Rep. Don Ritter's remarks (10/09/83)

Rep. Don Ritter's remarks

Following is the text of the address delivered by Rep. Don Ritter of the 15th Congressional District in Pennsylvania at the Great Famine memorial rally near the Washington Monument. Rep. Ritter, who is in his third term, is co-chairman of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Baltic States and Ukraine and a member of the Congressional Commission on Security and Cooperation in Europe. He speaks Russian fluently and spent a year in the Soviet Union as an exchange scientist.

Today, my dear friends, I honor the 7 million who died in the famine/holocaust and the millions who lived through those terrible years. But that is not enough. Today, I devote myself with all my heart and soul to the cause of freedom for our oppressed brothers and sisters living in Ukraine. [This opening paragraph was spoken in Ukrainian.]

We are here today to honor 7 million who perished and those who survived. We are here today to commemorate those tragic times. But we are here not only to honor, not only to commemorate. We are here today because we believe in freedom. We believe in a free Ukraine. In free lands, there are no holocausts. We are here today to tell Stalin's heirs that we believe in freedom. We believe in a free Ukraine.

We are hear to tell the story to the world of the people who suffered, the victims, the survivors. Yes, we want the world to know about this crime against humanity, not that they may feel sympathy towards the victims. That is given. But, even more important is that the world better understand that the disease of totalitarian control over people longing to be free is what creates holocausts. And that such totalitarian control is today exerted by Stalin's heirs over the Ukrainian people and many others. Yes, we have a story to tell.

Ivan Klymko lived on the Lukashiv Grange and survived the famine. Ivan was close friends with Vasyl Luchko whose wife and three children lived near him. Many times his wife, Sanka, made trips to Poltava for food, but soon this source ran out. Food became very scarce.

One day in March, Ivan went to Vasyl's house. Upon entering the dark house he brushed against some thing that felt warm and soft. Searching for a light, he saw in front of him Vasyl's 6-year-old son hanging by the neck. The rope was tight around his neck and saliva was still dripping from his mouth. In the adjoining storage room, soon discovered, was the body of the other son, also hung by the neck. Soon Vasyl appeared and Ivan asked him why he had murdered his children. His reply was that he had nothing to give them to eat and didn't want them to starve to death. Starvation breeds insanity. Forced starvation is murder.

Together with his brother, Vasyl dug a grave for the two boys. There were no coffins so the boys were lowered into an earthen grave. When the mother returned from a food foraging trip with her daughter she learned of the death of her sons, however, when she found out they had been buried she scolded Ivan and his brother for burying them. Ivan had to tell her that her husband was in such a state they were afraid he might eat them. Starvation breeds desperation. Forced starvation is murder.

Within two weeks both Vasyl and his daughter died of starvation and, a few months later, the mother also died. In a last attempt to gain food she ripped part of her roof off to sell the metal for bread. She died with the bread in her hand. Her death resulted in the entire Luchko family being wiped out. The Luchko family was murdered.

George Kulchycky, writing for a Cleveland paper in June of 1933, wrote a report on the famine based on interviews with eyewitnesses. He stated that in the village of Kharkivsky the famine had a devastating effect. He writes: "Reporters who knew of the catastrophe were so enamored with communism and its future that they were persuaded not to report the fiasco." But today, we reporters, all of us, file our stories.

One eyewitness account was that of Vera Kochno.

"In April of 1932 I personally went to Moscow for food, I risked my life, I was hidden in the locomotive. Ukraine was under an iron blockade, no one without party passports was permitted to leave the country. I was stunned when I witnessed that Moscow's stores and food markets were overloaded with food, and white rolls could be found on the streets. At the same time the well-known "Red Brigade" of 25,000 communist thugs and secret police wiped out completely food from Ukraine, confiscating in the villages everything from house to house, and killing even dogs and cats, so we would not hunt them for food. The high, enormous mountains of dead bodies of children, women, youngsters, were lying everywhere, especially in front of all the doors of our churches in Kharkov, where my husband was a head of the Metropolitan Cathedral. One couldn't open the doors."

According to the testimony of the economist, Dr. Mark Mensheha, published in 1958, the Kremlin imposed quotas of grain to be shipped from the Ukraine to government storages in Russia. These quotas exceeded the entire crop of the harvest of the preceding year of 1932. Statistics revealed that the harvest produced 140 million pounds of grain, which fed the Ukrainian people along with some exports. The quotas for out-shipment were tens of millions of pounds higher than total production. Nothing was left for the people to eat.

Moreover, Stalin sent Mikoyan, secretary of the Ministry of the Food Industry to Ukraine, and also Molotov, Kaganovich and Khrushchev. Mikoyan observed thousands of peasants' corpses, and thousands of swollen faces and bodies in the Uman district of Ukraine in the early summer of 1933. The local authorities begged Mikoyan to permit them to use part of the collected grain for the starving people to save them from death. Mikoyan rejected their petitions. In an answer to the petitions of dying and crying children and their families, came revenge: the destruction and harvest of death of many villages and Kozak towns around Uman city. They disappeared and the region became like a desert because all the people died. Yes, we have a story to tell.

During this short period over 7 million Ukrainians died. It took the Nazis five years to destroy 6 million people in their death camps. The Soviets outdid their "moral twin," the Nazis, by converting Ukraine into an enormous, sealed-off death camp. Starvation was the substitute for gas. Unfortunately, this holocaust has not received the attention that it should have and while the Nazis were defeated, the Soviets are still powerful. It is important for the world to know about this world-shaking historical event. Just as the world knows about the Nazi death camps. It is important to know that Stalin and the Communists made a death camp out of the Ukrainian nation in 1932-33.

The memories of the Ukrainian famine should haunt every civilized man, woman and child as does the holocaust of the Jews. These stories should not be left to scholars alone. They should be told in schools, they should be written in textbooks and remembered in places of worship, so that the memory may in some way prevent this from happening again and, yes, teach us about the perpetrators. You, as citizens, have the power to go to your school boards, your history and social studies teachers to teach our young people about this heinous crime against humanity - just as Nazi crimes are taught. I lend my support and that of the Ad Hoc Committee on the Baltic States and Ukraine, which I co-chair to seek through legislation to enhance this education process, to spread the word. I also pledge continued action on the part of the Congressional Helsinki Commission, on which I serve.

Recently, there was Cambodia, another dark fruit from the tree of totalitarian communism. Today, as we speak, Soviet armored helicopter gunships are being used in the destruction of the people of Afghanistan. Using chemical and biological weapons which wreak agonizing death on their victims and mines that appear as toys, but which are capable of blowing off a limb of some curious child, so as to incapacitate their parents, the Soviets are committing another genocide, another holocaust. One million dead in just a few years, 4 million forced to leave out of only 15 million people in Afghanistan.

Will free people one day stand and commemorate the 50th anniversary of the Afghan holocaust, or will we have the courage to stand up today and demand that it be stopped? Will we ignore them as we did the Ukrainians in 1932-33 or will we give freedom fighters the wherewithal to defend themselves from the same perpetrators of the Ukrainian holocaust. In the words of Alexander Solzhenitsyn, will we give them bread or stones?

In our hemisphere, another crime of communist totalitarianism is being committed. In Nicaragua, the Miskito and other ethnic Indians are facing genocide at the hands of the Marxist-Leninist Sandinistas. The Sandinistas, backed militarily and financially by the Soviet Union and their Cuban proxies, are trying to destroy the spirit of the ethnic Indians and bring them into submission. Tomas Borge, Sandinista interior minister, told Miskito Indian leader Stedman Fagoth that "if necessary, to impose Sandinista ideology, we will kill the last Miskito Indian." Again, I ask: Will we stand up and help or watch it all happen?

The Ukrainian people today are more than 50 million strong. Ukrainian people will not give in to the destruction of their national identity. Attempts at Sovietization have all but failed because of the strength of Ukrainian culture and the desire to pass on rich history, language and tradition to the children. It is essential that this passing on of the culture be continued. The culture passed down through the generations is keeping the flame of freedom alive. This year has been set aside as an entire year of commemoration and it is fitting and proper that America recognizes this event, learns from it and uses its wisdom to do what it can to prevent such tragedies. Standing behind those who resist totalitarian slavery is one way we can prevent future holocausts. Resisting Soviet expansion in Afghanistan, Southeast Asia, Africa and Latin America will prevent future holocausts and kindle flames of freedom which can one day kindle the flame in Ukraine.

As long as a free Ukraine exists in people's hearts, then a free Ukrainian nation "is" a reality. This is a struggle I for one accept, and welcome your participation and leadership.

As a brief aside, I'd like to welcome some 100 of my own Lehigh Valley constituents who came to Washington to be a part of this important demonstration.

May the memory of those who died live on in our hearts and in the hearts of all Americans so that the flame of freedom for Ukraine will never die. Long live the flame of freedom. Glory to Ukraine. Thank you, and I hope to see you again. [This concluding paragraph was spoken in Ukrainian.]

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