ГОЛОДОМОРGenocide in Ukraine

By: Nataliya Baltsevych

1932-

1933

Concepts:

• 10 million Ukrainians died during the Holodomor.

• The Soviet government resolved its conflict with the Ukrainian people by starving them to death.

• The Soviet government censored all press reports from Ukraine in 1932 – 1933.

• The Soviet government staged a campaign of disinformation to cover up the Holodomor.

• There are still people today who are denying the Holodomor.

http://www.rferl.org/soundslide/7.html

Holodomor, (based on two Ukrainian words: holod - hunger, starvation, famine, and moryty - to induce suffering, to kill), was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people committed by the Soviet Communists in 1932-1933

In the early 1930s, in the very heart of Europe - a region considered to be Europe's breadbasket - Stalin's Communist regime committed a horrendous act of genocide against up to 10 million Ukrainians. An ancient nation of agriculturists was subjected to starvation, one of the most ruthless forms of torture and death.

The Holodomor was geographically focused for political ends. It stopped precisely at the Ukrainian-Russian ethnographic border.

About Holodomor

15 soviet socialist republics were involved in the Soviet Union

The borders of Ukraine were strictly patrolled by the military to prevent starving Ukrainians from crossing into other countries in search of food

.

During this period, the Ukrainians were eating abnormal “foods," which caused stomach diseases, swelling and starvation.  People believed it was a bad harvest.

In Ukraine citizens weren't aware of Stalin’s plan about starving the Ukrainians.

Using medical records, doctors today say that these peoples’ death were caused by hunger.

Hunger causes exhaustion and swelling , and eventually results in death.

Hunger and its Causes

Everything was taken by force by the State PolicePeople were forced to put Stalin’s and Lenin’s

picture up the wallPeople were thrown out of their own houses

* attics * walls * underground * floors

How the authorities searched homes…

Where did people hide food?

To obtain food, people had to walk more then one and a half kilometers.

Stolen food was hiddenTen years in prison for collecting and eating

seeds Grain was sent to the government

What happened to people who tried to steal food…

Frogs (animals)WormsHuman beingsTrees (plants)

“I had two children…and they survived. I

fed them with meat from the

brain.” http://www.holodomorsurvivors.ca/Video/video/Files/index.html

What food did they eat…Something to Consider:* Remember a timewhen you were hungry.How did you feel? Whatdid you want to do?

“People died like insects…”• People died on roads •3, 500, 000 were arrested and died in camps later•People who died were buried where they were found. Most of the dead were thrown into holes without a proper burial together• At the same time the Soviet regime was dumping million tons of grain on Western markets

“..the mortality rate has been so high that numerous village councils have stopped recording deaths.” ~Letter written by Katsnelson head of the Kharkiv department of the OGPU( secret police) to Balytsky, head of the OGPU for Ukraine, 5 June 1933

At the height of the Famine, Ukrainian villagers were dying at the rate of:17 per minute1,000 per hour25,000 per day

Children comprised one-

thirdof the Holodomor

victimsin Ukraine. Large

numbers of children were

orphanedand became homeless.

When people heard the cart coming, whoever still had the strength tried to hide in the bushes or behind a tree, because they took people who were still living, saying that they didn’t want to return for them later.“They didn’t bury them. They had a pit and threw them in, like mud. The pit was big enough for the entire village. Eight [of my siblings] died. There were ten of us, and two of us survived. I don’t

know, I can’t fathom what misery this was. God forbid that anyone has to live through what I lived through. I remember sometimes now, and I don’t even want to think about it.” ~Maria Katchmar

How the dead were collected in villages?

“It was not easy to live through. We never had a youth. Our youth went god knows where. We lived through everything we shouldn’t have lived through. The Communist system made us the worst slaves in the world. We were guilty, we just didn’t know of what, of what sins. Simply because we

were called Ukrainians. This was not so easy, but somehow god granted us that we survived. I want to say that maybe this will help, that there are still people who will explain

what we had to live through.” ~ Halyna Huba

http://www.holodomorsurvivors.ca/Video/video/Files/Pavlo%20Makohon_video.html

Why did the Soviet government remove all grain and all food from Ukraine?

• The Soviet authorities wanted Ukrainian people to become Soviet. They didn’t want a Ukrainian language or literature, or any form of religious practice, or Ukrainian songs and culture.

•Ukrainians didn’t want a Soviet form of government. • The Soviet government needed to sell largequantities of grain to Britain, France and theUnited States to buy heavy machinery for its ammunition factories.

Ukraine's IndependenceAugust 24, 1991 – Ukraine gains its independence from the

Soviet Union The Independence Day of Ukraine was a hard fought battle with

the constitution being adopted nearly five years after its independence

The Parliament of Ukraine, the Verkhovna Rada, called for international recognition of the Holodomor as genocide in three resolutions adopted during 2002-2003

On November 28, 2006, the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine passed a resolution declaring the Holodomor as genocide

The Government of Canada unanimously passed Bill C-459, the Ukrainian Famine and Genocide Memorial Day Act, which came into being by Royal Assent on May 29, 2008. The Act recognizes the Holodomor as an act of genocide and proclaims the 4th Saturday of each November Holodomor Memorial Day

It conforms to the definition of the crime according to the UN Convention on Genocide. The Communist regime targeted the Ukrainians, as a civilized nation, in Soviet Ukraine, and as an ethnic group in Soviet Russia, especially in the predominantly Ukrainian Kuban region of the Northern Caucasus

“It was the well-organized execution that made the terror by starvation in Ukraine a genocide.” ~Alain Besancon, Professor of

History (Sorbonne, France)

Why was it a GENOCIDE?

Stalin’s goal of the genocide was the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.

Stalin knew, “If I take everything, they wouldn’t survive!”

Students who did well in school received a portrait of Stalin.

Students were told by theirteachers that Stalin was the greatest leader and life was perfect in the Soviet Union.

The year and its horror still haunt my nights. The year thirty three, I was six, saw the fright. On the land, in our hearts, still some promise we knew. Gardens thrived on the hills where the orache leaves grew.

Under Lenin they say, czars were shot. Terror reigned. Smash the patrons, the magnates and bourgeois. Take aim. With a shrill insane voice Joseph Stalin proclaimed Cut them down. Starve the kulaks who grow all the grain.

Arise all down-trodden and hungry, you mustFree land we will give you. This is our holy trustHand all of your stores to the commune “kolhosp”Or we’ll drive you – we’ll grind you to Siberian dust.

HOLODOMOR by Michael Fediw

The first raid came and the sheds were all emptiedInto sacks wheat was emptied for the commune farm.In the second requisition our hopes lay there emptied. Then a third, like our urns we lay broken, not a sound.

In our gloom we did eat what we could, dogs and catsFor the glory of their Five Year Plan and the rats In our village, they hid all the children. Don’t cry. Mothers prayed for their children. Please children don’t die.

How could this happen in Ukraine? Let us ask it. As you know our Ukraine was the world’s great bread basketWho sought truth? Who would tell? Where were you in that hell? In the silence death raged as the hunger did swell.

All our future, our promise, our flowers had diedIn the streets, bring your dead where you too will now lie. On the land, in our hearts, no more freedom we knew.

On the hilltops lay death where the orache once grew.

Famine Through The Eyes Of

Children

“We were trying to survive and live a normal life, however all of these horrible days and nights of hungriness turned into nothing.”

Holodomor Remembrance Day

Every candle is a life of a person who once had a bright life that turned into a dark night. A hope was like a light to guide them though their daily life…

“Who hasn’t been hungry may not understand, but hunger kills your memory.” by Marina

Firman

Works Cited Page:•http://faminegenocide.com/Holodomor-Ukrainian%20Genocide.pdf

•http://faminegenocide.com/kuryliw/index.htm

•http://www.holodomorsurvivors.ca/Home.html

Special thanks to :Mariya Grabar

Tetyana Prodanchuk (Chernivtsi)