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By Elizabeth Cady Brown, Staff Writer
Newsday, New York, New York, November 15, 2003
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It is sometimes called the "hidden holocaust" or the "forgotten
famine," but 3,000 people marched Manhattan's streets Saturday to
show the world they remember.
This week marked the 70th annual commemoration of the eight million
to 10 million Ukrainians who were starved to death by Joseph Stalin's
Soviet regime between 1932 to 1933.
It was crisp and sunny for the marchers gathered at noon in front of
St. George Catholic Church in the East Village. The procession, a sea
of blue and gold Ukrainian flags and colorful embroidered head
scarves, moved slowly up Third Avenue to Bryant Park, ending at St.
Patrick's Cathedral for a requiem Mass. It was at once a celebration
of Ukrainian culture and a time of collective mourning.
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Marchers walk and rally up 3rd Avenue in the East Village on the 70th anniversary of Ukrainian Holocaust victims on Saturday. Ukrainians were intentionally starved to death by the Soviet regime. Between 7 to 10 million Ukrainians died during 1932-1933
Photo by Richard L. Harbus
(Click on image to enlarge it)
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Paul Makovski, 54, lives in Sheepshead Bay but was born in Ukraine.
He remembers clearly his mother's stories about surviving the famine
as a young girl in Ukraine's capital, Kiev.
"My mother and her sister ate anything to stay alive," he said. "They
would make bread with bark or grass. It was terrible for them."
Another marcher, Sonia Kachorowsky, 52, from Kolomya, Ukraine,
recalled the stories her mother had shared of the '32 famine.
"After the Soviets came and took everything, my mother would go to
the fields and try to find edible plants in the ground," said
Kachorowsky, who lives in Salem, Conn. "She told me the horror of
small children dying because their mothers' breasts had nothing, no
milk."
Stalin imposed harsh policies against the Ukrainian province in the
early 1930s, to crush its growing nationalist movement and organized
opposition to collective farming practices. By withholding grain,
blocking external aid and destroying Ukrainian infrastructure and
farmland, Stalin engineered the deaths of millions of Ukrainians by
starvation, including nearly one million children.
Ukraine's permanent representative to the United Nations, Valeriy
Kuchynsky, said he hoped Saturday's demonstration would increase
international awareness of the genocide.
"We don't want to avenge the history," he said. "The main thing is
that mass human rights violations must never be repeated. For that,
we must remember."
Kuchynsky expressed optimism that after 70 years the world was
finally beginning to understand what had occurred. A U.N. joint
statement denouncing Stalin's genocidal policies was signed Friday by
more than 50 member states.
The Ukrainian delegation was joined by prominent American politicians,
including John Negroponte, the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., and Sen.
Charles Schumer (D-NY). Mayor Michael Bloomberg issued a
proclamation this week honoring the victims of the Ukrainian holocaust
and declaring the week of November 10th "Ukrainian Famine
Remembrance Week" in the city.
Addressing the congregation at St. Patrick's, Schumer said, "When one
seeks to remember something of this dimension, it is awfully hard to
get one's arms around it. But, if we forget, somewhere on the face of
the globe it will happen again. It is our job to let people know what
happened to prevent it from ever happening again."
Olha Oloch, 18, moved to Bensonhurst with her parents from Ukraine
five years ago and now works at the Ukrainian Museum in Manhattan.
She said that visitors often know nothing of the famine or Stalin's
repressive policies.
"I want Americans to recognize something like this happened," she
said quietly. "The loss of millions of people is tremendous and
should be recognized."
Newsday, New York, New York, November 15, 2003
http://www.nynewsday.com/news/local/manhattan/nyc-ukr1116,0,2757211.story?coll=nyc-manheadlines-manhattan
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