Here is a quick video from the candle light vigil from the Bloor West Villalge
Monthly Archives: November 2008
Holodomor post-weekend round-up – Nov 24 2008
Taras from Ukrainiana has provided an excellent primer on the Holodomor. He also reported from Kyiv Holodomor commemorations.
- Many Canadians attended a ceremony this week marking the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian Famine, or Holodomor, and Selkirk-Interlake MP James Bezan says it’s about time.
- Three-quarters of a century after the Ukrainian famine, Olga Zazula still gets overwhelmed by intense grief. “All the families were dying of starvation,” said Zazula, 82, the only known Calgary resident to have lived through the Holodomor. Zazula, later sent with her sister to Germany into forced labour, moved to Canada in 1950 and has lived in Calgary since 1953.
- Christian and Muslim leaders jointly conducted a Holodomor service in the St. Sophia Cathedral of Kyiv and prayed but Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich who attended refused, referring to the Shabbat. Israel is still considering Yushchenko’s call to recognize the genocide as such.
- A book entitled ’Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933’ has been presented in Kyiv, a joint research of Polish and Ukrainian historians who looked for archive documents of the NKVD and Polish secret services concerning the Great Famine. The chairman of the Polish Institute of National Remembrance Janusz Kurtyka said the search brought to light a full picture of the tragedy. He underlined that the West, and that included Poland at that time, remained silent when confronted with the tragic facts reported.
- Slavka Shulakewych in Edmonton stifles tears as she recalls her father’s secret tale of torment, he was a survivor of Holodomor. “It was a dark secret,” Shulakewych said, choked with emotion. “He wouldn’t talk about it. It was something people so horrendously lived through and (they) had to do horrendous things.
- The Holy Synod of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church has called the Holodomor a genocide, “It became a weapon of diabolic revenge due to the inability to eradicate from the consciousness of our wise people endowed with great virtues its filial memory of God, the love of God, the loyalty to and faith in God“. A week later an unnamed member of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church Synod Metropolitan Onufry of Chernovtsy and Bukovina said “Holodomor was a correction from God, suppression of our pride that rebelled against ourselves, against human existence”. “There are certain forces that use holodomor to divide Russia and Ukraine saying that Russians oppressed Ukrainians.†“While I believe that holodomor killed more people in Russia than in Ukraine,†the Metropolitan said. And then of course he urged believers not to make a political action of commemorating holodomor victims, but rather to pay attention to its spiritual causes (we’ve heard this hypocrosy before).
- Media coverage by the mainstream media was poor. No coverage in Toronto, New American notes the void from the New York Times (are we really surprised?). Nash Holos points out the struggle of creating awareness.
- Lithuanian President Valdas Adamkus while visiting Kyiv: The Nazi and Soviet-committed crimes against humanity will be equally condemned and their victims commemorated.
- Ukrainian community in Yonkers came together to commemorate the Holodomor by taking part in a solemn procession.
- Ukraine is having a hard time getting the Holodomor of 1932-33 to be recognized on the international level. What with the Kremlin’s frenzied resistance, Ukraine has to struggle even for its right to submit pertinent resolutions for consideration by international organizations and look for additional arguments to prove its rightness and explain its stand, although it is self-evident.
- “I remember when I was eight years old and there was nothing to eat,” said Anna Shewel, 83. She was living with her family in Ukraine in 1932 and 1933 and is one of the survivors of the Holodomor. Josef Stalin’s communists cut off food and starved millions in an attempt to destroy the country’s drive towards independence.
- When Soviet authorities and many western journalists denied the Holodomor, Gareth Jones announced that millions were starving in Ukraine as a result of Stalin’s policies at a press conference in Berlin on 29 March, 1933. Several foreign correspondents rushed to rubbish the story with 1932 Pulitzer Prize winner Walter Duranty of the New York Times dismissing his eye-witness account as “a big scare story”. Jones was given Ukraine’s Order of Merit at Westminster in London.
- In 1932, when Anna Kaczanowicz was 12 years old, she noticed that her meals were getting smaller and smaller. “My parents tried desperately to grow food, but no matter what they planted, within a few days, everything would be gone — dug up during the middle of the night.” But Kaczanowicz, 88, who lives now in Webster, survived the Holodomor.
Pope speaks to Ukrainian pilgrims of 1930s famine
From the Associated Press:
VATICAN CITY (AP) — Pope Benedict XVI on Sunday prayed that no political ideology would ever again cost people their freedom and dignity, as he recalled the millions who died from famine in Ukraine and other Soviet regions under dictator Josef Stalin.
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The pontiff spoke in Ukrainian to pilgrims from that country in St. Peter’s Square, and noted that this month marks the anniversary of Holodomor, or Death by Hunger, as the famine is known in Ukraine.
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Benedict said he prayed that “nations go forward on the paths of reconciliation and build the present and the future in reciprocal respect and in the sincere search for peace.”
Pope Benedicts words are a lot more bipartisan than his more charasmatic predecessor Pope John Paul II – don’t expect much help from them!
Ukrainian-Canadians mark famine’s 75th anniversary
From Sympatico/MSN news:
Ukrainian-Canadians spent Saturday marking the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the nightmarish famine that killed millions in the Ukraine in the early 1930s.
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National Holodomor Awareness Week in Canada begins this weekend with candlelight vigils and other events Saturday, and memorial services at Ukrainian churches across the country on Sunday.
Also in the article is a great news clip from Edmonton.
Holodomor news round-up – Oct 22 2008
- A sign in memory of Holodomor victims has been unveiled in the French town of Auenheim near Strasbourg.
- A Collection of works by well-known American researcher of the Holodomor James Mace named “Your Dead Have Chosen Me…” was first published in Ukraine. The historian and journalist was the first among western researchers to seriously prove and publicly state that the Holodomor was an act of
genocide of the Ukrainian people. - The “Holodomor: Through The Eyes of Ukrainian Artists” exhibition opened at the Ukrainian House in Kyiv, it consists of artworks assembled over the past 12 years in Ukraine and is the largest exhibition of artworks ever held about the Holodomor.
- U.S. President George Bush has named a delegation to attend events in Ukraine on Saturday marking the 75th anniversary of the Stalin-era famine known as the Holodomor. Twenty-five delegations are expected to attend, however Presidents of Macedonia, Montenegro and Azerbaijan canceled their plans to come.
- The Russian president turned down an invitation to attend commemorative events held in Ukraine in mid-November to mark the 75th anniversary of the famine. “The Russian president humiliates millions of innocent victims of the Famine. Any president has a commitment to respect his country’s history. This is an elementary ethical code,†Yushchenko replied. Ukrainian intellectuals are to send an open letter to Russian President Dmitriy Medvedev expressing their disapproval of his position.
- Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism Minister Jason Kenney will travel today to Kyiv, to mark the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor.
- Georgian President Mikhail Saakashvili will take part in the International Forum My Nation Will Live Forever. The Forum will open on November 22 in Kyiv.
- A presentation of a book entitled “Genocide Crime of the Totalitarian Regime in Ukraine 1932-1933 Holodomor” took place in Zagreb, Croatia.
- One of the lessons learned from the Ukrainian famine is that language and law were manipulated to de-humanize the Ukrainian farmer. Once it was declared that the Ukrainian farmers were not human beings it became possible to justify their deaths through famine.
- The Kyiv city organization of Svoboda All-Ukrainian Union has picketed the Embassy of United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland asking that Britain formally recognize the Holodomor.
- A week-long commemoration begins Sunday with a ceremony at the Manitoba Legislature to mark the 75th anniversary of an event known in English as the Ukrainian genocide.