By Yana Rudenko
Every year on the fourth Saturday of November, Ukraine commemorates the victims of the Holodomor – this year on November 23. This date commemorates the events of 1932-1933, when millions of people in Ukraine starved to death as a result of the Soviet Union’s grain procurement and collectivization policies. Holodomor literally means murder by starvation. Estimates range from three to ten million deaths. This man-made famine is recognized as genocide against the Ukrainian people by Ukraine and more than 30 countries – including Germany, as of 2022. On this day, Ukrainians will light candles in their homes in memory of the victims of the famine.
“The Holodomor was committed by the Soviet Union’s leadership to subjugate Ukrainians, to finally crush Ukrainian resistance to the regime and attempts to establish a Ukrainian state independent of Moscow,” reads the website of the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide. People starved as a result of the complete confiscation of all grain stocks and the subsequent confiscation of all other food and goods as punishment for not complying with the grain procurement plan. “Such a phenomenon did not occur in any other republic of the USSR,” the museum’s website says.
In Germany, too, the Holodomor was classified as genocide in 2022. “The mass starvation was not a consequence of crop failures, but was the responsibility of the political leadership of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin,” according to the non-partisan motion to the Bundestag, which was passed on November 30, 2022. The Holodomor represents a “crime against humanity”. From today’s perspective, “a historical-political classification as genocide is obvious,” write the members of parliament. “Whether the famine was caused with the aim of destroying Ukraine as a nation is still controversial among historians. The recognition of the Holodomor as genocide is therefore considered a political decision,” says the Federal Agency for Civic Education.
Officially, the Soviet Union denied the mass starvation in Ukraine and rejected the charitable aid offered by various countries, which was often provided by Ukrainian emigrants. After the regime had transformed Ukraine into an area of mass starvation, exit bans were imposed. “Only the peasants of Ukraine and Kuban were forbidden to travel to the cities, to Russia and Belarus. 22.4 million people were physically blocked in the Holodomor area. No other administrative region of the USSR or Republic has taken such a decision”, says the website of the Holodomor Museum. In Ukraine, entire families and villages died out. In Kazakhstan and other parts of the Soviet Union, millions of people also died of hunger. “To this day, the number of victims cannot be scientifically determined,” reports the ARD Tagesschau.
At the same time, the Soviet government had considerable grain reserves and exported them abroad during the Holodomor. People who tried to hide even a small amount of food were shot. According to the so-called “Five-ears of Corn Law”, which sanctioned the theft of kolkhoz property, even a few ears of corn that had overwintered under the snow in a field were considered theft, resulting in execution on the spot and confiscation of property. If there were mitigating circumstances, the sentence was at least ten years in a labor camp. There was no possibility of amnesty. And this despite the fact that under the legislation of the time, even premeditated murder was punishable by up to ten years in prison and theft was punishable by up to three months of forced labor. Between 1931 and 1940, 182,173 people were convicted under this law – including children who tried to find something to eat.
In the USSR itself, the memory of the Holodomor victims was forbidden for decades – there were no public lectures and no commemoration of the victims. Only after the restoration of state independence did the Ukrainian people manage to break the taboo on the Holodomor.
As early as September 1933, all those who sympathized with the Ukrainians and condemned the actions of the Soviet government commemorated the victims of the Holodomor abroad. During the Nazi era in Germany, a day of mourning and a memorial service for the millions of Ukrainians who had starved to death was held in Berlin on September 11, 1933. This took place at the invitation of the administrator and apostolic visitator for Ukrainian emigrants in Germany, Father Peter Vergun.
Translated with DeepL.com (free version)More information about the Holodomor is available in English on the website of the National Museum of the Holodomor Genocide: Holodomor Museum
A German-language assessment can be found at the Federal Agency for Civic Education: bpb | Holodomor
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Kerzen gibt es auf der ganzen Welt schon seit Jahrhunderten. Foto: tünews INTERNATIONAL / Linda Kreuzer.
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