FOR THE RECORD: Excerpts of keynote address by John Jaresko (11/20/05)

FOR THE RECORD: Excerpts of keynote address by John Jaresko

Following are excerpts of the keynote address delivered by John Jaresko on September 18 at Ukrainian Genocide Remembrance Day in Chicago.

... we have gathered here together to remember and pray for the souls of over 10 million innocent Ukrainians who died between 1932 and 1933 as a result of Stalin's forced genocide famine.

While preparing to make this speech, I questioned why should I address you today? What could I possibly say to help each and everyone here today realize the inhumane torture and pain that our Ukrainian people suffered during the course of this unequaled demonstration of genocide? Well, I think I found the answer.

The fact is that it is in my blood. Literally, I am a descendant of Ukrainian "kulak" landowners who refused collectivization in 1932-1933. My great grandparents Feofan and Natalia Brazhnyk were starved to death in the village of Marchenky in the Poltava region. I recall stories by my grandmother about the genocide and how she described my father's birth in November of 1932. That my father survived his first year of life was an unequivocal miracle because the majority of people around them were dying of starvation.

As you look at the screen beside me, you see the names of just some of the exterminated. To put this into its horrific perspective, by using a conservative number of 10 million starved victims, we could read one name per second for over 116 straight days. This averages out to 8,640 deaths per day. Yet, even with such a gigantic number of innocent victims starved to death, the world was kept unaware. ...

As Famine was raging across Ukraine and holding the Ukrainian people in its grip, the absence of food was slowly turning into an absence of life. Prominent author Vasilij Grossman writes "Within the villages mothers looked at their children and screamed in fear, they screamed as if a snake had crept into their house. And this snake was Famine, Starvation, Death." At first the children cried all day for food, and in the streets and villages the swollen bodies of the dead began to pile up. In order to hide the mounting death toll and prevent the dead from being used as food, Communist Party workers would come and collect the dead, transporting them to unidentified mass graves.

The physical harm that was inflicted upon the Ukrainian people was no more horrible than the psychological impact. Starvation often led to insanity and dehumanization. At this time I would ask everyone in the audience to visualize your child, your mother or father, your brother or sister too weak to scream or even cry, their abdomen swollen, nothing left but skin and bones and dying before your eyes. And then watch as they take the body away and leave you to suffer the same fate. This is the most cruel of all punishments that one can be subjected to. ...

Lev Kopelev, later one of Russia's leading dissidents, wrote "It was excruciating to see and hear all this. And even worse, to take part in it. We were realizing historical necessity, we were performing our revolutionary duty. We were obtaining grain for the socialist fatherland. For the Five-Year Plan. Our great goal was the universal triumph of communism and for the sake of that goal everything was permissible - to lie, to steal, to destroy hundreds of thousands and even millions of people, all those who were hindering our work or could hinder it, everyone who stood in the way. And to hesitate or doubt about all this was to give in to 'ineffectual squeamishness' and 'stupid liberalism.'

...The western media fell right into the trap of Soviet propaganda and while always finding the faults and failings of their own governments they blindly accepted Soviet reports. ...

As the Famine spread, many prominent Western figures traveled to Ukraine. The incidence of deception and self-deception were very plain to see. For example: in preparation for a state visit to Ukraine by a French statesman, Edouard Herriot, in 1933, the population worked from 2 a.m., cleaning the streets, decorating houses, removing the homeless, beggars and starving people. Shop windows were filled with food, the hotel he was to stay in was completely refurbished and his entire experience was confined to visiting model collective farms where all the peasants were selected Communists who were well fed. As a result, he denied that any famine had taken place.

Another prominent example is that of The New York Times Pulitzer Prize-winning corespondent Walter Duranty. Mr. Duranty personally told others that he estimated the Famine victims at around 7 million. Yet, what the American public read in his column was that any report of famine was exaggeration or malignant propaganda. The recently released KGB files and cables of the U.S. State Department identified him as a cooperative individual to the Soviet state.

There were a few reporters like Malcom Muggeridge and other westerners who gave true accounts of the situation. These reports were deemed untrue and dismissed. These reporters were vilified or fired.

This act of not only ethnic but socioeconomic cleansing was hidden by the Soviet government for many years. We commend the brave survivors, their descendants and Ukrainians worldwide who have not wavered in their battle to have the Ukrainian Genocide Famine recognized by the whole world. ...

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