Categories: General
Date: Nov 23, 2025
Title: mini-MUM Holodomor
We remember the victims of the 1932-1933 man-made famine genocide.
This mini-MUM display, in the vestibule of the St George Cathedral, provides some information about the horrors of that period in history.
We pray for their memories...
And, remember...
1933...
different weapons
2022...
same genocide
... a deliberate massacre. It's not war anymore.
On November 23 we also prepared a small memorial on the Tetrapod in our Religious Gallery.
HOLODOMOR
The Ukrainian term for ‘hunger by starvation'
From the Ukrainian words holod (hunger) and mor (plague)
This famine-genocide created by Joseph Stalin, communist leader of the Soviet Union, led to the starvation of millions of men, women, and children in 1932-33.
Why were Ukrainian people starved? Ukraine's fertile agricultural land easily produced large quantities of grain for sale to Western countries - money needed for Stalin's plan to forcefully amalgamate smaller nations into one Soviet Union. Stalin was furious with the Ukrainians who defied destruction of their national identity and collectivization of their farmlands. Therefore, Stalin gave orders to confiscate all grain and blocked entry into and out of the territory. He forcibly created conditions for the people who produced the grain to starve to death. The "Five Stalks of Grain" Law, written on August 7, 1932, threatened severe punishment, even death, for picking any food, including the smallest amount of grains or seeds from fields. Close to 25,000 people died each day. Soviet government officials suppressed news reports of the famine, distorted facts and destroyed documents. To this day, they continue to deny the years of genocide. As ghost villages began to emerge, Stalin resettled ethnic russians and other minorities on the Ukrainian territory to hide the reality. When Welsh journalist Gareth Jones published the first major expose of Stalin's deliberately imposed famine in the US, he was expelled from the USSR; in 1935, Jones was assassinated.Not until Ukraine's independence from soviet russia in 1991, could memories of witnesses be confronted publicly and the horror of the genocide was revealed. There are very few photos in existence that document the Holodomor. It is the voices of survivors that draw the pictures.
Through the voice of a survivor: "Our village had a population of about 5,000 people. It changed beyond recognition; there were no fences left, bushes and weeds grew instead of gardens, buildings including the majestic church were destroyed. People were forced to search for food by stealing at night. A young mother went to a field at night to scrounge for potatoes-she was shot there and thrown near a well. Her three children starved to death." (Vasyuta, a villager from Bilske, Poltava. Source: "Najbilshey zlochyn kremlya", 1952.)
In 2008, Canada's Parliament recognized the Holodomor as a deliberate act of genocide and declared the 4th Saturday in November as a national Memorial Day. The 46 nation states of the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) also recognize the 1932-33 Holodomor as genocide of Ukrainian people.
Recently, His Beatitude Sviatoslav stated: "Ukrainians were deliberately destroyed for fear of their love of freedom and patriotism. ... Today, as we prayerfully commemorate all those who died a martyr's death from artificial famine, we want to testify to the whole world that we do not forget the pain of any Ukrainian. ... Let the candle lit in all corners of the world by conscious Ukrainians in memory of hunger victims be a beacon of hope for Ukraine, now and always!"
Let us pray for their souls. Vichnaya Pam'yat!
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Information about the Holodomor - man-made genocide famine, is available from many reliable source:
