Zealand to get away from the country where their roots were, a country where they felt betrayed.  Their sympathies were divided.

Khrushchev, like Putin now, saw the integrity of historic greater Russia at stake. They both attacked countries, Hungary and Ukraine, with democratic aspirations, at a time in history when they discerned the weakness of the American dominated West, Khrushchev after the Suez crisis, when Britain and France were humiliated, and Putin after the Afghanistan debacle. In both cases the West did nothing but offer sympathy to the beleaguered countries.

At least New Zealand accepted over 1000 Hungarian refugees, who could make new lives here and contribute to New Zealand society.

Steven Sedley (Czeglédi) MNZM

Email stevensedley3@gmail.com

This is what was written about his investiture :

Steven Sedley, of Wellington, MNZM, for services to the Jewish community and music.

Steven Sedley, a child survivor of the persecution of Jews in Hungary, migrated to New Zealand soon after World War Two. He was President of the Wellington Jewish Community Centre and is the founding Chairman of the Holocaust Centre of New Zealand. He led the first adult-education programme on the Holocaust in association with Victoria University. He was the inaugural President of the Hutt Valley Chamber Music Society and helped organise a series of Kristallnacht concerts. He has written on the composer Richard Fuchs, the philanthropists Annie and Max Deckston, and Jewish writers in New Zealand. Mr Sedley is a Volunteer Support Worker for New Zealand Red Cross Refugee Services.