BGuthrie Photos: DC -- Union Station -- Exhibit: National Holodomor Memorial

DC -- Union Station -- Exhibit: National Holodomor Memorial:

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Description of Pictures: November 1-14, 2015
The 1932-1933 Famine-Genocide in Ukraine
On the occasion of the unveiling of the National Holodomor Memorial, this exhibit is dedicated to the victims of the man-made famine-genocide. The memorial will for eternity speak for them. This exhibit will help inform about what happened and why. This exhibit unmasks the inhumanity of Stalin's quest for absolute power. His perception that the independent Ukrainian spirit was an obstacle that must be crushed was justification for the man-made famine-genocide. The unspeakable evil of death by hunger as a weapon of destruction befell rural Ukraine in 1932-1933, with consequences evident till today.

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Copyrights: All pictures were taken by amateur photographer Bruce Guthrie (me!) who retains copyright on them. Free for non-commercial use with attribution. See the [Creative Commons] definition of what this means. "Photos (c) Bruce Guthrie" is fine for attribution. (Commercial use folks including AI scrapers can of course contact me.) Feel free to use in publications and pages with attribution but you don't have permission to sell the photos themselves. A free copy of any printed publication using any photographs is requested. Descriptive text, if any, is from a mixture of sources, quite frequently from signs at the location or from official web sites; copyrights, if any, are retained by their original owners.

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Specific picture descriptions: Photos above with "i" icons next to the bracketed sequence numbers (e.g. "[1] ") are described as follows:
1. HOLOUS_151106_001.JPG: User comment: Halyna Breslawec
2. HOLOUS_151106_033.JPG: The Face of Ukraine 1932-1933
3. HOLOUS_151106_036.JPG: The Making of the National Holodomor Memorial
4. HOLOUS_151106_041.JPG: Competition Finalists International design competition conducted by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Tourism October-December 2009 "Rushnyk" ("Ritual Cloth") by Borys Danyluk "Zruynovana Kulya" ("Destroyed Sphere") by Oleksandr Diachenko "Rostochok" ("Shooting Hands") by Igor and Liudmyla Grechanyk "Pole Pshenytsi" ("Field of Wheat") by Larysa Kurylas "Krapli Sliz na Pshenychnomu Poli" ("Teardrops on a Wheat Field") by Iulii and Lev Synkevych
5. HOLOUS_151106_046.JPG: "Pole Pshenytsi" ("Field of Wheat") by Larysa Kurylas
6. HOLOUS_151106_054.JPG: Creating the Model
7. HOLOUS_151106_056.JPG: Preliminary Steps
8. HOLOUS_151106_063.JPG: Casting the Sculpture
9. HOLOUS_151106_066.JPG: Construction
10. HOLOUS_151106_069.JPG: Setting the Sculpture
11. HOLOUS_151106_083.JPG: Ukraine 1917-1921 Following the collapse of the Russian monarchy in early 1917, the Ukrainian people were able to move toward statehood. In March 1917, with the mandate of soldiers' and peasants' councils throughout Ukraine, the Ukrainian Central Rada (Council) was formed. The Rada proclaimed the creation of the Ukrainian National Republic in November 1917 and declared full Ukrainian independence in January 1918. The following month, it was recognized as the legitimate government of Ukraine under the provisions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk. The Rada declared full Ukrainian independence in January 1918; the following month, it was recognized under the provisions of the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk as the legitimate government of Ukraine.
12. HOLOUS_151106_095.JPG: Victory by the Bolsheviks, the Establishment of the Communist System, and the New Economic Policy (NEP)
13. HOLOUS_151106_103.JPG: Solovets Islands
14. HOLOUS_151106_106.JPG: Liquidation Campaign in Ukraine Stalinism brought an end to all independent culture and political life in Ukraine. Show trials resulted in the liquidation of Ukraine's cultural elite. Prominent cultural figures and scholars, as well as leaders of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church, were executed, imprisoned, or sent into exile, and the church was disbanded. ... Stalin's Five-Year Plan included the plundering and demolition of centuries-old Ukrainian churches.
15. HOLOUS_151106_116.JPG: Stalin Comes to Power End of Independent Cultural and Political Life in Ukraine and End of the New Economic Policy (NEP)
16. HOLOUS_151106_122.JPG: Cultural Renaissance of the 1920s
17. HOLOUS_151106_126.JPG: Literature: The literary movement was particularly strong and diverse, producing numerous literary groups and organizations as well as exceptional works.
18. HOLOUS_151106_130.JPG: Cinema: Ukrainian cinema produced such notable figures as film director Olexander Dovzhenko (1894-1956), whose world-renowned epic films on mythological, historical, and folkloric themes included Zvenyhora (1927), Arsenal (1929), and Zemlia ("Earth," 1930).
19. HOLOUS_151106_136.JPG: Theater: Theater saw an unprecedented and still to this day unrivaled surge of creativity, manifested particularly in Les' Kurbas (b. 1887) and his avant-garde theatrical company Berezil' ("The Month of March"). Les' Kurbas was arrested in 1933 and died a political prisoner in the Solovki Islands. His date of death is unverified.
20. HOLOUS_151106_140.JPG: Visual Arts: The visual arts saw the rise in Ukraine of such innovative modernist figures as Kazimir Malevich, Oleksander Bohomazov, Anatolii Petrytskyi, Vasyl Yermilov, Olexandra Ekster, and others, many of whom also worked as designers in the theater, cinema, and the graphic arts.
21. HOLOUS_151106_149.JPG: The Great Man-Made Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933 Impossible grain quotas were imposed on Soviet Ukraine. While Soviet propaganda portrayed well-fed collective farmers with smiling faces, the last grain was taken from the starving peasants. Ukrainian Communist officials, led by Mykola Skrypnyk, protested to Stalin that the people were dying of hunger. Stalin, seizing the opportunity to solve the problem of Ukrainian self-assertion once and for all, publicly blamed the Ukrainian Communist Party for its "criminal negligence" in failing to meet grain quotas. Stalin took direct control of the country by sending Pavel Postyshev to Ukraine as virtual dictator. Postyshev ordered that even more grain be collected, but there was nothing left to take. Under his rule, beginning in January 1933, the Ukrainian countryside became a vast death camp. At the same time, Postyshev carried out a wave of terror against the Ukrainian intelligentsia and hounded Shrypnyk to suicide. Postyshev ordered that even more grain be collected, but there was nothing left to take. Under his rule, beginning in January 1933, the Ukrainian countryside became a vast death camp.
22. HOLOUS_151106_158.JPG: Appeals for World Response to the Famine
23. HOLOUS_151106_165.JPG: Published Reports on the Famine
24. HOLOUS_151106_173.JPG: Reports of Famine Published in Hearst Newspapers in the United States
25. HOLOUS_151106_189.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians The "Law of Five Grain Stalks" On 7 August 1932, Stalin signed a decree which stipulated that the "stealing of collective farm property" would be punished by execution or imprisonment for at least 10 years. People dubbed this the "Law of Five Grain Stalks." Those who were starving and took even a few stalks were arrested and tried in court. Shown above is a letter signed by Joseph Stalin, informing commissars in Ukraine to follow instructions and obey the interpretation of the decree he signed on 7 August 1932. The instructions are shown below.
26. HOLOUS_151106_193.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Implementing the "Law of Five Grain Stalks" The collective farm fields were divided into sectors, which were patrolled by armed "inspectors" to "protect" the crop from starving farmers. Every village had a jail for trespassers, and these prisoners were given no food by their jailers.
27. HOLOUS_151106_198.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians How the Genocide was Organized Isolation of villages by imposing a system of blacklists The blacklisted villages would be surrounded by armed detachments. All food and seed supplies would be removed, and deliveries of any kind of goods were prohibited. Trade was prohibited. Adding an inhabited location or territory to the blacklists was equivalent to placing a death sentence on its population. Over one-third of the villages in Soviet Ukraine were blacklisted, representing a population of nearly 10 million. Thirteen counties in the Kuban region, populated mostly by Ukrainians, were also blacklisted.
28. HOLOUS_151106_207.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Food Export for Genocide One human life: $6.55 In 1932, 1.72 million tons of grain were exported abroad from Soviet Ukraine, and 1.68 million tons in 1933. This volume of grain could have saved all starving Ukrainians. The value of Soviet net grain exported in 1932 and 1933 was 65.5 million dollars. Moscow sold 10 million human lives for the meager price of $6.55 per each Ukrainian man, woman and child who starved to death. The 1932-33 famine in Ukraine was not caused by crop failure or drought. The harvest was good in Ukraine. However, the Soviet government secretly stored large quantities of wheat and other agricultural crops in Ukraine and sold them abroad in massive amounts. Moreover, the distilleries worked to full capacity, processing the priceless grain into vodka, also for export.
29. HOLOUS_151106_213.JPG: Floating grain elevator #19 in the city of Kherson, Kherson Province, September 1933.
30. HOLOUS_151106_214.JPG: Journalists Speak...
31. HOLOUS_151106_219.JPG: Destruction of Ukrainian Farmer "Kulaks are the rabid enemy of Soviet rule. We shall wage a merciless war against the kulaks! Death to them all! The proletariat must crush the kulak uprising with an iron hand!" -- Vladimir Lenin, founder of the Soviet Union (1919) "We must conduct the dekulakization in the same way we dealt with the bourgeoisie in 1918." -- Joseph Stalin (21 January 1930, Pravda) "We have changed from a policy of containing the kulaks to a policy of elimination the kulaks as a class!" -- Joseph Stalin (29 December 1929)
32. HOLOUS_151106_222.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Starving Children
33. HOLOUS_151106_226.JPG: What the World Knew: The world knew enough. In spite of denial and cover-up by the Soviet regime and its sympathizers, Western governments of the day had sufficiently accurate information on the causes and effects of the Ukrainian Famine Genocide in the Soviet Union. This information was gleaned from eyewitnesses, refugees, journalists and, above all, government intelligence reports from the field. However, perceived political, economic and diplomatic considerations of the time excused these governments from and the League of Nations from taking any measures to stop the genocide. The failure of the civilized world to timely react to the Ukrainian genocide, and other genocides, paved the way for further genocidal atrocities, that haunt humanity to this very day.
34. HOLOUS_151106_230.JPG: Genocide Denial and Cover Up Walter Duranty and the Big Lie "There is no actual starvation of deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from disease due to malnutrition... conditions are bad, but there is no famine." -- Walter Duranty, The New York Times (30 March 1933) The most notorious case of Holoodomer cover-up was that of Walter Duranty, who worked as foreign correspondent for The New York Times in Moscow. Duranty reported from Moscow from 1921 to 1934. His reporting on the Soviet Union in 1931 was rewarded with the Pulitzer Prize, considered the highest award for reporters. In 1932-1933, he assisted the Soviet Union in covering up the famine conditions in Ukraine by not reporting on the famine in The New York Times. Due to the prestige of The New York Times, Duranty had an excellent reputation, and his reporters were significant in convincing President Roosevelt and the US Congress to recognize the Soviet Union in November 1933. In 2003, a campaign was initiated to revoke Duranty's Pulitzer Prize, but the initiative was unsuccessful. The campaign is documented in Lubomyr Luciuk's publication "Not Worthy," one of three books exposing Duranty's lies. Manchester Guardian correspondent, Malcolm Muggeridge, called Duranty "the greatest liar of any journalist I have met in fifty years of jouranlism." In his newspaper reports, Duranty wrote: "There is no famine or actual starvation, nor is here ." Privately, however, he told a British diplomat that as many as 10 million died. "Mr. Duranty thinks it quite possible that as many as 10 million people may have died directly or indirectly from lack of food in the Soviet Union during the past year." -- William Strang, British Embassy, Moscow (26 September 1933) Walter Duranty From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Walter Duranty (May 25, 1884 – October 3, 1957) was a Liverpool-born, Anglo-American journalist who served as the Moscow Bureau Chief of The New York Times for fourteen years (1922–1936) following the Bolshevik victory in the Russian Civil War (1918–1921). In 1932 Duranty received a Pulitzer Prize for Correspondence for a series of reports about the Soviet Union, 11 of them published in June 1931 (see below, "Works"). He was criticized as being a pro Stalinist then by Gareth Jones and other writers and again later for his denial of widespread deaths by the man made famine (1932–33) in the USSR, most particularly the Holodomor, the mass death by starvation of Ukrainians, Tartars, Kazakhs, and other non-Russian ethnic groups in the Ukraine, the south, and Siberia. Years later, there were calls to revoke his Pulitzer; The New York Times, which submitted his work for the prize in 1932, wrote in 1990 that his articles constituted "some of the worst reporting to appear in this newspaper."
35. HOLOUS_151106_234.JPG: "There is no actual starvation of deaths from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from disease due to malnutrition... conditions are bad, but there is no famine." -- Walter Duranty, The New York Times (30 March 1933)
36. HOLOUS_151106_243.JPG: U.S. Government Documents and the Genocide
37. HOLOUS_151106_246.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Losses Sir Winston Churchill to Joseph Stalin: "... Have the stresses of the war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of the Collective Farms?" Joseph Stalin: "Oh, no, the Collective Farm policy was a terrible struggle... . Ten million (he said, holding up his hands). It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary...." -- Sir Winston Churchill was the author of The Hinge of Fate, and the above exchange, documented in the book, took place during Churchill's visit to the Kremlin (August 1942) Nikita Khrushchev: "I can't give an exact figure because no one was keeping count. All we knew was that people were dying in enormous numbers." -- Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union (1953-1964), Khrushchev Remembers, New York (1970)
38. HOLOUS_151106_249.JPG: Sir Winston Churchill to Joseph Stalin: "... Have the stresses of the war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of the Collective Farms?"
39. HOLOUS_151106_252.JPG: Joseph Stalin: "Oh, no, the Collective Farm policy was a terrible struggle... . Ten million (he said, holding up his hands). It was fearful. Four years it lasted. It was absolutely necessary...." -- Sir Winston Churchill was the author of The Hinge of Fate, and the above exchange, documented in the book, took place during Churchill's visit to the Kremlin (August 1942)
40. HOLOUS_151106_254.JPG: Nikita Khrushchev: "I can't give an exact figure because no one was keeping count. All we knew was that people were dying in enormous numbers." -- Nikita Khrushchev, General Secretary of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union (1953-1964), Khrushchev Remembers, New York (1970)
41. HOLOUS_151106_257.JPG: Why the Holodomor was a Genocide United Nations Genocide Convention
42. HOLOUS_151106_260.JPG: Why the Holodomor was a Genocide United Nations Genocide Convention
43. HOLOUS_151106_263.JPG: "Genocide is a highly charged term, and there are those who still dispute its applicability in the case of Ukraine. The Holodomor falls squarely within the terms of this definition. Significantly, that was also the opinion of Raphael Lemkin, the legal scholar who conceived the Genocide Convention." -- Viktor Yushchenko, President of Ukraine, The Wall Street Journal, New York (26 November 2007)
44. HOLOUS_151106_265.JPG: The genocide was not aimed at Ukrainian farmers as farmers per se. Rather, being the foundation of the Ukrainian nation, which was striving to achieve an independent state, farmers constituted a significant threat to the integrity of the Soviet Union. Stalin emphasized this very idea when he stated that "the farmers are the main force behind any national movement... there is never and cannot ever be a powerful national movement without such a rural force." Furthermore, on 14 December 1932 Stalin issued a decree to the Communist Party and of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the Soviet Union in which the the problem of grain procurement in Ukraine and the North Caucasus were linked directly to the "incorrectly conducted" Ukrainization policy. Essentially, this meant full suppression of the national renaissance movement in the Ukrainian SSR and the Kuban region that had begin in the 1920s. Nineteen-thirty-three was also the first year of persecutions against the Ukrainian intelligentsia, and against all citizens opposed to the Communist region. Thus, the true aim of the genocide was to destroy the Ukrainian nation.
45. HOLOUS_151106_267.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Eyewitnesses
46. HOLOUS_151106_271.JPG: "On a recent visit to the North Caucasus and Ukraine, I saw something of the battle that was going on between the government and the peasants. The battlefield was as desolate as in any war -- on one side, millions of peasants, starving, often their bodies swollen from lack of food, on the other, soldiers, members of the GPU [Soviet Secret Police], carrying out the instructions of the dictatorship of the proletariat. They had gone over the country like a swarm of locusts, and taken away everything edible; they had shot and exiled thousands of peasants, sometimes whole villages; they had reduced some of the most fertile land in the world to a melancholy desert." -- Malcolm Mudderidge, The Fortnightly Review, London (January-June 1933)
47. HOLOUS_151106_272.JPG: The Genocide in Publications English-language Books and Films
48. HOLOUS_151106_280.JPG: Collectivization A Rural Catastrophe In 1928, the Communists commenced collectivization on a massive scale. Replacing the ancient and proven farming ways of Ukraine, new collective forms of agriculture were introduced, fully controlled by the government. Farming machinery, horses, cows and sheep were requisitioned for the collective farms. The farmers' most priceless asset -- the land of their forefathers -- was confiscated. By the end of 1932, nearly 70% of Ukrainian farms were collectivized, accounting for over 80% of sown land. The term kulak was primarily used to describe a Ukrainian farmer. It became an ambiguous Communist Party construct, but with a fundamentally negative connotation. At times, it was applied to all successful farmers; at other times it was used to tar all farmers who opposed Soviet rule. Soviet propaganda continuously heaped abuse on the kulaks, blaming them for every economic difficulty and accusing them of criminal designs. Yet, there were no objective criteria for identifying who was a kulak. -- Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol II
49. HOLOUS_151106_284.JPG: Collectivization A Rural Catastrophe In 1928, the Communists commenced collectivization on a massive scale. Replacing the ancient and proven farming ways of Ukraine, new collective forms of agriculture were introduced, fully controlled by the government. Farming machinery, horses, cows and sheep were requisitioned for the collective farms. The farmers' most priceless asset -- the land of their forefathers -- was confiscated. By the end of 1932, nearly 70% of Ukrainian farms were collectivized, accounting for over 80% of sown land.
50. HOLOUS_151106_286.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Ghost Towns
51. HOLOUS_151106_291.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians How the Genocide was Organized Isolation of villages by imposing a system of blacklists On 4 November 1932, the blacklisting system was introduced in the Kuban region of the Caucasus, an ethnographic Ukrainian territory in the southern Russian SFSR. Its initiator was Lazar Kaganovich, who was sent there by Stalin. Blacklisting had been a common practice of the Soviet government since 1919. In 1932-33, however, it became exceptionally repressive and one of the most important mechanisms of the Famine Genocide. At this time, the Ukrainiazation of the Kuban region was halted under the guise of penalizing the failure to achieve grain procurement quotas. In Ukraine, the Holodomor blacklists were introduced pursuant to a Decree of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, dated 18 November 1932. Accordingly, on 6 December 1932 a joint Decree of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Soviet of People's Commissars [Ministers] of the Ukrainian SSR was issued regarding the blacklisting of six Ukrainian villages. The policies in this document virtually duplicated those in the decree promulgated in the Kuban region. Gradually, new populated locations were added to the blacklists by decrees of local local Communist Party organizations.
52. HOLOUS_151106_294.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians How the Genocide was Organized Isolation of villages by imposing a system of blacklists On 4 November 1932, the blacklisting system was introduced in the Kuban region of the Caucasus, an ethnographic Ukrainian territory in the southern Russian SFSR. Its initiator was Lazar Kaganovich, who was sent there by Stalin. Blacklisting had been a common practice of the Soviet government since 1919. In 1932-33, however, it became exceptionally repressive and one of the most important mechanisms of the Famine Genocide. At this time, the Ukrainiazation of the Kuban region was halted under the guise of penalizing the failure to achieve grain procurement quotas.
53. HOLOUS_151106_295.JPG: At this time, the Ukrainiazation of the Kuban region was halted under the guise of penalizing the failure to achieve grain procurement quotas. In Ukraine, the Holodomor blacklists were introduced pursuant to a Decree of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, dated 18 November 1932. Accordingly, on 6 December 1932 a joint Decree of the Communist Party of Ukraine and the Soviet of People's Commissars [Ministers] of the Ukrainian SSR was issued regarding the blacklisting of six Ukrainian villages. The policies in this document virtually duplicated those in the decree promulgated in the Kuban region. Gradually, new populated locations were added to the blacklists by decrees of local local Communist Party organizations.
54. HOLOUS_151106_297.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Eyewitnesses
55. HOLOUS_151106_303.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Eyewitnesses Telegram from the Italian Ambassador in Moscow to the Italian Minister of Foreign Affairs, dated 23 August 1932: Earlier I was compelled to inform Your Honor about the sudden appearance in Soviet cities of homeless children, abandoned in dreadful conditions, which is a characteristic of the famine that is threatening several localities. Today, as I have been apprised by Your Royal Consul Gradenigo, all those homeless were unexpectedly caught and sent in an unknown direction, apparently to islands in the Caspian Sea. They have all been marked on the left arm with a sign that does not wash off, and commanded not to appear anymore in Moscow or Kharkiv, under threat of being shot. -- [signed] Attolico
56. HOLOUS_151106_306.JPG: International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine
57. HOLOUS_151106_313.JPG: US Commission on the Ukraine Famine
58. HOLOUS_151106_319.JPG: US Commission on the Ukraine Famine
59. HOLOUS_151106_324.JPG: Larysa Kurylas (l) picks up wheat sheaves from Michael Kaminsky (r) in Beasejour, Manitoba, Canada, October 2012 | photo Olha Kurylas
60. HOLOUS_151106_328.JPG: Tracking down a source of wheat in Canada, August 2012 | photo Barbara Signore
61. HOLOUS_151106_331.JPG: Preliminary discussion of layout between Lawrence Welker IV (l) and Larysa Kurylas after delivery of wheat to Laran Bronze Foundry in September 2013 | photo Olenka Dobczanska
62. HOLOUS_151106_334.JPG: Fifth-scale model at the National Building Museum, approved by the Commission of Fine Arts staff in June 2014
63. HOLOUS_151106_337.JPG: Progress meeting at Laran Bronze Foundry in January 2014 with representatives of the Ukrainian Embassy, Holodomor Committee, Commission of Fine Arts, National Park Service, and The Kurylas Studio | photo Lawrence Welker IV
64. HOLOUS_151106_340.JPG: Rejected full-scale foam patterns testing high, transitional, and negative relief sections of the sculpture
65. HOLOUS_151106_344.JPG: Foam patterns for sections 14 through 7 of the sculpture
66. HOLOUS_151106_347.JPG: Pouring melted bronze into the mold
67. HOLOUS_151106_349.JPG: Attaching bronze castings to stainless steel frame and verifying letter projection
68. HOLOUS_151106_354.JPG: Craning of sculpture into site
69. HOLOUS_151106_356.JPG: Groundbreaking on December 4, 2013 | photo Yaro Bihun
70. HOLOUS_151106_359.JPG: Rebar installation for footings
71. HOLOUS_151106_362.JPG: Construction progress meeting
72. HOLOUS_151106_365.JPG: Moving sculpture out of warehouse
73. HOLOUS_151106_372.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Death at the Border In a desperate attempt to escape death by starvation, Ukrainian farmers and their families would bunch together in large groups and attempt to rush the Soviet border in the hope that at least some of them might survive and reach safety in a neighboring country.
74. HOLOUS_151106_379.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Death at the Border In a desperate attempt to escape death by starvation, Ukrainian farmers and their families would bunch together in large groups and attempt to rush the Soviet border in the hope that at least some of them might survive and reach safety in a neighboring country.
75. HOLOUS_151106_380.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Organizers and Perpetrators of the Genocide
76. HOLOUS_151106_383.JPG: Order No. 536 of the Ukrainian SSR, dated 5 November 1933 in Kharkiv, on the XVI anniversary of the October Revolution, addressed to the personnel of the Soviet Secret Police: This year, the strength and power of the collective farm system has been raised to an unprecedented level. A most serious blow has been dealt to the parasitic classes, and particularly to the kulaks, which have been eliminated as a class. We are celebrating the XVI anniversary of the revolution of the proletariat amidst grand victories of socialism in the Soviet state. Under the leadership of Lenin's Party and the beloved leader of the Party, Comrade Stalin, the first Five-Year Plan has been victoriously achieved. Klimenti Voroshilov, member of the Politburo of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, XVII Congress of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, the "Congress of Victors" (26 January - 8 February 1934): "We consciously opted for the famine, because we needed grain. But those who were victims of the famine, were non-working elements and kulaks."
77. HOLOUS_151106_385.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Give Us Bread Bread was the most valuable item in Ukraine in 1933 because of the Soviet government had confiscated almost all the wheat and food from Ukrainian farmers. Bread was more valuable than gold, because it provided life to starving Ukrainians. Historically, wheat is an important element in Ukrainian culture. In fact, there is a Ukrainian proverb that says, "bread is everyone's master." In Ukraine, bread is far more than food. It is also an art, for example, in the traditional "korovai" wedding bread. And the traditional bread and salt greeting for guests in Ukraine -- the bread of hospitality and the salt of friendship -- is 2,500 years old. Golden wheat has been grown in the rich black soil of Ukraine for 8,000 years. Ukrainian wheat is the ancestor for all the finest wheat strains around the world.
78. HOLOUS_151106_392.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Starving Children Genocide of Ukrainians Starving Children Stephane Courtois, The New York Times (22 December 1997): "The child of the Ukrainian kulak deliberately starved to death by the Stalinist regime is worth no less than a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto starved to death by the Nazi regime." Stephane Courtois was an author of The Black Book of Communism. Andrew Cairns, Canadian agricultural expert in a report to the British Embassy Moscow (3 August 1932): "On my way home (hotel), I stopped to give coins to three small girls; they were all nearly dead with hunger and the smallest one certainly could not have lived more than a few days longer." "Towards the end of the famine, under pressure of the silent disdain of the people and the condemnation in the press of the democratic countries, the NKVD organized a huge concentration camp for children, called 'death barracks.' People whispered there were tens of thousands of farm children picked up in Kharkiv [capital of Ukr SSR] gathered there. The death rate in these barracks reached 40%. An attempt was made here to separate them from the children of kulaks. But almost all the children said they were the offsprings of heads of collective farms. Only one girl, 13 years of age, to show her contempt, stoutly declared that she was a kulak's daughter." -- M. Mishchenko, Black Deeds of the Kremlin, Toronto (1953)
79. HOLOUS_151106_396.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Starving Children Stephane Courtois, The New York Times (22 December 1997): "The child of the Ukrainian kulak deliberately starved to death by the Stalinist regime is worth no less than a Jewish child in the Warsaw ghetto starved to death by the Nazi regime." Stephane Courtois was an author of The Black Book of Communism.
80. HOLOUS_151106_399.JPG: Andrew Cairns, Canadian agricultural expert in a report to the British Embassy Moscow (3 August 1932): "On my way home (hotel), I stopped to give coins to three small girls; they were all nearly dead with hunger and the smallest one certainly could not have lived more than a few days longer."
81. HOLOUS_151106_402.JPG: "Towards the end of the famine, under pressure of the silent disdain of the people and the condemnation in the press of the democratic countries, the NKVD organized a huge concentration camp for children, called 'death barracks.' People whispered there were tens of thousands of farm children picked up in Kharkiv [capital of Ukr SSR] gathered there. The death rate in these barracks reached 40%. An attempt was made here to separate them from the children of kulaks. But almost all the children said they were the offsprings of heads of collective farms. Only one girl, 13 years of age, to show her contempt, stoutly declared that she was a kulak's daughter." -- M. Mishchenko, Black Deeds of the Kremlin, Toronto (1953)
82. HOLOUS_151106_405.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Organizers and Perpetrators of the Genocide Joseph Stalin: General Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Part of the Soviet Union "As a result of fulfilling the Five-Year Plan, we have managed to eliminate totally the last remains of the enemy classes from their production base. We have smashed the kulaks and prepared the way for their annihilation. -- Joseph Stalin (7 January 1933)
83. HOLOUS_151106_411.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Losses "... On 18 June 1932, Stalin admitted to Kaganovich what he called the 'glaring absurdities' of 'famine' in Ukraine. The death toll of this 'absurd' famine... was between four to five, and as high as ten million dead, a tragedy unequalled in human history except by the Nazi and Maoist terrors." -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, London (2004) "The death of one person is a tragedy. T He death of many is a statistic." -- Joseph Stalin Fred. E. Beal, editor of the American Communist newspaper Tempo, who in 1933 was a propaganda official for foreign workers at the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, recalled the following: "In 1933, I had occasion to call on Gregorii Petrovsky, the [titular] President of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, in his office in Kharkiv ... 'Comrade Petrovsky,' I said, 'the men at our factory are saying millions of peasants are dying. They say that five million people have died this year, and they hold it up to us as a challange [sic] and mockery. What are we going to tell them?' 'Tell them nothing,' answered President Petrovsky. 'What they say is true. We know that millions are dying. This is unfortunate, but the glorious future of the Soviet Union will justify that." -- Fred E. Beal, Word from Nowhere, London (1937)
84. HOLOUS_151106_414.JPG: "... On 18 June 1932, Stalin admitted to Kaganovich what he called the 'glaring absurdities' of 'famine' in Ukraine. The death toll of this 'absurd' famine... was between four to five, and as high as ten million dead, a tragedy unequalled in human history except by the Nazi and Maoist terrors." -- Simon Sebag Montefiore, Stalin: The Court of the Red Tsar, London (2004) "The death of one person is a tragedy. T He death of many is a statistic." -- Joseph Stalin
85. HOLOUS_151106_417.JPG: Fred. E. Beal, editor of the American Communist newspaper Tempo, who in 1933 was a propaganda official for foreign workers at the Kharkiv Tractor Plant, recalled the following: "In 1933, I had occasion to call on Gregorii Petrovsky, the [titular] President of the Ukrainian Soviet Republic, in his office in Kharkiv ... 'Comrade Petrovsky,' I said, 'the men at our factory are saying millions of peasants are dying. They say that five million people have died this year, and they hold it up to us as a challange [sic] and mockery. What are we going to tell them?' 'Tell them nothing,' answered President Petrovsky. 'What they say is true. We know that millions are dying. This is unfortunate, but the glorious future of the Soviet Union will justify that." -- Fred E. Beal, Word from Nowhere, London (1937)
86. HOLOUS_151106_421.JPG: Collectivization A Rural Catastrophe
87. HOLOUS_151106_424.JPG: In 1928, successful farmers became the target of repressive measures the effectively destroyed the Ukrainian grain growing sector. One of the aims of collectivization was to instill terror in the neighbors of dekulakized farmers. The elimination of kulaks as a class actually meant the total destruction of the rural economy of Ukraine. The anti-kulak measures were part of the Soviet Communist government's policy of genocide aginst Ukrainian farmers.
88. HOLOUS_151106_426.JPG: At an auction of confiscated property, Mariya Kubrachka, an auctioneer in the village of Udachne, Donetsk Province, 1930-1932, is taking bids.
89. HOLOUS_151106_430.JPG: "On a tour of the Ukraine late that fall I went through deserted villages and depopulated towns. Entire communities were being uprooted. Everywhere peasants were being summarily dealth [sic] with for slaughtering their own cattle, for hiding seeds, and for the faintest resistant to GPU mandates. All over the countryside leather-coated and heavily armed brigadiers wre at work carrying out strict orders from the Apparat [Soviet bureaucracy] to get through with their collectivization task before the coming celebration of Stalin's fiftieth birthday." -- William Reswick, Chief of the Moscow Associated Press Bureau, I Dreamt Revolution (1952)
90. HOLOUS_151106_432.JPG: Communism and the National Question in Ukraine "The farmers are the main force behind any national movement... there is never and cannot ever be a powerful national movement without such a rural force. This is what they mean when they say that the national question is in essence a rural question." -- Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader (March 1925) "Ukraine, so rich in grain, is ours now. The proletariat in Moscow will never go hungry..." -- Alexander Shlikhter, Minister for Food Supply of the Ukrainian SSR (1919) The village has long been an important symbol in Ukrainian literature and culture. Glorification of rural life and the extensive use of themes and images from Ukrainian folklore were characteristic of Romantic and realist writers and artists, such as Taras Shevchenko, most of whom were of rural origin, from the early 19th century on. Since the cities and much of the elite of Ukraine were either Russified or Polonized, the village and the farmers came to represent the Ukrainian nation. The village was portrayed as the cradle of the Ukrainian national renaissance, an idealization that remained a facet of Ukrainian life well into the 20th century. -- Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol V
91. HOLOUS_151106_436.JPG: "The farmers are the main force behind any national movement... there is never and cannot ever be a powerful national movement without such a rural force. This is what they mean when they say that the national question is in essence a rural question." -- Joseph Stalin, Soviet leader (March 1925) "Ukraine, so rich in grain, is ours now. The proletariat in Moscow will never go hungry..." -- Alexander Shlikhter, Minister for Food Supply of the Ukrainian SSR (1919)
92. HOLOUS_151106_440.JPG: The village has long been an important symbol in Ukrainian literature and culture. Glorification of rural life and the extensive use of themes and images from Ukrainian folklore were characteristic of Romantic and realist writers and artists, such as Taras Shevchenko, most of whom were of rural origin, from the early 19th century on. Since the cities and much of the elite of Ukraine were either Russified or Polonized, the village and the farmers came to represent the Ukrainian nation. The village was portrayed as the cradle of the Ukrainian national renaissance, an idealization that remained a facet of Ukrainian life well into the 20th century. -- Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Vol V
93. HOLOUS_151106_445.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Give Us Bread
94. HOLOUS_151106_451.JPG: Hunger exhausts the reserves of energy and body. Vitally important and necessary amounts of sugar and fat are lost. The body becomes worn out. The skin becomes thin, assumes a graying colour, and begins to wrinkle. Children look like old people, and their eyes become big and severely immobile. Dystrophic processes sometimes cuast a far-reaching drying of the organic tissues, and the sufferer resembles a skeleton wrapped in skin. But more often, the tissues distend, and the legs, hands and face swell up. The skin cracks, and slow-healing wounds appear. The body loses strength. To carry on with the most necessary functions of life, breathing and heartbeat, the organism uses up its protein in developing cells; that is, it consumes itself. Coordination of the physiological processes is disturbed, and the nervous system becomes weak. The least amount of effort causes heart fatigue and faster breathing. The pupils in the eyes become larger. Then comes famine diarrhea, which is very dangerous because the least amount of exertion causes paralysis of the heart. General weakness increases, and the sufferer falls into a drowsy state, which may last for a week, until his heart stops beating from exhaustion.
95. HOLOUS_151106_454.JPG: Letter from pupils of the school in the village of Pechera, Braslav County, to the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee [of the Communist Party] asking for food aid in conjunction with the famine: 1 November 1931 "Our Dear Leaders: We, the pupils of Pechera School, Braslav County, ask you for help because we are perishing from hunger. We should be studying, but from the hunger we cannot even walk on this earth. Both individual and collective farmers are swelling up from starvation. Soon, the October festivities are approaching, and we should be joyful, but we are blacking out from hunger; our stomachs hurt from the garbage we are eating, because they took not only every single grain from us, but also potatoes, beans, and everything edible. We will not mention [the lack of] clothing and footwear, but ask you not to kill us by starvation. We hope that the Soviet government will not let us die and not feed us bullets instead of bread, as the Czars fed our fathers. We believe that the Soviet government will help us and save us from death by starvation. Asked by pupils [signed] Maiak, Sirokha, Moskaliuk, Buran, Magdych, Pylypenko, Antonyshyn, Vostiak"
96. HOLOUS_151106_459.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Food Export for Genocide [This panel is shown twice because it appeared twice in the exhibit]
97. HOLOUS_151106_465.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Ban on Travel On 15 November 1932, the Communist Party of the Soviet Union adopted a decision "On the passport system and clearing of superfluous elements from cities." A single system of [internal] passports was introduced, and all other types of identification were revoked. This decree was implemented with the intention of NOT issuing these passports to the rural population. Thus, the rural population was virtually reduced again to a state of serfdom, which had been revoked by the Czarist Russian Empire back in 1861. On 22 January 1933, a decree issued on orders by Stalin forbade the rural population from leaving the Ukrainian SSR or the Kuban region to obtain grain in other parts of the Soviet Union. Tickets for rail or water transport were not sold to Ukrainian farmers. The roads to the cities were blocked in order to keep the farmers out. Those who had managed to leave were arrested and turned away. In fact, all of Ukraine became a vast death camp. In the first six weeks after this decree, nearly 220,000 farmers were arrested. On these, 186,000 were forced to return to their villages, where they died of starvation. Such measures were not imposed on any other part of the Soviet Union. Directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet of People's Commissars in conjunction with the large-scale exodus of farmers from Ukraine, dated 23 January 1933... 2. Requires the Plenipotentiary [in Ukraine] of the [USSR] People's Commissariat for Passenger Transport (Comrade Lavryshchev) and the Southern Branch [in Ukraine] of the Transport Department of the GPU [Secret Police] to immediately instruct all railroad stations to halt the sale of tickets [to destinations] beyond the borders of Ukraine... Following last year's example, there has been a massive exodus of farmers from several counties in Ukraine to Moscow Province [Russia]... and Belarussia in search of bread. There have been instances of villages being abandoned by practically all independent farmers and many collective farm workers. ... The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine requires: 1. The immediate implementation in every county of decisive measures to prevent the massive exodus of independent farmers and collective farm workers... [signed] M. Khataevich Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine V. Chuber Chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the UkrSSR
98. HOLOUS_151106_469.JPG: Directive of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and the Soviet of People's Commissars in conjunction with the large-scale exodus of farmers from Ukraine, dated 23 January 1933... 2. Requires the Plenipotentiary [in Ukraine] of the [USSR] People's Commissariat for Passenger Transport (Comrade Lavryshchev) and the Southern Branch [in Ukraine] of the Transport Department of the GPU [Secret Police] to immediately instruct all railroad stations to halt the sale of tickets [to destinations] beyond the borders of Ukraine... Following last year's example, there has been a massive exodus of farmers from several counties in Ukraine to Moscow Province [Russia]... and Belarussia in search of bread. There have been instances of villages being abandoned by practically all independent farmers and many collective farm workers. ... The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine requires: 1. The immediate implementation in every county of decisive measures to prevent the massive exodus of independent farmers and collective farm workers... [signed] M. Khataevich Secretary of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine V. Chuber Chairman of the Soviet of People's Commissars of the UkrSSR
99. HOLOUS_151106_472.JPG: Ukrainian farmers attempting to escape death by famine
100. HOLOUS_151106_474.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Starving Children More than half the victims were children. One-third of all the children of Ukraine died in the Famine Genocide. It is shocking to think of what that meant for future birth rates of Ukrainians. According to Article 2 of the UN Convention on Genocide, genocide means "imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group."
101. HOLOUS_151106_478.JPG: People standing in queue in front of a store in the city of Kharkiv, Kharkiv Province, 1932
102. HOLOUS_151106_481.JPG: Girl in rags in the city of Kharkiv, Kharkiv Province, 1933
103. HOLOUS_151106_483.JPG: Emaciated children showing signs of starvation
104. HOLOUS_151106_485.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Total Confiscation In 1932, an extraordinary procurement commission was sent to Ukraine, headed by Vyacheslaw Molotov, Prime Minister of the Soviet Union. It directed the total confiscation of grain from the rural population. Meanwhile, the grain requisitions in the Kuban region of the Caucasus were led by Stalin's deputy in the Communist Party, Lazar Kaganovich. "Your work must be organized and conducted so that the grain procurement quotas are fully executed. You must decisively overcome all and various obstructive attitudes..." -- Lazar Kaganovich on directing his henchmen how their quotas must be met (6 July 1932) "That year, there was a very good yield of graine crops. But after the harvest, they started requisitioning grain; they loaded it onto wagons and took it away. They would take i not only from the collective farms, but from us as well. They took away not only grain but also potatoes and beets -- everything they could. They did not leave a single seed. To save themselves from dying, people would hide little pouches of grain in the attic. At that time, there were teams of men organized to seize this food. If they found it in the attic, they took it away. After this 'cleanout,' a terrible famine began. On our street -- the 18th Party Congress Street -- 74 people died." -- Kateryna Yahupa, town of Buryn (now in Sumy Province)
105. HOLOUS_151106_494.JPG: (left) Dead farmers on the streets of the city of Kharkiv, Kharkiv Province, Spring 1933
106. HOLOUS_151106_496.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Why the Genocide was Organized The genocide was organized as a way to keep Ukraine within the Soviet Union. In fact, an independent Ukraine limited the Soviet Union's geostrategic -- political, economic, and military -- options to be an Euroasian empire. To bring an insubordinate Ukraine into the Soviet fold, the Stalinist Communist regime, in a decade of terror, 1928-1938, chose to destroy the Ukrainian Church, the Ukrainian national, cultural, and political elites, and the socioeconomic fabric of the nation through genocide by famine -- the Holodomor. In Ukraine, the Soviet Union was under constant threat of uprisings and insurgent movements. Even in February of 1932, as Soviet intelligence revealed, armed uprisings against Soviet rule were planned by Ukrainian farmers. The goal was to overthrow Soviet rule and establish an Independent Ukrainian Republic. Thus, plans to organize the Famine Genocide must have been prepared as early as the Summer of 1930. Stanislav Kosior, Head of the Communist Party in Soviet Ukraine and a leading strategist for the Stalinist regime, stated in a speech to military personnel that the enemy, meaning Ukrainian farmers, have miscalculated in their tactic of "[strangling] Soviet rule with the bony hand of starvation," and that it is incumbent on the Communists and military personnel to reverse the trend by strangling the farmers with real famine.
107. HOLOUS_151106_500.JPG: Bell knocked down from the Volodymyr Cathedral in Kyiv, Kyiv Province, 1929
108. HOLOUS_151106_503.JPG: Opposition to Collectivization Ukrainian farmers protested against collectivization from the beginning. In the Spring of 1930, rural unrest and uprisings became widespread in Ukraine. The farmers destroyed collective farm buildings and many reclaimed their property. The Soviet government then made concessions. Most of the rural economy reverted to individual farming, and the arable land owned by the collective farms (71% as of 1 March 1930) was reduced by more than half (to 34.1% as of 1 October 1930). But it was only a tactical withdrawal. In the late Fall of 1930, collectivization was reinstated. And soon afterward, the Communist government decided to implement another solution, a massive famine genocide imposed on the Ukrainian people.
109. HOLOUS_151106_507.JPG: "I arrived in Tulchyn district yesterday. The entire district is seized with unrest and uprisings. Fifteen of the seventeen counties in the district are afffected. [sic] As of today there is unrest in 153 villages. The Soviet authorities have been completely expelled from 50 villages. There have been armed revolts in some villages. Trenches have been dug around the villages, which are occupied by armed people that are not letting anyone in. In certain villages they are singing the Ukrainian national anthem and chanting 'Down with Soviet rule! Long live an independent Ukraine!' " -- Vsevolod Balitsky, Head of the Secret Police in Soviet Ukraine (16 March 1930)
110. HOLOUS_151106_510.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Why the Genocide Was Organized
111. HOLOUS_151106_525.JPG: Group of Ukrainian farmers being cut down by a Soviet broder guard's machine-gun fire
112. HOLOUS_151106_530.JPG: Ukrainian woman shot at the border by a Soviet border guard
113. HOLOUS_151106_539.JPG: Ukraine (dark) Holodomor Famine Genocide Area in Ukraine and Kuban (black border) Current State Borders of Ukraine (yellow border) Ukrainian Ethnographic Borders in 1932-1933
114. HOLOUS_151112_016.JPG: Kulak's property is confiscated, Donetsk Province, 1930
115. HOLOUS_151112_020.JPG: ulakized family in the village of Udachne, Donestsk Province, 1930
116. HOLOUS_151112_032.JPG: Based on testimony heard and staff research, the Commission on the Ukraine Famine makes the following findings: 1. There is no doubt that large numbers of inhabitants of the Ukrainian SSR and the North Caucasus Territory starved to death in a man-made famine in 1932-1933, caused by the seizure of the 1932 crop by Soviet authorities. 2. The victims of the Ukrainian Famine numbered in the millions. 3. Official Soviet allegations of "kulak sabotage," upon which all "difficulties" were blamed during the Famine, are false. 4. The Famine was not, as is often alleged, related to drought. 5. In 1931-1932, the official Soviet response to a drought-induced grain shortage outside Ukraine was to send aid to the areas affected and to make a series of concessions to the peasantry. 6. In mid-1932, following complaints by officials in the Ukrainian SSR that excessive grain procurements had led to localized outbreaks of famine, Moscow reversed course and took an increasingly hard line toward the peasantry. 7. The inability of Soviet authorities in Ukraine to meet the grain procurements quota forced them to introduce increasingly severe measures to extract the maximum quantity of grain from the peasants. 8. In the Fall of 1932 Stalin used the resulting "procurements crisis" in Ukraine as an excuse to tighten his control in Ukraine and to intensify grain seizures further. 9. The Ukrainian Famine of 1932-1933 was caused by the maximum extraction of agricultural produce from the rural population. 10. Officials in charge of grain seizures also lived in fear of punishment. 11. Stalin knew that people were starving to death in Ukraine by late 1932. 12. In January 1933, Stalin used the "laxity" of the Ukrainian authorities in seizing grain to strengthen further his control over the Communist Party of Ukraine and mandated actions which worsened the situation and maximized the loss of life. 13. Postyshev had a dual mandate from Moscow: to intensify the grain seizures (and therefore the Famine) in Ukraine and to eliminate such modest national self-assertion as Ukrainians had hitherto been allowed by the USSR. 14. While famine also took place during the 1932-1933 agricultural year in the Volga Basin and the North Caucasus Territory as a whole, the invasiveness of Stalin's interventions of both the Fall of 1932 and January 1933 in Ukraine are parallelled only in the ethnically Ukrainian Kuban region of the North Caucasus. 15. Attempts were made to prevent the starving from travelling to areas where food was more available. 16. Joseph Stalin and those around him committed genocide against Ukrainians in 1932-1933. 17. The American government had ample and timely information about the Famine but failed to take any steps which might have ameliorated the situation. Instead, the Administration extended diplomatic recognition to the Soviet government in November 1933, immediately after the Famine. 18. During the Famine certain members of the American press corps cooperated with the Soviet government to deny the existence of the Ukrainian Famine. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/U.S._Commission_on_the_Ukraine_Famine says there was a 19th point which, interestingly, is not mentioned on the sign: 19. Recently, scholarship in both the West and, to a lesser extent, the Soviet Union has made substantial progress in dealing with the Famine. Although official Soviet historians and spokesmen have never given a fully accurate or adequate account, significant progress has been made in recent months.]
117. HOLOUS_151112_051.JPG: Gregorii Petrovsky is reading an oath to young recruits in Kharkiv, Karhkiv Province, 1930
118. HOLOUS_151112_053.JPG: Fred E. Beal on a tractor, Kharkiv, Kharkiv Province, 1933
119. HOLOUS_151112_064.JPG: "We must conduct the dekulakization in the same way we dealt with the bourgeoisie in 1918." -- Joseph Stalin (21 January 1930, Pravda) "We have changed from a policy of containing the kulaks to a policy of elimination the kulaks as a class!" -- Joseph Stalin (29 December 1929)
120. HOLOUS_151112_072.JPG: An old starving man sits in front of an empty store
121. HOLOUS_151112_079.JPG: You can see the "Genocide of Ukrainians: Food Export for Genocide" signs are repeated for some reason.
122. HOLOUS_151112_101.JPG: Genocide of Ukrainians Eyewitnesses Gareth Jones (1905-1935) was a Welsh journalist and foreign affairs adviser to former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George. Gareth Jones visited Ukraine in August 1930 and March 1933, and was among the first, at that time, who extensively and honestly reported on the Famine Genocide. Gareth Jones (journalist) From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia Gareth Richard Vaughan Jones (13 August 1905 – 12 August 1935) was a Welsh journalist who first publicized in the Western world the existence of the Soviet famine of 1932–1933. Life and career Jones was born in Barry, Glamorgan. His father Major Edgar Jones was headmaster of Barry County School which Gareth attended. His mother had spent the period 1889–1892 as tutor to the children of Arthur Hughes, the son of Welsh steel industrialist John Hughes, who had founded the town of Yuzovka or Hughesovka, modern day Donetsk, in Ukraine, and her stories inspired in Jones a desire to visit the Soviet Union, and particularly Ukraine. Jones graduated from the University of Wales, Aberystwyth in 1926 with a first class degree in French, and from Trinity College, Cambridge in 1929 with a first class honours degree in French, German, and Russian. In January 1930 he began work as Foreign Affairs Advisor to former British Prime Minister David Lloyd George, and that summer made his first brief "pilgrimage" to Yuzovka (by then renamed Stalino). In 1931 he was offered employment in New York City by Dr Ivy Lee, public relations advisor to organisations such as the Rockefeller Institute, the Chrysler Foundation, and Standard Oil, to research a book about the Soviet Union. In the summer of 1931 he toured the Soviet Union with H. J. Heinz II of the food company dynasty, producing a diary published by Heinz as Experiences in Russia 1931, a diary which probably contains the first usage of the word "starve" in relation to the collectivisation of Soviet agriculture. In 1932 Jones returned to work for Lloyd George and helped the wartime Prime Minister write his War Memoirs. During the 1930s, he was a reporter for the Western Mail. In late January and early February 1933 Jones was in Germany covering the accession to power of the Nazi Party, and was in Leipzig on the day Adolf Hitler was appointed Chancellor. A few days later on February 23 in the Richthofen, the fastest and most powerful three-motored aeroplane in Germany, he became the first foreign journalist to fly with Hitler as Jones accompanied Hitler and Joseph Goebbels to Frankfurt where Jones reported for the Western Mail on the new Chancellor's tumultuous acclamation in that city. He wrote that if the Richthofen would have crashed, the history of Europe would be changed. The next month, he travelled to the Soviet Union and eluded authorities to slip into Ukraine, where he kept diaries of the man-made starvation he witnessed. On his return to Berlin on 29 March 1933, he issued his famous press release, which was published by many newspapers, including the Manchester Guardian and the New York Evening Post: I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, 'There is no bread. We are dying'. This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, and Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening. In the train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided. I stayed overnight in a village where there used to be two hundred oxen and where there now are six. The peasants were eating the cattle fodder and had only a month's supply left. They told me that many had already died of hunger. Two soldiers came to arrest a thief. They warned me against travel by night, as there were too many 'starving' desperate men. 'We are waiting for death' was my welcome, but see, we still, have our cattle fodder. Go farther south. There they have nothing. Many houses are empty of people already dead,' they cried. This report was unwelcome in a great many of the media, as the intelligentsia of the time was still in sympathy with the Soviet regime. On 31 March the New York Times published a denial of Jones' statement by Walter Duranty under the headline "RUSSIANS HUNGRY, BUT NOT STARVING". In the article, Kremlin sources denied the existence of a famine, and said, "Russian and foreign observers in country could see no grounds for predications of disaster". On 13 May, Jones published a strong rebuttal to Duranty in the New York Times, standing by his report: My first evidence was gathered from foreign observers. Since Mr. Duranty introduces consuls into the discussion, a thing I am loath to do, for they are official representatives of their countries and should not be quoted, may I say that I discussed the Russian situation with between twenty and thirty consuls and diplomatic representatives of various nations and that their evidence supported my point of view. But they are not allowed to express their views in the press, and therefore remain silent. Journalists, on the other hand, are allowed to write, but the censorship has turned them into masters of euphemism and understatement. Hence they give "famine" the polite name of 'food shortage' and 'starving to death' is softened down to read as 'widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition'. Consuls are not so reticent in private conversation. In a personal letter from Soviet Foreign Commissar Maxim Litvinov (whom Jones had interviewed while in Moscow) to Lloyd George, Jones was informed that he was banned from ever visiting the Soviet Union again. Banned from Russia, Jones turned his attention to the Far East and in late 1934 he left Britain on a "Round-the-World Fact-Finding Tour". He spent about six weeks in Japan, interviewing important generals and politicians, and he eventually reached Beijing. From here he travelled to Inner Mongolia in newly Japanese-occupied Manchukuo in the company of a German journalist. Detained by Japanese forces, the pair were told that there were three routes back to the Chinese town of Kalgan, only one of which was safe; they took this route but were captured by bandits who demanded a ransom of 100,000 Mexican silver pesos. The German journalist was released after two days, but 16 days later the bandits shot Jones under mysterious circumstances, on the eve of his 30th birthday. There were strong suspicions that Jones' murder was engineered by the Soviet NKVD, as revenge for the embarrassment he had previously caused the Soviet regime. On 26 August 1935, the London Evening Standard quoted Lloyd George paying tribute to Jones: That part of the world is a cauldron of conflicting intrigue and one or other interests concerned probably knew that Mr Gareth Jones knew too much of what was going on... He had a passion for finding out what was happening in foreign lands wherever there was trouble, and in pursuit of his investigations he shrank from no risk... I had always been afraid that he would take one risk too many. Nothing escaped his observation, and he allowed no obstacle to turn from his course when he thought that there was some fact, which he could obtain. He had the almost unfailing knack of getting at things that mattered. In November 2009, his diaries recording the Stalinist man-made genocide of the Great Soviet Famine of 1932-33 went on display for the first time at Cambridge University. Serhii Bukovs'kyi's 2008 Ukrainian film The Living is a documentary about the Great Famine of 1932-33 and Gareth Jones' attempts to uncover its horrific atrocities. The Living premiered November 21, 2008 at the Kyiv Cinema House. It was screened in February 2009 at the European Film Market, in spring 2009 at the Ukrainian Film Festival in Cologne, and in November 2009 at the Second Annual Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film. It received the 2009 Special Jury Prize Silver Apricot in the International Documentary Competition at the Sixth Golden Apricot International Film Festival in July 2009 and the 2009 Grand Prize of Geneva in September 2009. In 2015, a feature film titled Gareth Jones, based on Jones' famine reporting, was announced. In April 2016 it was announced that the Oscar-nominated Polish director Agnieszka Holland would direct Gareth Jones. Memorial On 2 May 2006, a trilingual (Welsh/English/Ukrainian) plaque was unveiled in Gareth Jones' memory in the Old College at Aberystwyth University, in the presence of his niece Margaret Siriol Colley, and the Ukrainian Ambassador to the UK Ihor Kharchenko, who described him as an "unsung hero of Ukraine". The idea for a plaque and funding were provided by the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Association, working in conjunction with the Association of Ukrainians in Great Britain. Dr Lubomyr Luciuk, UCCLA's director of research, spoke at the unveiling ceremony. In November 2008, Jones and fellow Holodomor journalist Malcolm Muggeridge were posthumously awarded the Ukrainian Order of Merit at a ceremony in Westminster Central Hall, by Ambassador of Ukraine to the UK, Dr Ihor Kharchenko, on behalf of the President of Ukraine in reward for their exceptional services to the country and its people.
123. HOLOUS_151112_158.JPG: The National Holodomor Memorial At the heart of the National Holodomor Memorial is a bronze bas-relief sculpture depicting a monumentally-scaled "Field of Wheat" which -- across 30 feet -- transitions from highly articulated to barely visible wheat. The haunting negative space of the sculpture, with the gradual emergence of the Ukrainian term "Holodomor", is intended to convey the deliberate nature of the famine in Ukraine -- a famine which was secretly engineered by the Soviet government mainly through grain confiscation. The "Field of Wheat" sculpture is elevated on a stone wall and placed within arm's reach to encourage touching and burnishing of the bronze surfaces and thus, a more personal connection to the memorial. Etched into granite panels on the rear face of the sculpture is a visually engaging geometric pattern abstracted from a 1933 textile design by the famous Kyiv architect Vasyl H. Krychevsky. Use of the folk-inspired design bespeaks of the attack on Ukrainian culture which was a parallel goal of the Holodomor. The barbed character alludes to the deliberate sealing of the Ukrainian border at the peak of the tragedy. A distinctive and somber backdrop for the "Field of Wheat" sculpture is created by a staggered row of purple-leafed Forest Pansy Redbud trees. Nandina Domestica shrubs, with year-round visual interest, occupy both the tree planter bed and the rain garden which will capture all storm runoff at the low end of the site. The disposition of the sculpture, plaza and plantings resolves the challenging triangular geometry of the site, separating a more peaceful gathering place on Massachusetts Avenue, in front of the sculpture, from existing sidewalk cafes on F Street.
124. HOLOUS_151112_169.JPG: Miscellaneous bronze castings awaiting clean-up and assembly
125. HOLOUS_151112_177.JPG: Attaching bronze castings to stainless steel frame and verifying letter projection
126. HOLOUS_151112_182.JPG: Sandblasted bronze ready for final metal inspection
127. HOLOUS_151112_192.JPG: Casting the Sculpture
128. HOLOUS_151112_195.JPG: Foam patterns for sections 14 through 7 of the sculpture
129. HOLOUS_151112_200.JPG: Tracking down a source of wheat in Canada, August 2012
130. HOLOUS_151112_203.JPG: Rejected full-scale foam patterns testing high, transitional, and negative relief sections of the sculpture.
131. HOLOUS_151112_207.JPG: Progress meeting at Laran Bronze Foundry in January 2014 with representatives of the Ukrainian Embassy, Holodomor Committee, Commission of Fine Arts, National Park Service, and the Kurylas Studio.
132. HOLOUS_151112_211.JPG: Creating the Model
133. HOLOUS_151112_226.JPG: Moving sculpture out of warehouse
134. HOLOUS_151112_228.JPG: Construction progress meeting
135. HOLOUS_151112_233.JPG: Site prepared for arrival of sculpture
136. HOLOUS_151112_235.JPG: Rebar installation for footings
137. HOLOUS_151112_246.JPG: Representatives of the various entities involved in the making of the memorial after the successful installation of the sculpture, August 4, 2015 | photo Steve Lann
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