Holodomor – Genocide in Ukraine 1932-33: 85th Anniversary

84th anniversary of Ukrainian Holodomor genocide 2017

Ukrainians in Rochdale will be holding a commemoration on 24 November at 1.00pm in the Memorial Gardens and 2.00pm at St. Chad’s Church at which they will be joined by the Mayor of Rochdale, Councillor Mohammed Zaman, The Rt. Hon Tony Lloyd M.P for Rochdale and local councillors. 

Olga Kurtianyk, Chairperson, Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain (Rochdale Branch) said: “The commemoration will begin with the blessing of the memorial and laying of wreaths to the victims of the Holodomor.   

“This will be followed by a Memorial Service at St Chad’s Church led by Reverend Mark Coleman, Vicar of Rochdale and Reverend Bohdan Lysykanych of the Ukrainian Catholic Church in Rochdale.

“The year 2017-2018 marks the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor - the man-made famine in Ukraine in which millions of Ukrainians were systematically and deliberately starved to death. The Ukrainian community worldwide commemorates this tragedy annually on the fourth Saturday of November.”

Between 1932-33, Stalin’s policy of collectivisation, and his determination to crush Ukrainian opposition, turned Ukraine – the bread basket of Europe – into a mass graveyard, with whole villages wiped out from starvation and adults and children dying from starvation in the streets of towns and cities.

For many years, the truth about Holodomor has been denied, but archive documents now uncovered in Ukraine show that Stalin deliberately targeted Ukraine for the harshest treatment, in the full knowledge that millions were starving and dying.

At the time, two British journalists Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones witnessed and wrote about the famine. Foreign and Commonwealth Office archives also show that the UK Government was fully aware of the famine, the scale of deaths and the fact that it had been created deliberately, but chose, for political reasons, to remain silent. Many documents and eye witness accounts exist verifying the cold facts of genocide.

Article II of the UN Convention for the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide 1948 states that “acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethical, racial or religious group including deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part” should be termed genocide.

On any objective view of the evidence, the Holodomor was genocide. Ukraine, America, Canada, Australia, Poland and many other nations have already recognised the famine as genocide. The Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain is campaigning, for the UK Government to acknowledge the Holodomor as genocide.

They believe that the millions of innocent victims who were starved to death just for being Ukrainian deserve to be remembered and to be given the justice of their rightful place in mainstream 20th century history.