Holodomor victims honored in Warsaw

On Saturday, the Ukrainian community in Poland, as well as Ukrainian and foreign diplomats accredited in Poland, honored the memory of the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine.

The participants of the mournful event gathered at the monument to the victims of the Holodomor in Ukraine in 1932-1933 at the Volske Orthodox Cemetery in the Polish capital, an Ukrinform correspondent reports.

After the prayer in memory of the millions of dead Ukrainians, Charge d'Affaires of Ukraine in Poland Roman Shepelyak emphasized that the famine of 1932-1933 was not the negligence of the communist authorities of the time, but “a clear and very purposeful policy aimed at destroying the entire Ukrainian identity, to erase everything Ukrainian from the face of the earth.” He emphasized that as a result of the Holodomor, the total demographic losses of the Ukrainian people amounted to more than 4.5 million people.

Shepelyak emphasized that today Russia once again wants to bring the Ukrainian people to their knees and destroy everything Ukrainian through terror. He noted that back then Stalin was taking away bread from Ukrainians, and now Russia is killing Ukrainians with missiles, destroying civilian infrastructure, including energy infrastructure, “to freeze Ukrainians in the cold months.”

The diplomat emphasized that the main task of Ukrainians is to resist terror and stand strong. Shepelyak thanked the Ukrainian community and foreign diplomats for their presence at the event and their very important support for Ukraine. He drew attention to the fact that the parliaments of 28 countries have recognized the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as genocide of the Ukrainian people.

The head of the Association of Ukrainians in Poland, Myroslav Skirka, also drew parallels between the 1930s and the present.

“We used to say that it [the Holodomor] was committed by the communist government, but if we look at it more broadly, we see that no matter what the government in Russia is, it will always remain the same. What happened then was just one of the pages in this terrible history of confrontation between Russia and Ukraine,” Skirka emphasized.

He reminded that now is the 10th year of Russia's war against Ukraine and the 1004th day of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine.

“And we realize that we cannot lose in this war again, because Russia has already promised that it will commit a new genocide against Ukrainians... There is no choice, but this struggle that Ukraine must continue is a struggle for truth,” the head of the OUP emphasized.

Euromaidan Warsaw activist Viktoria Pohrebniak noted that the memory of the Holodomor victims is now honored by the descendants of the fourth and fifth generations of Ukrainians who survived and told this story to their children and grandchildren.

“They survived so that we could make the world a better place, so that the next time Russia tries to commit genocide, it will not succeed,” Pohrebniak emphasized.

The activist noted that comparing the genocide of 1932-1933 and the current genocide that Russia is committing against Ukraine, she sees one significant difference.

“The difference is that we are not silent and will not be silent anymore. We are witnesses to what our grandparents went through, and we will never remain silent when we see Russia doing what it does again,” emphasized the activist of the Warsaw Euromaidan.

She also thanked the present Western diplomats for their solidarity and support of Ukraine in these difficult times.

The Ukrainian community and Ukrainian diplomats were joined at the event in Warsaw by ambassadors and diplomats from more than 10 EU countries, including Latvia, Lithuania, Romania, Portugal, Austria, the Netherlands, Norway and others.

As reported, on Saturday, November 23, Ukraine commemorates the victims of the Holodomor.

This day of remembrance is celebrated annually on the fourth Saturday of November on the basis of presidential decrees of 1998 and 2007.

Ukrainians survived three Holodomors in the twentieth century: 1921-1923, 1932-1933, and the famine of 1946-1947. The largest was the famine of 1932-1933, which is called the genocide of the Ukrainian people committed by the Stalinist regime.