Luhansk researcher is determined to record Famine survivors' accounts (07/24/05)

Luhansk researcher is determined to record Famine survivors' accounts

by Zenon Zawada
Kyiv Press Bureau

DONETSK - It was during her work on a folklore project in the rural Luhansk Oblast that Iryna Mahrytska began encountering survivors of the Holodomor, the Great Famine of 1932-1933.

Though her class had focused on documenting the customs, rituals, history and songs of Luhansk villagers, inevitably the subject of the Holodomor came up with the oldest residents.

"When we listened to their stories, we couldn't hold back our tears," Ms. Mahrytska said. "These were sad stories about collectivization and dekurkulization, the result of which was the Holodomor." (A kurkul was a Soviet term for a wealthy peasant.)

From these interviews, she compiled several articles published in Kyiv magazines in 2004. However, she felt it wasn't enough to merely document the accounts and wanted to do more.

At the urging of Oleskii Danylo, who led the Yushchenko presidential campaign in Luhansk, Ms. Mahrytska and a cameraman organized a 10-day trip to visit 65 villages to videotape eyewitness testimonies.

"When we visited northern Luhansk Oblast, they told of horrific things," Ms. Mahrytska said. "Entire villages died out, people were swollen and starving, children were dying, dead people were lying on the road and people didn't even have the strength to bury them."

Ms. Mahrytska's initiative is a rare example of those Ukrainians determined to record the few remaining first-hand accounts of the genocidal Famine.

Survivors who can recall memories of the political catastrophe must be at least 77 years old, or born in 1928, and there are fewer of them with each passing year.

First Lady Kateryna Yushchenko has said that the Ukraine 3000 Foundation will continue its work on the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide by sponsoring a massive collection of witness testimonies similar to Steven Spielberg's Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation (www.vhf.org).

However, thus far only a documentary film produced by Ukraine's Tonis Telekanal network is under way as part of the foundation's "Lessons in History: Famine 1933" project.

In April, the documentary's producers set out on a tour of 10 oblasts in Ukraine and videorecorded the eyewitness accounts of 40 survivors, said Oleksii Kopetko, programs coordinator for the Ukraine 3000 Foundation.

Tonis plans to broadcast this first portion of the film in September as a way of introducing the subject to the Ukrainian public.

The film's second half will handle the Holodomor from a more historical, academic perspective, Mr. Kopetko said, answering the questions of what happened, how did it happened and who was responsible.

While a film is a step in the right direction, the recordings of 40 survivors pales in comparison to the nearly 52,000 testimonies the Shoah project was able to record.

According to BBC News, Mr. Spielberg himself established and financed the Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation with a $60 million profit he earned from his movie "Schindler's List."

Shoah project interviewers and videographers received extensive training, and the average testimony was two hours and 30 minutes, according to the Survivors of the Shoah website. The testimonies are also catalogued and indexed in a sophisticated system for research and educational purposes.

Beyond financial constraints, Ukrainians face much larger obstacles than those recording Holocaust-survivor testimonies, Mr. Kopetko said.

He figured that at least 80 percent of the archived materials on the Holodomor were destroyed or removed from Ukraine, he said. Also, most of the official reports and documents written by the Communist Party were lost during World War II or intentionally destroyed.

In addition, there is the fact that Holodomor survivors are older than the Holocaust survivors.

Time was lost in recording testimonies during the indifferent presidency of Leonid Kuchma. Only in April did a Ukrainian president finally take action when Mr. Yushchenko wrote an official letter to all oblast chairmen, asking them to compile a list of people who lived up to the year 1932.

"So we have a lot less to work with," Mr. Kopetko said. "We're doing what we can with the support of the foundation."

The Tonis crew producing the film thus far has not collaborated with Ms. Mahrytska. She said she wants to make some editorial contributions to her 17 hours of videotape and hasn't yet shared her work with anyone.

Luhansk was among the Ukrainian oblasts to suffer the worst from the Holodomor - the Soviet Communists killed a quarter of the oblast's population, according to Ms. Mahrytska's research.

While southern Luhansk is industrialized and Russified, the oblast's northern half is mostly rural. Villagers there have retained their Ukrainian language and culture.

Ms. Mahrytska came to the conclusion that Holodomor survivors in Luhansk's southern half did not suffer as much as the northern villagers because they were not farmers and villagers.

Residents of northern Luhansk recalled people with stomachs swollen from hunger, but not to the extent that they were starving to death - she said. The industrialized cities were left with food to survive on.

Villagers and farmers didn't want to take part in collectivization, which is why Joseph Stalin had targeted these hard-working, independent-minded people for death.

"The Soviet authorities, meaning the Communists, stole from the people their seeds and food and led them to death, not just families, but entire villages," she said.

In certain regions, survivors described how entire neighboring villages died off as a direct result of grain collectivization. To commemorate a destroyed village, villagers even planted black flags.

During the Holodomor, people tried fleeing to the Donbas because mine workers were at least able to receive food for their labor.

Survivors "showed us cemeteries of mass graves," Ms. Mahrytska said, referring to the village of Proyizhiv of the Staropilskyi region where 364 people died.

"Almost half the population of the village died off," she continued. "Hard-working people who spent their whole lives making bread with their hands were forced to starve to death."

Ms. Mahrytska said her journalistic work provides further proof that the Holodomor was indeed an orchestrated genocide against the Ukrainian people.

Those Holodmor survivors who lived near the border with Russia described how they took their families' embroidered shirts and ritual cloths to the neighboring Russian oblasts to trade for bread, a little bit of seed and potatoes.

"However, there was nothing here," Ms. Mahrytska said. "So one can make the conclusion that this was a genocide of Ukrainians who were a people that in general, did not want to join the kolhosps" (collective farms).

When she decided it was imperative to record and videotape Holodomor survivors in the Luhansk Oblast as soon as possible, Ms. Mahrytska appealed to the oblast authorities but received no response.

It wasn't until Mr. Danylo demonstrated an interest in her work and even provided the transportation, professional cameraman and videotaping equipment that Ms. Mahrytska was able to embark on her 65-village expedition.

She said she now needs an experienced person to help her edit 17 hours of witness testimony and create a documentary film.

In addition to the survivors, Ms. Mahrytska also obtained interviews from local historians and archivists who were able to describe the Holodomor based on their research, and knowledge of documents.

"Without learning our history, we can't lead a future in dignity," Ms. Mahrytska said. "It's worth learning from the Jews who have learned about their Holocaust, and we need to learn so that our children will not allow similar things."

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