FOR THE RECORD

Ambassador Oleh Shamshur's testimony in support of Famine memorial in D.C.

Following is the testimony of Dr. Oleh Shamshur, ambassador of Ukraine to the United States, during the February 16 hearing before the National Parks Subcommittee of the Committee on Energy and Natural Resources on a bill to authorize the government of Ukraine to establish a memorial on federal land in the District of Columbia to honor the victims of the Famine-Genocide that occurred in Ukraine in 1932-1933. (The text was released on February 22 by the Embassy of Ukraine.)

Mr. Chairman, distinguished members of the subcommittee:

First of all, let me express my deep gratitude for the attention you are paying to the issue of raising a memorial to the victims of the man-made Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933.

In the Ukrainian language this tragedy is referred to as "Holodomor," meaning "total starvation." The Holodomor is an unparalleled disaster in the history of my nation, similar to the Holocaust in scale, cruelty and cynicism of its perpetrators - a crime officially recognized by the U.S. Congress in 1986 as an act of genocide against Ukrainian people.

Although the Holodomor took from 7 million to 11 million innocent lives, it remains barely known to the world. Stalin and the Soviet regime employed every possible tool in order to make this atrocious crime fall into oblivion. And yet, as the Gospel says, "there is nothing hidden, except that it should be made known; neither was anything made secret, but that it should come to light." The truth about the cold-blooded starving to death of millions of human beings in the center of Europe, in the midst of the 20th century, has been revealed, although it is yet to receive a due historical tribute. The pain and bitter memory of the Holodomor are alive in practically every Ukrainian family; they make our hearts ache and remind us what a monster died when the Soviet empire fell apart 15 years ago.

There is at least one thing that has been always well known about Ukraine: its richness in agricultural resources that earned it the name of the "breadbasket of Europe." In the early 1930s Ukraine was still largely an agricultural country. It was inhabited by hard-working, peaceful and diligent people. The state forced them into so-called "kolhospy," collective farms, where they toiled to satisfy the agricultural appetites of the Soviet regime. They were natural-born farmers deprived of earth and instruments of production. Yet, even after 15 years of Communist rule, they still knew how to grow wheat, breed cattle, plow their fertile land. Respect for private property and independent spirit were in their blood. This was their crime in the eyes of the tyrant who ruled the country. This was the reason why Ukraine and its people were considered dangerous by Stalin and his henchmen.

I shall be honored to provide you with some background information to explain what a horrible tragedy occurred in my country 73 years ago and why it deserves to be commemorated in the capital of the U.S. In my testimony I will rely upon the book "Harvest of Sorrow" by British historian Robert Conquest, works of the American researcher James E. Mace, Canadian scholar Roman Serbyn and British journalist Askold Krushelnycky.

The disaster started in 1932 when the Soviet authorities increased the grain procurement quota for Ukraine by 44 percent. They were aware that this extraordinarily high quota would cause a grain shortage, resulting in the inability of the Ukrainian peasants to feed themselves. Soviet law was quite explicit: no grain could be given to feed the peasants until the state quota was met. Communist Party officials with the aid of military troops and NKVD secret police units were used to move against peasants who might be hiding grain from the Soviet government. An internal passport system restricted movement of Ukrainian peasants so that they could not travel in search of food. Ukrainian grain was collected and stored in grain elevators that were guarded by military units and the NKVD while Ukrainians were starving in the vicinity.

After it turned out in 1932 that Ukraine couldn't fulfill the quota set by Moscow, draconian measures were taken. On the highest level, the grown wheat was declared inviolate "socialist property" and anyone who gleaned even an ear of wheat or bit off a sugar beet was declared an "enemy of the people" and could be executed or sentenced to not less than 10 years in the gulag.

In Ukraine, the decree of December 6, 1932, singled out six villages that allegedly sabotaged the grain procurement campaign. They were placed on the "blacklist," which was soon extended in a wholesale fashion. The blacklist meant a complete economic blockade of the villages listed, including an immediate closing of stores with all the food therein; a complete ban on trade in the village, including trade in most essential goods; immediate halting and calling in of all credits and advances; combing the neighborhood for so-called "foreign agents" and "saboteurs." At that time this was equivalent to a sentence of death by starvation.

Only those who survived the Famine can describe adequately what it was like. They tell of the entire village population swelling up from starvation. They tell of the "dead wagons" day after day picking up dead bodies to dump them later in pits. They tell of whole villages becoming deserted, of homeless children roaming the country in search for food, and of railroad stations flooded with starving peasants who had to beg lying down for they were too weak to stand. Many tried to cross the border to the Russian Federation, where bread was available. But the secret police established border checkpoints to prevent anyone from carrying food from Russia to Ukraine. This meant the de facto blacklisting of the entire Ukraine.

Graphic portraits of the horrors of village life during the Holodomor emerge from testimonies of eyewitnesses gathered by British journalist Askold Krushelnycky.

Oleksa Sonipul was 10 in 1933 and lived in a village in northern Ukraine. She said by the beginning of that year, famine was so widespread people had been reduced to eating grass, tree bark, roots, berries, frogs, birds and even earthworms. Desperate hunger drove people to sell off all of their possessions for any food they could find. At night, an eerie silence fell over the village, where all the livestock and chickens had long since been killed for food and exhausted villagers went to bed early. But requisition brigades looking to fulfill the impossibly high grain quotas continued to search even those villages where inhabitants were already dying from starvation. Brigade members, fueled by Soviet hate campaigns against the peasants, acted without mercy, taking away the last crumbs of food from starving families, knowing they were condemning even small children to death. Any peasant who resisted was shot. Rape and robbery also took place.

Sonipul described what happened when a brigade arrived at her home.

"In 1933, just before Christmas, brigades came to our village to search for bread. They took everything they could find to eat. That day they found potatoes that we had planted in our grandfather's garden, and because of that they took everything from grandfather and all the seeds that grandmother had gathered for sowing the following autumn. And the next day, the first day of Christmas, they came to us, tore out our windows and doors, and took everything to the collective farm."

As villages ran out of food, thousands of desperate people trekked to beg for food in towns and cities. Food was available in cities, although strictly controlled through ration coupons. But residents were forbidden to help the starving peasants and doctors were not allowed to aid the skeletal villagers, who were left to die in the streets.

Fedir Burtianski was a young man in 1933 when he set out by train to Ukraine's Donbas mining area in search of work. He says thousands of starving peasants, painfully thin with swollen bellies, lined the rail track begging for food. The train stopped in the city of Dnipropetrovsk, and Burtianski says he was horrified by what he saw there.

"At Dnipropetrovsk we got out of the carriages. I got off the wagon and I saw lots of people swollen and half-dead. And some who were lying on the ground in convulsions. Probably they were going to die within a few minutes. Then the railway NKVD quickly herded us back into the wagons."

Grain and potatoes continued to be harvested in Ukraine, driven by the demand of Stalin's quotas. But the inefficiency of the Soviet transportation system meant that tons of food literally rotted uneaten - sometimes in the open and within the view of those dying of starvation.

The scene Burtianski described was repeated in towns and cities all over Ukraine. In the countryside, entire villages were being wiped out. The hunger drove many people to desperation and madness. Many instances of cannibalism were recorded, with people living off the remains of other starvation victims or in some instances resorting to murder. Most peasant families had five or six children, and some mothers killed their weakest children in order to feed the others.

Burtianski said at one point he avoided buying meat from a vendor because he suspected it was human flesh. When the authorities heard about the incident, he was forced to attend the trial of a man and his two sons who were suspected of murdering people for food. Burtianski says during the trial one of the sons admitted in chilling terms to eating the flesh of his own mother, who had died of starvation.

He said, "Thank you to Father Stalin for depriving us of food. Our mother died of hunger and we ate her, our own dead mother. And after our mother we did not take pity on anyone. We would not have spared Stalin himself."

Mykhaylo Naumenko was 11 years old in 1933. His father was executed for refusing to join a nearby collective farm. Mykhaylo was left with his mother and siblings to face the Famine without a provider. He said people were shot for trying to steal grain or potatoes from the local collective farm, which was surrounded by barbed wire and guarded by armed men. He said people were executed even for trying to pick up a few loose seeds dropped on the ground.

"A tragedy developed. People became swollen, they died by the tens each day. The collective farm authorities appointed six men to collect and bury the dead. From our village of 75 homes, by May 24 houses were empty where all the inhabitants had died."

Many people met their deaths with quiet resignation, praying and comforting their starving children with fairy tales.

Teodora Soroka, who lost nearly every member of her family to "dekulakization" and famine, says such memories can never be erased. Nor does she want to forget them.

"My baby sister died of hunger in my arms. She was begging for a piece of bread, because to have a piece of bread in the house meant life. She pleaded for me to give her a bit of bread. I was crying and told her that we didn't have any. She told me that I wanted her to die. Believe me, it's painful even now. I was little myself then. I cried, but my heart was not torn to shreds because I couldn't understand why this was all happening. But today, and ever since I became an adult, I haven't spent a day in my life when I haven't cried. I have never gone to sleep without thinking about what happened to my family."

Let us think about this little girl. Visualize this Ukrainian martyr forced to see her dear ones die one after another from starvation. Multiply her suffering by at least 7 million - those are the most modest estimates of human losses Ukraine suffered during the Holodomor.

Today I am adding my voice to many others who ask you to provide Ukrainians with an opportunity to commemorate the immeasurable suffering and horrid death of millions of their kin and to condemn this act of genocide by erecting a solemn memorial in the heart of America which has always been so attentive to pain and injustice inflicted upon others.

By doing so you will also pay tribute to over 1 million Ukrainian Americans making an outstanding contribution to the prosperity of this country. This memorial will be yet another sign of the developing partnership between Ukraine and the United States now standing together for democracy and against tyranny and oppression.

Thank you.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 5, 2006, No. 10, Vol. LXXIV

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