“The Holodomor, or Hunger plague, was a famine engineered by the Soviet Union as part of a series of actions, including mass executions, designed to destroy the Ukrainian nation. Census data reveal a shortfall of 11,000, 000 in the Ukrainian population by 1937.”
Throughout Canada, in each and every year, the fourth Saturday in November shall be known as
“Ukrainian Famine and Genocide (“Holodomor”) Memorial Day”.
I heard a lady tell of her experience as a young girl 8 years old. Her village had a bumper crop that year but all the grain was confiscated and stored in large government granaries. The government then proclaimed that the people could not eat the grain stored in the granaries and anyone caught stealing said grain would be shot on sight.
As the year wore on the people became more and more desperate. Some of them became so hungry that death by soldier’s rifle was quicker and less painful than slow starvation. Some would try to break into the granaries in broad daylight and were killed before they could get the door open.
Seeing her family withering away and with death soon approaching she hatched a daring plan. Before going to bed one night she hid her mother’s mixing bowl under her bed. Then she found her father’s wood bore and put it beside the bowl. Next she went out into the woods and found a short branch about the same size as the wood bore’s auger. She drilled a test hole and shaved the branch to fit the hole exactly. Late that night as her parents and siblings slept she crawled out the window with the bowl, bore and branch. Under the cover of darkness she crawled under the granary and bored a small hole in the granary floor. The grain poured out and she caught it in the bowl. As soon as the bowl neared being full she plugged the hole, took the bowl full of grain, her father’s wood bore and as stealthily as she could went home again. She put the bowl in the pantry and crawled into bed.
Early the next morning her mother shook her awake demanding to know where this grain had come from. When told the parents were terrified that their little girl might have been killed or if found out her entire family killed or sent to Siberia. Nevertheless they couldn’t return the grain and without the grain they would all starve to death and so they did what was needed; they ate it. A few nights later the young girl once again crawled under the granary and again her family had food to eat.
Her heroics continued until at long last the government edict was lifted and the the very few survivors were able to get grain to feed their families. Needless to say the little girl’s family was still there when the granaries were finally opened.
She still lives in that little village and having grandchildren of her own she relates this story to them in hopes that they will keep the memory alive.
The Ukrainian holocaust reminds us of the greatest slaughter of all time ever perpetrated in the name of an ideology. That slaughter, is the number of people killed by communists throughout the world. Commies hold the all time record for killing people. (And this doesn’t include Hitler’s socialist regime)
Isn’t it strange, that in our society, being branded a racist, or homophobe … or islamophobe or even … gasp … white supremacist … carries with it such negative connotation that tribunals will punish you … yet being a communist or hard socialist is almost a badge of honour … yet, as an ideology, communism/marxism/socialism has the blood of between 100 and 200 million people on its hands.
http://www.digitalsurvivors.com/archives/communistbodycount.php
http://users.erols.com/mwhite28/warstat8.htm
“Harvest of Sorrow”
I doubt this is covered in todays schools, only that my kids know of this.
Paul’s point is frustratingly right. Communists and their sympathizers have escaped scot free from the ostracism that they deserve.
To add insult to injury, they have managed to divert all criticism to those with reservations about Islam, gay activism, or mass third world immigration, none of whom are guilty of mass murder.
It’s as though the world has agreed to ignore the giant Redwood of communism in Russians’ eyes and instead carp about little splinters in the eyes of better systems and nations.
I just want to add that it was a young Malcolm Muggeridge as a reporter for the Manchester Guardian newspaper that did his best to alert the world to this deliberate famine.
In 1933, he took it upon himself to take an unauthorized trip across the Ukraine to find the truth out for himself and he smuggled his eye witness accounts out of the country.
From Muggeridge’s diary;
“Whatever else I may do or think in the future, I must never pretend that I haven’t seen this. Ideas will come and go; but this is more than an idea. It is peasants kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have seen and understood.”
He was fired for his reporting after being vilified by Duranty, who had a sweetheart relationship with the Russian authorities.
‘Gimme me what I want and I will tell the world how great Russia is’.
Read more in Muggeridge’s biography and at
http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/tale.htm
Time has shown Muggeridge was right.
BTW Vit, Muggeridge actions show that leaders always do what is right and suffer the consequences.
Ukrainian Memorial “Day”.
Obviously the Ukrainians have made very little contribution to Canadian society, because they do not warrant a month.
Unlike “Black history month” or “Islamic history month”.
Must be useless buggers, no?
How about some coverage of the Native American genocide that’s taken place over the last 400 years in North America? You know, the one where the white Europeans came over, and proceeded to kill anyone that disagreed with them, or fought to keep their land, then put the rest in ‘camps’ to keep them down?
Where is the Native American Month, or day for that matter?
Oh yeah, history is written by the victors. Or something like that.
By all means this should be commemorated. The Soviets were monsters.
Now… how’s about one recognizing the genocide of North American Natives.
You may all now begin explaining why it isn’t the same thing, or how the natives weren’t really doing anything with the land, or how they’re better off now, etcetera.
when did the British Empire ever engage in genocide? on teh contrary, they fed the aboriginals they encountered, gave them medicine etc… the 19th century Crown was rascist, to be sure, but benevolent by the standards of every other empire in history.
screw you and your moral relativism John and herb.
I understand the point about the lack of interest in NA native genocide in relation to other unrecognized historical genocide’s – but not in a Canadian concept? The US was a completely different MO but Canadian genocide? Seems more like bad treaty deals and land purchases to me.
What’s the issue with “whitey” taking the ancestral rights? In Canada any native Indian is free to buy a horse and ride across the open plains and kill what they want for food, no license, or season limits. Very few seem to take an interest. There’s a ton of reservation and crown land to roam, even set up a small teepee village.
The native Canadians I’ve met seem to enjoy their modern “European” style homes, pick-up trucks, and rodeo’s. Throw in a casino or two for entertainment and you’ve got full coverage of the hate inflicted on the native peoples of Canada. Free education, tax free status, along with other indigenous and special minority rights, life isn’t all that bad from my side of the peace pipe………….
@Stephane:
Tell that to the Beothuk Tribe … oh yeah, you can’t, because they were wiped out by the British Empire. None left, extinct like the dino’s. Sounds like genocide to me, no? Or when there is none of them left to complain, I guess it’s okay? Written by the victors and all that jazz.
@Knight99:
Maybe they should have been given their own country, somewhere warm. And then been given billions in foreign aid. I mean, their population was reduced by 95% in 400 years. Millions died (around 11.5 million). I hear the ‘camps’, I mean, reserves, are really nice places to live … at least now they don’t get shot when they leave them …err, or something. Actually, yah, the Native Americans got a great deal now that you mention it. And the Beothuk tribe used to live in Newfoundland. They got a sweet deal …. That’s Canada, no?