Friday, May 9, 2008
The Quiet Holocaust: Utahns Commemorate The Ukrainian "Holodomor", Which Took As Many As 10 Million Lives In 1932-33
We endlessly hear about the Jewish Holocaust. Organized Jewry never ceases to remind us of their suffering during World War II. And not only do they memorialize it, but they've weaponized it and marketed it as the penultimate genocide. In Europe, they've even gone so far as to pass "Holocaust Denial" laws in which those who publicly dispute aspects of the Holocaust, such as the demographics, the methodology, and, above all, the singularity of the event have been fined and imprisoned under the pretext of "spreading false news", "defaming the memory of the dead", etc, etc, ad nauseum. Leading victims of this campaign of repression include Germar Rudolf, Ernst Zündel, and Zündel's defense lawyer Sylvia Stolz, whose only real crime was defending Zündel too vigorously during his trial.
Meanwhile, a less trumpeted but even worse outbreak of genocide took place in the Ukraine long before Germany even began rounding up Jews. This one year orgy of genocide has become known as the "Holodomor". According to the Ukraine's San Francisco Consul General Mykola Tochytskyi, an estimated 7 million to 10 million people were killed in a one year period from 1932-33. It represented an effort by Josef Stalin to stop any movement toward Ukrainian independence from the Soviet Union.
And, according to the Deseret News and the Salt Lake Tribune, twenty-five Utahns gathered together in Salt Lake City on Thursday May 8th, 2008 to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the onset of the Holodomor. Included among them was Dasha Pokhilko, whose grandfather told her stories of gathering leaves and roots to eat as a young boy. There was nothing else to eat. "His mom worked the whole day, and they gave her one gallon of flour and water and salt," said Pokhilko, 24, of Orem. "She worked 10 to 12 hours, and that was the only thing they gave her whole family to eat."
Recognition of this tragedy has been long suppressed. Only in 2003, after the United States and Canada became the first two nations to recognize the famine-genocide in the Ukraine, did a memorialization movement spring up. Now forty governments recognize the genocide.
A remembrance torch, known as the International Holodomor Remembrance Flame, was lit and passed around a table by those who participated. Tochytskyi joined Palmer DePaulis, executive director of the Utah Department of Community and Culture, in signing a declaration naming May 8, 2008, as "Ukrainian Genocide Remembrance Day." The torch will travel to 25 American cities, as well as locations in 33 countries, before returning to Ukraine for a November remembrance of the beginning of the starvation campaign.
Pokhilko and other Ukrainians at the event said the anniversary is an opportunity for the world to learn about the genocide. "It touched every single family," said Liliya Velbovets of Provo. "Being here so far from home and being able to touch the torch. ... We belong."
Grain was taken from Ukraine and sold abroad, while people were starving, said Velbovets, whose grandparents survived by making pancakes from grass. Pokhilko said conditions were so stark that some people resorted to cannibalism to survive. Her grandfather remembers two "cute blonde girls" who disappeared. The people in the village knew it was their mother and grandmother who ate them. The famine lasted just one year, but even after it was over, Ukrainians faced decades of repression under Soviet tyranny. The famine was a prohibited subject for discussion; people who spoke of it were punished.
Here's a nine-minute Google video providing an overview of the tragedy:
And while the Ukrainian government has worked to expose the facts behind this genocide, post-Soviet Russia has yet to come to terms with the monstrous Soviet crimes agains humanity during their 75 years of Bolshevik slavery. This is because, unlike Germany, which undertook de-Nazification, Russia did not undertake de-Communization. As a matter of fact, the torch of liberty, which briefly flared under Boris Yeltsin, is slowly being extinguished by the Putin Gang. The recent sham presidential election in Russia, in which Putin puppet Dmitri Medvedev was manipulated to "victory" by his master, is proof of this revanchism. And of course, as expected, Medvedev "appointed" Putin prime minister. But we know who really wears the pants in Russia, don't we? Those who are concerned about Russia's real motives should read Joel Skousen's analysis of the Soviet deception on the WorldAffairsBrief website.
Nore information about the Holodomor can be found at the Holodomor Memorial Website, the Infoukes website, and Wikipedia. The "quiet" Holocaust has been given voice.