St. Joseph's Ukrainian Theatre School, Holodomor Remembrance 2011
Channel: Ukrainian Media
Date: 2011-09-23

Children from St. Joseph's Ukrainian School of Chicago joined by Leonida Mytnychuk present a piece commemorating those who died in the Holodomor. Directed by Vasyl Mytnychuk.

Holodomor, the genocide of millions of Ukrainians in 1932-33, was inflicted by The Soviet Union to crush the autonomy of Ukraine and its rural population. Ukrainians with swollen bellies died in mass throughout the countryside while grain exports increased dramatically. A peasant caught with grain was killed as an enemy of the state. In order to maintain his access to Stalin, The New York Times's Walter Duranty purposefully hid his knowledge of the famine and denounced those in the West who reported it. He was, sadly, rewarded a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting. The Soviet coverup of this genocide continues to this day on the part of the Russian government, and, recently, their favored politicians in Ukraine.

At the height of the Genocide Ukrainians were dying at a rate of 25,000 per day.

Nearly 1 in 4 rural Ukrainians perished as a direct result.

The Soviet Union dumped 1.7 million tons of grain on Western markets during the Genocide.

Nearly a fifth of a ton of grain was exported for each person who died of starvation.

Over 3,000,000 children born between 1932-1933 died of starvation.

The US Congress 1988 Commission on the Ukraine Famine concluded:
"Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933."

Thanks to Taras Konowal, Nicholas Kochera, Tamara Kuzyk-Storrie, and Katya Mischenko-Mycyk for their help co-ordinating this video's production and presentation.

For more information, please visit www.ukrainiangenocide.org

Rafael Lemkin, who coined the term genocide, said,

"The third prong of the Soviet plan [at Ukrainian genocide] was aimed at the farmers, the large mass of independent peasants who are the repository of the tradition, folk lore and music, the national language and literature, the national spirit, of Ukraine. The weapon used against this body is perhaps the most terrible of all -- starvation. Between 1932 and 1933, 5,000,000 Ukrainians starved to death, an inhumanity which the 73rd Congress decried on May 28, 1934. There has been an attempt to dismiss this highpoint of Soviet cruelty as an economic policy connected with the collectivization of the wheatlands, and the elimination of the kulaks, the independent farmers was therefore necessary. The fact is, however, that large-scale farmers in Ukraine were few and far-between. To establish the horrifying uniformity of the Soviet state that the Ukrainian peasantry was sacrificed. The method used in this part of the plan was not at all restricted to any particular group. All suffered -- men, women, children. [....] This is not simply a case of mass murder[....] It is a case of genocide, of destruction, not of individuals only, but of a culture and a nation."