Ukr. Holodomor (genocide) commemoration Nov. 2016

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Selkirk-Interlake-Eastman MP James Bezan explains its significance.

"Joseph Stalin and his communist thugs in the former Soviet empire decided to target Ukrainian nationals as well as Ukrainian farmers who refused to be part of collectivization," says Bezan.

He notes Stalin punished these proud Ukrainians through starvation.

"What he did over a period of 15 months was raided these homesteads and took away their harvest in the fall of 1932 and took all of their preserves from the garden, all their livestock and poultry and shipped it out of the country. Then they sat there and watched every man, woman and child in that region slowly starve to death. The numbers are over 7-million that perished in that short 15-month timeframe. And, to put it in comparative numbers, Ukraine, at the time, had a population of about 35-million, about the same as what Canada has today. It would be like having every man, woman and child starve to death in all four western Provinces -- Manitoba, Saskatchewan, Alberta and British Columbia."

He adds it's a genocide and they executed all of the political leaders, the clergy, all the teachers and academics, and took all the fit men and sent them off to Siberia to work in the labour camps and gulags. Bezan says everyone else -- the elderly, men and women -- were left behind to starve.

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Kyiv Holodomor Memorial

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Estonia





Ukrainians light candles on Freedom Square to remember Holodomor victims

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https://youtu.be/9NwvjVASQwg

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https://vimeo.com/289014306/a7aac466cd

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From Euromaiden Press

“Death solves all problems. No human, no problem.” - Joseph Stalin

The Holodomor (“extermination/death by hunger” in Ukrainian) destroyed Ukraine, and an estimated 3 million to 6 million lives - nearly one-fifth of the country’s population - were lost. The dreadful famine that engulfed Ukraine, the northern Caucasus, and the lower Volga River area in 1932-1933 was the result of Joseph Stalin’s policy of forced collectivization. The heaviest losses occurred in Ukraine, which was the most productive agricultural area of the Soviet Union. Stalin was determined to crush all vestiges of Ukrainian nationalism. Thus, the famine was accompanied by a devastating purge of Ukrainian intelligentsia and the Ukrainian communist party. The famine broke the peasants’ will to resist collectivization and left Ukraine politically, socially, and psychologically traumatized.