‘Holodomor’ commemorated worldwide

    Driving on U.S. 41 from the south, one cannot miss seeing a billboard on the right just after leaving Port Charlotte. The billboard reads: “Ukraine Remembers — The World Acknowledges” and below that, “80th Anniversary of Holodomor 1932-33.” This billboard is being sponsored by the Southwest Florida Ukrainian American community, led by the Ukrainian American organizations of North Port and vicinity.
The worldwide “Holodomor” (literally translated, “killing by hunger”) commemoration ceremonies are honoring the close to 10 million victims of the artificially created famine by Joseph Stalin and his cohorts in 1932-33 in Ukraine, heretofore known as the “bread basket of Europe.”
Pulitzer Prize and Britain’s Duff Cooper Prize winner American writer and journalist Anne Applebaum recently said, “Holodomor became a model for mass killings for other totalitarian regimes. During the World War II years, using such methods, as in the 1932-33 years (isolation, complete deprivation of food), Nazis annihilated millions of Soviet prisoners of war. And even the Holocaust initially reminded this methodology — Jews were isolated in ghettos and left to die. Later, Nazis recognized that this method was insufficiently effective and expeditious, therefore, they began to use gas chambers.”
The commemorations will be varied and will be held in various cities in Ukraine and throughout the world, including 47 national capital cities. At New York City’s St. Patrick’s Cathedral, there will be an ecumenical service, while in other localities, including in North Port, there will be “hunger dinners” ( a meal consisting of rye bread and unsweetened tea) in addition to prayer services in churches. Holodomor memorials have been erected in thousands of cities, large and small, in Ukraine and other countries.
There is a Holodomor memorial in North Port in front of St. Andrew’s Ukrainian Religious and Cultural Center (known as the “Oseredok” to Ukrainians), 4100 S. Biscayne Drive.
A ground-breaking and keystone-laying ceremony for a Holodomor memorial in Washington, D.C., will take place in 2014 with President Barack Obama and Ukraine President Viktor Yanukovych in attendance.

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The monthly membership meeting of the Ukrainian American Club of Southwest Florida, headed by Daria Tomashosky of North Port, will take place tonight at 6 at the Oseredok. This change from the customary meeting day, the last Wednesday of the month, is due to the Thanksgiving holiday that week. The meeting will include, in addition to the customary reports of officers, the final report on the club’s Christmas party, scheduled for Dec. 8, and a report on the “Help Homeless Students” project.
Members are reminded to bring canned food items to the meeting. As in the past several years, the club is collecting nonperishables, which will be donated to the local Salvation Army food pantry. Cash donations will be accepted also.

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The Ukrainian National Soccer Club’s winning match against France was a cause for massive celebrations in Ukraine. The enthusiastic singing of the Ukrainian national anthem by tens of thousands assembled at the Olimpiyskiy stadium in Kyiv was noticed (with a degree of envy by the neighboring Russians). One Russian publication stated frankly that “Russians could never sing their national anthem the way Ukrainians do.”
Atanas Kobryn covers the Ukrainian community for the North Port Sun. He can be emailed at atanask@aol.com.

Our Neighbors — The Ukrainians

by Atanas Kobryn