Dear Editor:
On February 26, a lecture about the Holodomor by Dr. Matthew Pauly, associate professor of history at Michigan State University, was held at the Holocaust Memorial Center in Farmington Hills, Mich.
The impetus for this lecture was the urgent need to bring about inclusion of Holodomor into the future Michigan Genocide Studies program mandated by Gov. Rick Snyder. The urgency was due to the term limit for the current Michigan Genocide Studies Council, which expires in August of this year. The concern was that the governor’s mandate would not be continued and the intense effort by Ukrainian American activists to include Holodomor would have to be renewed.
The original request was made to the Holocaust Memorial Center Board, where all Genocide Council meetings were convened. We proposed to schedule an already available PowerPoint lecture by Vera Andrushkiw, Ph.D. candidate and current leader of Michigan Ukrainian American activists.
The Holocaust Memorial Center Board accepted this proposal but provided its choice for the presenter of the Holodomor Lecture in the person of Dr. Pauly, a Fulbright scholar, author of “Breaking the Tongue: Language, Education and Power in Soviet Ukraine, 1923-1934,” and a researcher on a book project titled “City of Children: Juvenile Poverty, Crime and Salvation in Odessa, 1881-1940.”
This lecture was well delivered, well documented and very well received by an appreciative audience of over 200. A question and answer period followed. In planning for this event, the goal of the Ukrainian American activists was to elicit the Genocide Council’s genuine support for inclusion of the Holodomor in the mandated genocide curriculum. This goal, however, was not achieved.
Not one member of the council was present.
Warren, Mich.