in kyiv, the Holodomor memorial traces the history of this famine orchestrated in Ukraine by Stalin

While French deputies examine Tuesday, March 28 a cross-partisan bill to recognize the Holodomor as genocide, the subject has not been debated in Ukraine for 20 years. In Kiev, for example, the memorial that remembers the history of this great famine orchestrated by Stalin and in which five million people perished between 1932 and 1933 is called the “National Museum of the Holodomor and Genocide”.

>>> War in Ukraine: how the memory of the Holodomor, this famine caused by Stalin, has shaped Ukrainian identity

“Follow me, we continue the visit as a group”, tells us the guide Olga at the entrance of this circular space without window, out of time and overhung by a large tower in the shape of candles. Today’s visitors Volodymyr, Valentina and their eight-year-old son were driven out of Kherson by the Russians at the very start of the war in Ukraine. “My son is growing up and I want him to know what happened 100 years ago, explains Volodymyr. Russia wants to exterminate us. I want my son to understand that he is Ukrainian and to know the history of his country”.

Little Yaroslav tells us about the present and the army of Vladimir Putin’s army: “It’s very bad. They chased us out of our house and it was very scary”. “One of our relatives has disappeared and we have no news, continues the father. It’s been seven months. In Kherson, if you say ‘glory to Ukraine’, at worst you are killed on the spot. At best, you’re taken to a basement and beaten. I saw it. They have come to exterminate us.”

“Tell your French friends that for me, nothing has changed for a century”.

Volodymyr, Ukrainian father expelled from Kherson

at franceinfo

The French have not always grasped the violence of the Russian repression, believes one of the leaders of the Memorial, Mykhaïlo Kostiv: “France is a special case because in the 1930s, Edouard Herriot [alors président du Conseil des ministres], a politician, denied the existence of the Holodomor and part of the left supported Soviet propaganda. But France is a civilized country and it is important to recognize the genocide, even if it was a long time ago”.

Mykhaïlo Kostiv also lost ancestors who were victims of Stalinist methods. It was not during the Holodomor, but a few years later, during the great purges, at the very beginning of the Second World War.

The Russian invasion prompted some European politicians to re-examine the history of Ukraine. Since December, the European Parliament but also the Bulgarian and German deputies have thus recognized the Holodomore (literally “extermination by hunger”) as a genocide.