Patriarch and Cardinal Josef Slipii,
c/o Rev. Ivan Choma,
Palazzina dell’ Arciprete,
00120 Citta del Vaticano,
Rome, Italy.
February 11th, 1982.
Dear Friend, Cardinal Josef,
We, your former mates in Soviet concentration camps, are grateful for the invitation to participate in the celebration of your 90-ieth jubilee, and are sorry we cannot be there to deliver to you in person our deep respect and heartfelt wishes.
We shall always remember your dignified behavior in the dreadful Soviet camps from where you were miraculously saved by the Lord’s hand. In the camps you always personified calmness and human dignity — to such an extent that even the Soviet butchers could feel this. By your kindness and sympathy, by the feeling of hope that emanated from you, you helped your camp-mates to withstand the suffering and not to fall into despair.
We appreciate the fact that upon your arrival in the Free World you have not forgotten your co-sufferers left behind in the Soviet camps and raised your voice in their defense.
From the very bottom of our heart we wish you, dear Cardinal Josef, many healthy years, the energy to fight against the evil and, above all, to live till the day of return to the liberated and independent Ukraine.
With deepest respect, in behalf of a group of former political prisoners of Soviet concentration camps, Avraham Shifrin, Executive Director of Research Centre for Prisons, psych prisons and forced-labor concentration camps of the USSR.
