On Nov. 25, 2009, the Ukrainian Home hosted the opening ceremony of an renewed documentary and art exhibit entitled “1932–33 Holodomor: An Act of Genocide against the Ukrainian People,” which was launched last year.
Every stand illustrates a certain period in Ukrainian history: the UNR, the Bolshevik enslavement of Ukraine, dekulakization and collectivization, and the initiators of the Holodomor and genocide. “The essence of history is revealing the truth. Falsified history does not provide energy for the people’s heroic deeds. Today we have opened secret archives and collected more than 200,000 eyewitness accounts, published the National Book of Memory with almost a million of names of Holodomor victims. We have located and tidied up mass burial sites, erected 7,000 monuments and memorial signs in towns and villages,” said Viktor Yushchenko during the opening ceremony.
He paid special attention to the worldwide effort in the past several years aimed at explaining the Holodomor in Ukraine (to date the parliaments of 14 countries have recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide). Commenting on the importance of this exhibit, the head of state mentioned separate documents and criminal cases started by the SBU with regard to the 1932–33 Holodomor in Ukraine. The investigating team has unearthed 3,456 documents issued by Soviet and communist party authorities that are proof of this act of genocide against the Ukrainian people. A total of 857 mass burial sites of Holodomor victims have been located and 735 populated areas where the authorities enforced the blacklist regime. All this is apparent evidence of genocide and struggle against the Ukrainian peasantry as the motive force of the national liberation movement.
During the ceremony new publications on the Holodomor, including English-language editions, were presented, among them Raphael Lemkin’s Soviet Genocide in the Ukraine, and Robert Conquest’s The Great Terror. In 2005, the bilingual, Ukrainian–English book Day and Eternity of James Mace was published as part of The Day’s Library Series, followed by James Mace’s Your Dead Chose Me (2008) and a Romanian version of Stanislav Kulchytsky’s Why Did He Destroy Us?
Perhaps the most exciting event was the summing up of the project “Humaneness in Inhuman Times.” Launched by the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory, it is designed to honor the memory of those who helped people survive the Holodomor, who did not break down physically and psychologically, who refused to be intimidated and hunted down like a wild beast, who never reached the point where one stops being human. Amidst that chaos and countless deaths there remained human beings who remembered His Commandment: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself.
Vasyl Ivchuk, school principal in the village of Dudarkiv, currently in Boryspil raion, Kyiv oblast, was one these people. Says Mykola Karpets: “You can’t get accustomed to death, but the most terrible thing was that we did just that in 1933. The children of that village survived thanks to the school principal Vasyl Ivchuk. He taught history and was strict and demanding. He wore a pair of blue army breeches and a soldier’s shirt. He arranged for the children to receive meals at school. During the large recess children from all the schools across the village ran over to the central school to have something to eat. For most of us it was the only place where we got food. On his orders children from poor families, who were straight-A students, received two pieces of bread each…” This man was posthumously conferred the title “Hero of Ukraine.”
Another one by the name of Vasyl Kabaniuk was the head of the collective farm in the village of Petrova Solonykha, Mykolaiv oblast. “People survived thanks to the head of our collective farm,” says eyewitness Maria Serdeshna. “In order to save people, he hid some grain in a safe place. This grain was crushed and used for cooking the shlikhta gruel. Then it was poured in molds and left to cool, then sliced and given to all families. News quickly spread in the countryside. Before long starving people started coming to the village. Some dropped dead before the kitchen, but we managed to rescue others…”
Volodymyr Kosak was the head of a state farm in the village of Sharivka, Khmelnytsky oblast. Says Yevhenia Stepanyshyn: “In 1932, Volodymyr Kosak was summoned to Kyiv where he attended a conference and ordered to hand all grain over to the state. At the time workers hadn’t received a single kilo. Kosak realized what would happen. Back home he called a meeting of activists and ordered all grain to be immediately delivered to the government. After people received grain several days later, they hid it. Among those present at the meeting was Pender, chairman of the village council. He and another activist reported this ‘outrageous fact’ to the NKVD. Volodymyr Kosak was expelled from the party and relieved of his post, but thanks to him people in Sharivka didn’t suffer as much as others during the Holodomor.”
Apparently there are enough eyewitness accounts about people who saved their fellow countrymen during the famine for an entire edition of Oral History-2. Such evidence must be collected, because this was a remarkable period in Ukrainian history from which we know that some Ukrainians would report their neighbors to the NKVD, which meant certain death, while others, living in different empires, had to fight and kill each other on the battlefield. But there were also people who, when faced with great ordeals, never hesitated to save their fellow countrymen, often at the cost of their freedom and life.
The Day’s two-volume collection Extract-150 (published this year) contains a letter from Tetiana Nykytiuk from Kyiv: “There was the village. No dogs barking or hens cackling, no children shouting. Not a single living being in sight. The place was dead quiet and empty… She spotted a ramshackle village home with the door left open wide. She peeped inside and saw what looked like a pile of rags on the stove. The pile suddenly moved and a faint woman’s voice said, ‘What do you want, child?’ My mother froze in horror for staring at her was a living skeleton. Stammering, she explained where she was headed (it was still a long way) and that she expected some kind-hearted people to help her, but what she saw here was so weird, no one in sight. ‘That’s right, some have died of hunger, others left for the city to save their lives,’ whispered the woman. And then she said something that defied logic and normal instincts, especially the self-preservation one: ‘There, take that chunk of bread on the table. You’re young, you need it, and I’ve no use for it because I’m dying.’” She gave instead of asking!”
