EDITORIAL

A place for our genocide memorial

Two weeks ago on this very page we published a letter addressed to President Viktor Yushchenko from two survivors of the Famine-Genocide that ravaged Ukraine in 1932-1933. In that letter, Nicholas Mischenko of the Ukrainian Genocide Famine Foundation based in Chicago and Peter Borisow of the Hollywood Trident Foundation based in Los Angeles argued emotionally, eloquently and insightfully that the capital of Ukraine must become the site of a memorial and museum dedicated solely to the remembrance and study of the Great Famine, Stalin's genocide of the people of Ukraine.

"There is no place on earth dedicated exclusively to our genocide, to our suffering, the Holodomor. We need such a place, and we deserve such a place," they wrote, in order to properly mourn and remember the 10 million of our kinsmen who perished during that time of terror. The only proper place for such a memorial, they emphasized, is Kyiv. And there, they noted, "we would finally have a place of our own - to be with our own and to cry with our own."

Since that letter was published, we have learned from other news media and, in particular, from a report filed by journalist R.L. Chomiak especially for the Action Ukraine Report (an international newsletter distributed via e-mail), that there appears to be a problem in Kyiv with the siting of the Famine-Genocide memorial. Several proposed sites have already been rejected and, as reported in Vechirnii Kyiv, "The issue of the final location of the memorial ... is far from completion."

One suggested site was dropped with the reasons never revealed (possibly the construction nearby of high-rise luxury apartments); another was far off the tourist trail next to a floating casino on the Dnipro - clearly an inappropriate setting; and parts of a third site are at once being suggested for a commercial project and being claimed by the Ukrainian Orthodox Church - Kyiv Patriarchate.

"Seventy-two years after the greatest disaster of the Ukrainian people there still is no place for a center to study it and keep the memory of it alive," Mr. Chomiak underscored.

Morgan Williams, editor of the Action Ukraine Report, noted that in February President Viktor Yushchenko proposed that the Kyiv administration submit proposals for a Famine memorial. He commented that the city administration's response that a museum of the Famine will be established before November 26 of this year, the national day of remembrance, "was never taken seriously by anyone" and that "it is not possible to create a world-class museum" in such a short time-frame. We most emphatically concur.

With the Yushchenko administration in power, we believe it is not too much to expect a serious and well-thought-out plan to recall the 10 million brutally killed in 1932-1933 in Ukraine and to educate the world about this genocide that, unfortunately and unbelievably, remains largely unknown and unacknowledged.

At the same time, we pray that by the time of our national tragedy's 75th anniversary there will be a proper memorial and museum, or at the very least the beginnings of one, in the capital city of our long-suffering and now independent Ukraine.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 31, 2005, No. 31, Vol. LXXIII

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