Holodomor survivor: ‘I saw very terrible things’ [Article]

From the Hamilton Spectator:

Victor Rojenko is 90 years old, but the memories of his childhood in Ukraine play in his mind as clearly as a movie.

“My obligation was: never, never forget what you see at your young age. And I saw very terrible things,” said Rojenko, sitting in a classroom at the Metropolitan Wasyly Learning Centre in Hamilton today.

Rojenko is a survivor of the Holodomor, a man-made famine and genocide in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed as many as 10 million people under Josef Stalin’s regime.

What’s also interesting to note from the article is that a Holodomor museum has opened in Hamilton:

The museum, which is a small gallery inside the learning centre on Barton Street East at Gage Avenue North, was open for the public as part of the second National Holodomor Awareness Week.

It officially launched as the country’s first Holodomor museum last year, but has recently been completed with historical literature and photos.

Read the rest of the article

Holodomor news round-up – Nov 25 2009

Some of the news headlines today about the Holodomor:

Ukrainian genocide will be commemorated in Quebec
Once the bill receives final approval, the fourth Saturday in November will be designated to commemorate the Ukrainian genocide, known as the Holodomor …
Ukraine – President opens updated exhibition “Holodomor 1932-1933 – genocide
President Victor Yushchenko and his wife Kateryna Yushchenko took part in the opening of updated documentary and art exhibition “Holodomor 1932-1933” …
Criminal case on Ukrainian famine of 1930s already numbers 253 volumes
He said this at an evening requiem dedicated to the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933, the SBU press service reported …
Memorial for victims of Stalin’s brutal act
MOVING memorial … the mayor Councillor Keith Swift and Holodomor survivor Oksana Paraszczak, place a wreath on the stone …Ukrainian genocide will be commemorated in Quebec
Once the bill receives final approval, the fourth Saturday in November will be designated to commemorate the Ukrainian genocide, known as the Holodomor …
Ukraine – President opens updated exhibition “Holodomor 1932-1933 – genocide
President Victor Yushchenko and his wife Kateryna Yushchenko took part in the opening of updated documentary and art exhibition “Holodomor 1932-1933” …
Criminal case on Ukrainian famine of 1930s already numbers 253 volumes
He said this at an evening requiem dedicated to the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933, the SBU press service reported …
Memorial for victims of Stalin’s brutal act
MOVING memorial … the mayor Councillor Keith Swift and Holodomor survivor Oksana Paraszczak, place a wreath on the stone …

Ukrainian genocide will be commemorated in Quebec

Once the bill receives final approval, the fourth Saturday in November will be designated to commemorate the Ukrainian genocide, known as the Holodomor …

Ukraine – President opens updated exhibition “Holodomor 1932-1933 – genocide

President Victor Yushchenko and his wife Kateryna Yushchenko took part in the opening of updated documentary and art exhibition “Holodomor 1932-1933” …

Criminal case on Ukrainian famine of 1930s already numbers 253 volumes

He said this at an evening requiem dedicated to the day of remembrance for the victims of the Holodomor famine of 1932-1933, the SBU press service reported …

Memorial for victims of Stalin’s brutal act

MOVING memorial … the mayor Councillor Keith Swift and Holodomor survivor Oksana Paraszczak, place a wreath on the stone …

Monument to Soviet public figure Petrovsky dismantled in Kyiv

Kyiv’s community protested and opposed the presence in the capital downtown of the monument to ‘a father of the Holodomor’ and ‘a hangman of Ukraine’ …

Ukrainian genocide will be commemorated in Quebec [Article]

From the Montreal Gazette:

QUEBEC – Members of the Quebec provincial legislature voted unanimously to approve on first reading a bill to commemorate the Ukrainian genocide in the 1930s, when Soviet dictator Josef Stalin withheld food from Ukraine, leading to millions of deaths.

The bill was presented by Parti Quebecois member Louise Beaudoin.

Once the bill receives final approval, the fourth Saturday in November will be designated to commemorate the Ukrainian genocide, known as the Holodomor.

If passed, Quebec will be the fourth province to mark the genocide. Alberta passed similar legislation in October 2008.

Read the rest of the article

You can view the bill here. Similar legislation is underway in British Columbia as well.

Prof. Andrea Graziosi on Stalin and the Holodomor [Interview]

The following is an interview with Prof. Andrea Graziosi of the University of Naples on Stalin and the Holodomor:

Part 1

 Download MP3

Part 2

 Download MP3

Part 3

 Download MP3

Andrea Graziosi is Professor of History at the University of Naples "Federico II" and President (from 2007) of the Italian Society for the Study of Contemporary History. He is the author, among other things, of:

  • Lettere da Kharkov (Torino, 1991 and Kharkiv, 2007)
  • The Great Soviet Peasant War (Cambridge, MA, 1996 and Moscow, 2001),
  • Bol’sheviki i krest’iane na Ukraine, 1918-1919 (Moscow, 1997)
  • A New, Peculiar State. Explorations in Soviet History (Westport, CT, 2000)
  • Guerra e rivoluzione in Europa, 1905-1956 (Bologna, 2002, Kyiv and Moscow, 2005)
  • L’Urss di Lenin e Stalin, 1914-1945 (Bologna, 2007)
  • L’Urss dal trionfo al degrado, 1945-1991 (Bologna, 2008)

He serves on editorial boards of a number of French, English, Italian, Ukrainian and U.S. specialized journals, co-edits in Moscow, since 1992, the series "Dokumenty sovetskoi istorii" (15 volumes in print) and is a member of the editorial board of the series Istoriia Stalinizma (Rosspen, Moscow).

Telephone interview with historian Dr. Andrea Graziosi, conducted by Roman Brytan, producer & host of Radiozhurnal, Edmonton’s daily Ukrainian radio program on 101.7 World FM.

Holodomor news round-up – Nov 24 2009

Highlighting some recent news for Holodomor Awareness Week

National Holodomor Memorial Day – November 28, 2009

TORONTO, Nov. 24 /CNW/ – Saturday, November 28 marks Holodomor Memorial Day in Canada. Canadians will honour the memory of the victims of this famine-genocide with a moment of silence at 9:00 a.m. and light candles of remembrance in their homes. Memorial services will be celebrated in churches across the country on Sunday, November 29.

On Friday, November 27, Holodomor Memorial Day will be marked in schools of the Toronto District, Hamilton-Wentworth District and Hamilton-Wentworth Catholic District School Boards.

Read the rest of the article

Supporters gather to remember genocide in Ukraine

Every November, Leoniv Korownyk revisits one of the darkest periods in Ukrainian history.

Korownyk, officials and supporters gathered at the legislature yesterday for a service that recognized Bill 37 and commemorated those who died as a result of the man-made famine and genocide of 1932-1933 in the Ukraine.

Bill 37, passed on Nov. 4, 2008, declared every fourth Saturday in November as Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (Holodomor) Memorial Day in Alberta.  The service was hosted by Ken Kowalski, speaker of the legislative assembly of Alberta, and featured Premier Ed Stelmach along with other officials and survivors of the genocide.

Read the rest of the article

Lemkin: Holodomor ‘classic’ genocide

Because of the horrors committed by Nazi Germany in World War II what is often forgotten, however, is that Lemkin’s thinking about an international law to punish perpetrators of what he originally labeled the “Crime of Barbarity” came not in response to the Holocaust but rather following the 1915 massacres of Armenians, Greeks and Assyrians within the Ottoman Turkish empire.

Likewise overlooked were Lemkin’s views on Communist crimes against humanity. In a 1953 lecture in New York City, for example, he described the “destruction of the Ukrainian nation” as the “classic example of Soviet genocide,” adding insightfully:“the Ukrainian is not and never has been a Russian. His culture, his temperament, his language, his religion, are all different…to eliminate (Ukrainian) nationalism…the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed…a famine was necessary for the Soviet and so they got one to order…if the Soviet program succeeds completely, if the intelligentsia, the priest, and the peasant can be eliminated [then] Ukraine will be as dead as if every Ukrainian were killed, for it will have lost that part of it which has kept and developed its culture, its beliefs, its common ideas, which have guided it and given it a soul, which, in short, made it a nation…This is not simply a case of mass murder. It is a case of genocide, of the destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation.”

Read the rest of the article

The Man who expaosed Stalin and the nazis

Welsh investigative reporter Gareth Jones believed in the truth. In the early 1930s, he travelled through Nazi Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union recording the grim realities of nascent dictatorships. As a new exhibition of his writing opens, Alex Donohue goes in search of Jones’ legacy

Read the rest of the article