Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center hosts teachers' program on Ukrainian Famine (11/16/03)

THE 70th ANNIVERSARY OF THE FAMINE-GENOCIDE IN UKRAINE

Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center hosts teachers' program on Ukrainian Famine

by Vsevolod Onyshkevych

LAWRENCEVILLE, N.J. - A special program at the Julius and Dorothy Koppelman Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center at Rider University focused on the artificial famine, or Holodomor perpetrated by the Stalin regime in Ukraine in 1932-1933.

The keynote lecture was given by Dr. Taras Hunczak, professor of history and political science at Rutgers University, on October 15.

It was followed on October 16 by the center's annual fall program for high school teachers, with over 50 teachers of Holocaust/genocide studies in attendance at which Dr. Hunczak was the featured lecturer.

These events were organized by the Resource Center, with assistance from the Shevchenko Scientific Society.

After brief introductions by Dr. Mordechai Rozanski, president of Rider University, and Dr. Marvin Goldstein, co-director of the Holocaust/Genocide Resource Center, Dr. Hunczak launched into a detailed factual and emotional exploration of this tragic episode of history.

While estimates of the death toll from the Holodomor range between 6 million and 14 million, most scholars have narrowed the estimates to a still-imprecise 7 million to 10 million. It is impossible to arrive at an exact number, Dr. Hunczak explained, since the Soviet regime was diligent in covering up the facts, while Western, Soviet-loving, apologists such as The New York Times reporter Walter Duranty spread significant disinformation. In recent years, the files of the KGB and its predecessor have been accessible to Dr. Hunczak and others, hence more details are beginning to emerge, and awareness is on the increase.

The Holodomor can be traced to a policy of forced socialism and collective farming codified in 1928, continued Dr. Hunczak. The premise of collectivization was for the farmers to deliver the entirety of their crops to the state; in order to accomplish this goal, the middle-class, land-owning farmers, or "kulaks," needed to be destroyed. From January to March 1930, 61,000 farms were taken over forcibly, over 1 million farmers saw their property expropriated, and 850,000 farmers and family members were deported to Siberia.

By 1932 peasant revolts against this collectivization became characterized as "activism" and "nationalism," and it became the express policy of Stalin and his henchman Lazar Moiseyevich Kaganovich, a.k.a. "the Wolf of the Kremlin," to crush the revolts and peasants, Dr. Hunczak said. By 1932 12,000 brigades were mobilized to scour every village and find the supposed "hidden reserves" of food the peasants had not delivered to the Soviets. On August 7, 1932, an edict was issued making it a crime to have more than five ears of wheat; this led to the arrest and trial of more than 54,600 peasants, and over 2,000 executions.

Simultaneous with the crackdown, the regime limited the amount of food available to peasants to an average of 4 pounds per month per person. A system of internal passports kept the peasants in their villages. This exacerbated the food shortages and wholesale famine ensued. The effects were shocking, with millions of deaths, and numerous reports of cannibalism and bands of parentless, feral "wild" children, Dr. Hunczak reported.

The Stalin regime was deliberate in its actions, justifying the deaths of millions of people under the guise of a crackdown on "nationalism" and equating people eating the food they themselves produced as "sabotage," said Dr. Hunczak. He cited numerous statements by Stalin and his cohorts some as damning as "Nationalism is the village" and "It took a famine to crush the peasants."

Faced with the horrors of their actions (and inactions), Ukrainian Communist leaders Mykola Khvyliovyi and Mykola Skrypnyk committed suicide.

On the other hand, Western Communist sympathizers, including George Bernard Shaw and Walter Duranty, claimed that "this couldn't happen in the promised land," with the "promised land" being the USSR. Duranty issued article after article denying the existence of a famine, while privately acknowledging it. There is a major effort under way to try to rescind Duranty's Pulitzer Prize for these lies. Contemporaneously, Welsh journalist Gareth Jones did try to expose this genocide, but his exhortations fell on deaf ears. Today, 70 years later, the true horrors of the Holodomor are beginning to be exposed throughout the West, thanks to the efforts of Ukrainian organizations and the government of Ukraine, Dr. Hunczak concluded.

Participants of the teachers' workshop received a curriculum guide prepared by Dr. Myron B. Kuropas, an educator and historian, which was funded by the Ukrainian National Association.

Valeriy P. Kuchinsky, ambassador extraordinary and plenipotentiary, the permanent representative of Ukraine to the United Nations, was slated to attend the session. Due to a last-minute Security Council session, however, he was represented by Markiyan Z. Kulyk, the deputy permanent representative.

Mr. Kulyk read a communiqué from the ambassador, and described the significant efforts the Ukrainian government has been making to raise the awareness of the Holodomor and to honor its victims. This includes a weeklong commemoration in New York City on November 10-15 at the United Nations Headquarters, a conference at Columbia University and with a requiem service at St. Patrick's Cathedral.

At the conclusion of the session, Dr. Hunczak and Mr. Kulyk answered questions from the floor, elaborating on the facts.

New Jersey is one of many states mandating "Holocaust and genocide" education on the elementary and high school levels. To date, this curriculum included numerous 19th and 20th century genocides, but not the Famine-Genocide, which numerically was one of the largest. At the end of the program, Dr. Harvey Kornberg, who is also president of the Association of New Jersey Holocaust Organizations (ANJHO), pledged to introduce a resolution mandating the Holodomor as one of the genocides to be covered in the core curriculum. This pledge was met with a rousing ovation by the 100-plus students and citizens in attendance.

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