Working To Shine A Light On A Dark Period For Ukrainians

(Image from Gnostic Liberation Front)

From The Houston Chronicle:

Efforts under way to mark man-made famine that left up to 7 million dead

Many Americans have never heard of the holodomor — the estimated 7 million people who starved to death in the Ukraine when Joseph Stalin turned farms into collectives in the early 1930s.

Even while the famine was ravaging parts of the Ukraine, few in the West knew of it. Journalists such as Walter Duranty of the New York Times, who won a Pulitzer Prize for his coverage of the Soviet Union in 1932, reported there was no evidence of starvation or an artificially created famine, which was the position of the Soviet government.

In Russia, the holodomor, viewed as genocide by many Ukrainians, gets scant or no mention today in some high school history books.

Local Ukrainian-Americans, along with others of Ukrainian heritage worldwide, are rankled that so few know of the mass deaths. During this year, the 75th anniversary of the holodomor, they are holding vigils and working to raise awareness of what happened in the Ukraine in 1932 and 1933.

Read more ....

My Comment: My father was a 13 year old child when the Ukraine famine started. They lived in the city of Bila Tserkva, south of Kiev. His eye witness accounts of that time are riveting, much of which has not been publicized nor recorded by those who are trying to accumulate as much information as possible before the last of the survivors pass away.

Sigh .... one day I will do a post on my dad .... and I will write down his memories and the stories of what he and the family went through during this period of time. With the exception of the apparatchiks within the communist party and their families, everyone suffered in this horror.