Your Eminences,
Your Excellencies,
Reverend Clergy,
Distinguished Government Officials,
Esteemed Ambassadors,
Dear Holodomor Survivors,
Honored Community Representatives,
Ladies and Gentleman:
 
"Seventy-six years ago, the Stalinist government of the Soviet Union did the unthinkable...they used food as the ultimate weapon against the people of Ukraine.
 
The brutal communist regime of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin sought to wipeout the nationally conscious Ukrainian people, their history, culture, language and way of life -- to crush the Ukrainian spirit of independence.  To do this, Stalin unleashed his henchmen to do the unimaginable – to carry out the starvation of millions.  Through a meticulously orchestrated collectivization campaign the Soviet regime imposed unreachable grain quotas, confiscated all foodstuffs, and even sealed Ukraine’s borders -- Trapping Ukrainians within their own country…with no food… and no chance of escape. 
 
It is difficult to comprehend the magnitude of this crime against humanity, known in Ukrainian as Holodomor -- murder by starvation. 
 
In the very heart of Europe, -- in a country that boasts some the world’s most fertile soil and was once known as the 'breadbasket of Europe"  Ukrainians were dying at the rate of 25,000 per day --- or 1,000 per hour --- or 17 per minute. Nearly a quarter of Ukraine’s rural population - the backbone of the nation - was mercilessly starved to death.  Of the millions who perished, approximately 3 million of them were children.
 
What was even worse is that for decades the Soviet Regime had little difficulty covering up their gruesome deeds.  On Stalin’s orders, the Soviet government sealed Ukraine borders to stop anyone from escaping in search of food and to prevent foreigners from witnessing the mass starvation, thus largely concealing this crime from the outside world. Hiding behind its iron curtain, the Soviet Regime covered up this atrocity and denied its existence.

 

Despite the efforts of some reporters, such as Malcolm Muggeridge and Gareth Jones, human rights activists and Ukrainian expatriates, few accounts of the starvation ever reach the west.  And those accounts that did were denounced by the Soviets as “anti-Soviet propaganda.”  
 
It was not until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent reestablishment of an independent Ukraine that the contents of many sealed government archives were uncovered, exposing a wealth of gruesome information. 
  
This educational exhibit includes photos recently released from KGB archives, which highlight the tragic events of 1932-33 in Ukraine,
 
This exhibit, prepared by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America’s New York City Branch, utilizes the most recent archival photos released by the KGB.  It was prepared to expose the true nature of the totalitarian Soviet regime which resulted in the 1932-1933 famine.  The panels are displayed in chronological order to provide the viewer an overall picture of the motives and methods used to kill up to 10 million innocent men, women and children.
 
On behalf of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America’s New York City Branch, we would like to express our sincere gratitude to Ukraine’s Permanent Mission to the United Nations, and especially it’s Ambassador, the Honorable Yuriy Sergeyev for inviting us to display our exhibit here, within the halls of the United Nations.
 
We hope this educational exhibit will shed light on the Famine of 1932-1933 - one of the darkest pages in Ukraine's history… and a crime that ranks among the worst cases of man's inhumanity toward man, and is perhaps the most extreme example of the use of food as a weapon. By exposing such crimes, as the Holodomor and remembering its victims we will help to ensure that the horrors of the past are never repeated." [Presentation by Ivanka Zajac, President, UCCA NYC Branch, obtained from Tamara Gallo Olexy, President of the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, by the Action Ukraine History Report (AUHR).]

 

Presentation by Nigel Linsan Colley,

Grand Nephew of Welsh Journalist Gareth Jones

Exhibition at UN Dedicated to 76th Anniversary of the 1932-33 Holodomor
United Nations, New York, NY, Mon, Nov 23, 2009

Published by Action Ukraine Report (AUR) #943, Wash, D.C., Sat, Nov 28, 2009

 

NEW YORK, NY - "Last week, 180 newspapers across the world, from the Washington Post to the London Times reported the remarkable story of Gareth Jones and his graphic eyewitness accounts of his off-limits trek into Ukraine during the height of Moscow’s starvation of that country.  Today, we call it the “Holodomor.” 

 

Gareth’s accounts are preserved in his journalist’s diaries which probably now represent the only surviving contemporary independent western verification of that genocide. These precious diaries are currently on display in the Wren Library at Cambridge University, where Gareth had been a student.

 

They sit side by side with memorabilia of other illustrious alumni including Sir Isaac Newton’s personal annotated copy of ‘The Principia’, in which he proposed his fundamental mathematical Laws of Motion.

 

When I came to the UN in 2003 with my mother to attend the first exhibition commemorating the 70th anniversary of the Holodomor, few had heard of the great man-made famine in Ukraine and even fewer knew of Gareth’s role in telling the world about it. 

 

Gareth Jones was born in Barry, South Wales in 1905, the son of a School headmaster. After graduating from Cambridge in 1929 with a first-class honours’ degree in Russian, German and French, he was employed by David Lloyd George, the former British WW1 Prime Minister as his foreign affairs advisor.

 

In 1930 he went to the Soviet Union on behalf of Lloyd George. Following an unescorted pilgrimage to the Ukrainian city of Donetz, where his mother had been a governess in the 1890s, he returned disillusioned at the brutality of the Stalinist regime against the Ukrainian people and was invited to write three articles about the subject for the London Times.

 

In London, in the September of 1932, Gareth learnt through several informed sources, of reports emanating from Moscow, of a severe famine in the southern part of the Soviet Union. Professor Jules Menken (of the London School of Economics), an eminent economist of the time, told Gareth that he “dreaded this winter, when he thought millions would die of hunger and finally stated that “There was already famine in Ukraine.” Due to the censorship of the press in Moscow the world was unaware of the ongoing plight of the Ukrainians. 

 

In light of this information, Gareth wrote two prophetic articles published in the Cardiff Western Mail  in October 1932, entitled: “Will There be Soup?” where he painted a very bleak picture of the coming Soviet winter. However, he knew that in order to expose the famine in Ukraine he needed to see it first hand. Otherwise the Soviet sources would continue to deny its existence.

 

He arrived in Moscow on the fifth of March 1933, and privately interviewed diplomats and journalists. After five days Gareth quietly left by train for Ukraine with a rucksack full of loaves of white bread, butter, cheese, meat and chocolate, which he had bought at the foreign currency stores.

 

On his journey Gareth wrote of an episode; ‘Boy on train asking for bread. I dropped a small piece of bread on floor and put it in a spittoon. Peasant came and picked it up & ate it.’ Later he noted ‘Man speaking German, same story “Tell them in England, Starving, bellies extended. Hunger’ Without official papers he had to leave the train at the Russian/Ukrainian border and sneak across. He stopped off in villages along the way talking to the inhabitants and sleeping on the bug-infested floors of their homes.

 

In his diaries he wrote… ‘Everywhere I talked to peasants who walked past – they all had the same story;    “There is no bread – we haven’t had bread for over 2 months – a lot are dying.”

 

The first village had no more potatoes left and the store of БҮРЯК (beetroot) was running out. They all said ‘the cattle are dying. (Nothing to feed.) НЕЧЕВО КОРМитьn.

Then I caught up with a bearded peasant who was walking along. His feet were covered with sacking. We started talking. He spoke in Ukrainian Russian. I gave him [a] lump of bread and of cheese.

[He said:]    “You could not buy that anywhere for 20 roubles. There just is no food”.   We walked along and talked [he told me]; “Before the war this was all gold. We had horses and cows and pigs and chickens. Now we are ruined. [We are] ПОГИБЛИ (the living dead).     “Before the war we could have boots and meat and butter. We were the richest country in the world for grain. We fed the world. Now they have taken all away from us. “Now people steal much more. Four days ago, they stole my horse. “A horse is better than a tractor. A tractor goes and stops, but a horse goes all the time. A tractor cannot give manure, but a horse can.

 

"PEOPLE ARE DYING OF HUNGER"
He took me along to his cottage. His daughter and three little children [were there]. Two of the smaller children were swollen. “If you had come before the Revolution we would have given you chicken and eggs and milk and fine bread. Now we have no bread in the house. They are killing us.” “People are dying of hunger.”

There was in the hut, a spindle and the daughter showed me how to make thread. The peasant showed me his shirt, which was home-made and some fine sacking which had been home-made. [He explained] “But the Bolsheviks are crushing that. They won’t take it. They want the factory to make everything.”

 

The peasant then ate some very thin soup with a scrap of potato. No bread in house. The white bread [of Gareth’s] they thought was wonderful.

 

In Kharkiv, he noted in his diary; ‘Queues for bread. Erika [from the German Consulate] and I walked along about a hundred ragged pale people.

 

Militiaman came out of shop whose windows had been battered in and were covered with wood and said: “There is no bread” and “there will be no bread today.” Shouts from angry peasants also there. “But citizens, there is no bread.” “How long here?” I asked a man. “Two days.” They would not go away but remained. [because] sometimes the cart came with bread.  Waiting with forlorn hope.

 

On 29th March 1933 Gareth exposed the Holodomor at a press conference in Berlin.  However, within 24 hours he was personally denigrated by the then world’s highest paid correspondent and Pulitzer prize winner Walter Duranty in an article in the New York Times called ‘Russians hungry but not starving’.  We know that this was intentional & willfully misleading of the American public. 

 

The US Embassy in Berlin reported to the US State Department that in discussions with Duranty, he admitted that the NYT had entered into an agreement with Moscow to publish only the official Moscow party line.
 
Duranty made his outrageous and prompt rebuttal to Gareth’s press release stating: “Since I talked with Mr. Jones I have made exhaustive inquiries about this alleged famine situation. . . . There is serious food shortage throughout the country with occasional cases of well-managed state or collective farms. The big cities and the army are adequately supplied with food. There is no actual starvation or death from starvation, but there is widespread mortality from diseases due to malnutrition . . .”

He went on to explain the Soviet determination for the 5-year plan to succeed; “But - to put it brutally - you can’t make an omelette without breaking eggs.” Gareth had embarrassed both the Americans and the Soviets who were engaged in delicate negotiations towards establishing diplomatic recognition between the two countries.

 

His reward was to be banished from the international journalistic scene from more than a year.  On the opposite end, Duranty wrote that Maxim Litvinov, the Soviet Commissar of Foreign Affairs, was going home to Moscow with a “pretty fat turkey for Thanksgiving.”
 
On November 16, 1933, some eight months after Gareth’s revelations, Litvinov, whom Gareth had privately interviewed in March 1933, managed to secure American diplomatic recognition of the USSR. He also banned Gareth from returning to the Soviet Union.
 
From a letter written to a friend in 1934, Gareth wrote:  “Alas! You will be very amused to hear that the inoffensive little 'Joneski' has achieved the dignity of being a marked man on the black list of the O.G.P.U. and is barred from entering the Soviet Union. I hear that there is a long list of crimes which I have committed under my name in the secret police file in Moscow and, funnily enough, espionage is said to be among them. As a matter of fact Litvinoff  sent a special cable from Moscow, to the Soviet Embassy in London, to tell them to make the strongest of complaints to Mr. Lloyd George about me.”
 
Gareth was tragically murdered little more than two years later in 1935, supposedly at the hands of Chinese bandit kidnappers in Inner Mongolia, though there is much circumstantial evidence to link his murder with the Soviet Secret Police. The trading company he was traveling with was Wostwag, a trading front for the NKVD. Thus one of the very few western witnesses of the Holodomor was effectively silenced.

 

Gareth’s story would have ended there if it weren’t for serendipity or maybe fate. Except perhaps for oblique references to Jones in a couple of George Orwell’s writings, then for almost 70 years his memory and role in exposing the Holodomor were forgotten, not just by the world but also by the Ukrainian Diaspora.
 
Thanks to the interest generated in 2003, much of the world has been made aware of the true circumstances of the Holodomor but it saddens me to report that although the world press ran the story last week, including a whole page in the London Times, conspicuous by its absence was the NYT.

All the NYT Pulitzer prize winners are being besmirched by the infamous acts of one rogue journalist. Isn’t it time Mr Sulzberger that as publisher of the NYT you should do the decent thing and return his Pulitzer? You owe it to your own paper’s reputation, and your readership, to live by your famous motto and publish ‘all the news that’s fit to print’.

 

WHAT DOES ALL THIS MEAN, TODAY?
Ladies and gentlemen.  What does all this mean, today?  Well, let me first take you back even further to the past. One hundred and seventy years ago, a Frenchman, Marquis de Custine published a book detailing his travels in Russia.   Among the observations was this:  “Russian despotism not only pays little respect to ideas and sentiments, it will also deny facts; it will struggle against evidence, and triumph in the struggle!”

Truth, and an informed public, are the linchpin of a free society.  The campaign in Russia to resurrect Stalin, to whitewash his inhuman crimes, is well under way.   There are disturbing signs that his rehabilitation will not only be poorly opposed but may even be facilitated by certain media around the world. 

 

Gareth Jones is a shining example of honest journalism, a benchmark to be aspired to by today’s media. It is thanks to efforts of many around us that the Holodomor is slowly, but surely, being accepted as the apogee of Stalin’s terror.  I believe that Gareth was viciously murdered by the Soviet secret police. 

 

It was what the Frenchman Custine warned about, the Russian struggle against evidence.  Just as decades later journalists and others who sought to uncover Moscow’s crimes before a trusting world, would also be murdered.  No one is asking you to risk your lives.  But do risk a little of your time and energy to uphold principle, honour and the truth.  To make sure that despotism does not triumph. Thank you very much."  [Copy of presentation was obtained from Nigel Linsan Colley and published by the Action Ukraine Report (AUR), Washington, D.C., with the permission of Nigel Linsan Colley.] 

[H.E. Mr. Yuriy Sergeyev] We also have the opportunity to honor the memory of Dr. Raphael Lemkin, distinguished legal scholar who authored the concept of genocide and was the farther of the Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, adopted by the General Assembly of the United Nations in 1948.

His address which was made in 1953 in order to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the Great Ukrainian Famine was discovered by Dr. Taras
Hunczak in New York Public Library and organized into a book by Professor Roman Serbyn. I am holding this book today which contains only one article translated into 28 languages thanks to Ukrainian Embassies and private translators.

It is an honour to participate at today’s presentation in the United Nations of the publication "Raphael Lemkin: Soviet Genocide in Ukraine". I would like read the greetings from Kateryna Yushchenko, Head of the Supervisory Board of the International Charitable Foundation "Ukraine 3000". I quote:
 
       Dear friends!

       I warmly welcome all participants of presentation of the book "Raphael Lemkin: Soviet Genocide in Ukraine". Thank you for being interested in Ukraine and for your desire to learn the truth about her past.

       Almost daily we are discovering new pages in our history. We want to restore our genetic code, link between generations and to re-establish the value system, which was destroyed by Soviet authorities.

       Studying and conveying the truth about the crimes perpetrated by the communist regime in Ukraine is a priority in the activities of the International Charitable Foundation “Ukraine 3000”. The Holodomor of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, communist repressions 1920-1950's, enforced labor of Ukrainians in Germany during the Second World War, repressions against Ukrainian spirituality - those are the main themes of our attention.

       By commemorating the 76th anniversary of the tragedy of the Holodomor, as well as honoring the 50th anniversary of the death of Raphael Lemkin, we  have supported the publication of this book.

       I want to thank all those who contributed to the publication of this book. I wish you all good health and prosperity, inspiration and successful realization of all plans. God bless you and your families.

       Sincerely,

       Kateryna Yushchenko
 
In Soviet times, when telling about the Holodomor was prohibited, foreign historians and researchers have tried to draw public attention to the terrible events in Ukraine in the first half of the twentieth century. One of them was Raphael Lemkin.

Today we present the text of the report by Raphael Lemkin, proclaimed in New York in 1953, at the honoring celebration of Ukrainian Community-Hromada of the Great Famine. This report has been translated into 28 languages, including English as original one.

A lot of people were involved to the book release - Representatives of Ukrainian Embassies in different countries, private translators and volunteers in Ukraine as well abroad. I also would like to express my sincere gratitude to Professor Roman Serbyn and the diplomats of the Mission of Ukraine to the United Nations, especially H.E. Mr. Yuriy Sergeyev. Without persistence and hard work of those people we would not have had the opportunity to keep this book in our hands.

Publication of this book is another step in bringing the truth to the Ukrainian and world public opinion about the tragic events in Ukraine’s history. Such direction is a priority in the work of our Foundation "Ukraine 3000". We have implemented the program "History Lessons" since 2003. We have supported publication of ten books on the Holodomor, a documentary film "Holodomor: Genocide technology" and "The Living."

The Foundation creates and distributes in Ukraine and abroad documentary exhibitions on crimes of the communist regime. For instance such as the exhibition "Executed by hunger: the unknown genocide of Ukrainian”, translated into all UN languages.

We have done a lot, but our work does not end. It will last until will investigate all historical facts, recorded all evidence of survivors, honored names of all victims and until we tell everyone the truth about the crimes of the communist Soviet regime.

Thank you."

 

LINK:  http://www.mfa.gov.ua/data/upload/news/uno/en/31120/maks231109eng.doc

 

Raphael Lemkin and the Recognition of the Ukrainian Genocide

"Last year we commemorated the 60th anniversary of the adoption by the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. This year we mark the 50th anniversary of the passing away of Raphael Lemkin, the man who coined the term “genocide” and conceptualized that heinous act as a crime committed against entire identifiable groups.

 

Lemkin’s seminal work on genocide, "Axis Rule in Occupied Europe," and his role in prodding the delegates to the UN General Assembly to adopt the Convention are well known and appreciated.

 

Little known, however, is Lemkin’s address entitled “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine”, delivered here in New York, at the Manhattan Center, on 20 September 1953, during the commemoration of the 20th anniversary of the Great Famine. It is to pay tribute to Lemkin and to keep the memory of the Ukrainian tragedy, which the eminent jurist and respected scholar analyzed with such insight and poignancy, that Ukrainians have published a book with Lemkin’s allocution in 28 languages.
 
Ukrainians are grateful to Lemkin, for being among the first to recognize the Ukrainian genocide and above all for giving the catastrophe a most comprehensive analysis in terms of the UN Convention on Genocide. Article II of the Convention specifies: “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such”. The most numerous victims of the genocide were Ukrainian peasants, but peasantry is a social group, and as such is not recognized by the Convention.

 

Lemkin was well aware of this limitation of the UN document, but did consider it an obstacle for the recognition of the Ukrainian genocide. He understood that the Ukrainian farmers were targeted not as a socio-economic group, but rather as the main part of the Ukrainian nation, which in its opposition to Stalin’s murderous “revolution from above” became a threat to the integrity of the Soviet empire.
 
Lemkin rightly shows that Stalin’s intention was to destroy the Ukrainian nation as such, although not in its entirety (as Hitler tried to do with the Jews), but a sizeable part of it, since the Ukrainians were too numerous for total annihilation. He also shows that the attack was not only against the peasants, but also against all the segments of the Ukrainian society.

 

Lemkin described the Ukrainian genocide as a four-prong attack: “The first blow was aimed at the intelligentsia, the national brain, so as to paralyze the rest of the body.” The second attack was against the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church, which Lemkin calls the soul of Ukraine. “The third prong of the Soviet plan was aimed at the farmers, the large mass of independent peasants who are the repository of the tradition, folk lore and music, the national language and literature, the national spirit, of Ukraine.”

 

It is significant that Lemkin stresses the farmer’s national characteristics, for it was as Ukrainians that these people was seen by Stalin as a threat to his power and thus slated for extermination. The fourth step was the fragmentation of the Ukrainian people by settling Ukraine with non-Ukrainians from other parts of the USSR. “In this way,” declares Lemkin, “ethnic unity would be destroyed and nationalities mixed.”
 
Lemkin’s analysis of the Ukrainian genocide is corroborated by documents in Western and Soviet archives. The destruction of the Ukrainian intelligentsia began with the 1929 arrests of 700 Ukrainian intellectuals, whom the OGPU (forerunners of the KGB) accused of belonging to a non-existent subversive movement called Union for the Liberation of Ukraine (SVU).

 

Trials and severe sentences followed for this and other similar organizations. In 1930 the Ukrainian Orthodox Autocephalous Church was forced to self-liquidate, not because it was a religious institution, but because if wished to stay free from the Russian Orthodox Church (which was not abolished).

 

Stalin’s letter to Kaganovich in which he states that there is danger of losing Ukraine, shows the dictator’s reason for wishing to break the backbone of Ukraine’s national revival, and the Ukrainian genocide was his chosen method of achieving his goal. The directive on the outlawing the Ukrainian language in public use in the RSFSR, inhabited then by 8 million ethnic Ukrainians and the closing of borders between Ukraine and the RSFSR to Ukrainian farmers shows that the Ukrainian farmers were the specific target of Stalin’s extermination policies.
 
Although Lemkin did not have at his disposal all the documentary evidence that we possess today, he was nevertheless familiar with the Soviet system and had a clear understanding of Stalin’s motives and intentions, which he described masterfully in his brilliant address 56 years ago. May this book, “Soviet Genocide in Ukraine” be a fitting tribute to the author and recognition of his contribution in making the Ukrainian tragedy known."  [This copy of the  Serbyn presentation was composed by Professor Roman Serbyn from his memory of the remarks he gave at the opening of the Holodomor Exhibition at the United Nations in NYC at the request of the Action Ukraine History Report (AUHR).]
 

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