Ukraine honours Stalin famine victims.

Kiev -- In late November 2003, 2000 people gathered at the golden-domed St. Michael Orthodox Cathedral in Ukraine's capital to commemorate the death of some seven to ten million people during the famine years 1932 and 1933.

The Soviet totalitarian regime in Moscow provoked the famine as part of Stalin's campaign to force farmers to give up their land and join collective farms. Some 25,000 or more people died every day in the Ukraine in 1933. Kaganovich, Commissar for Ukraine, set a quota of at least 10,000 executions a week.

Earlier, in November 2003, some 30 countries signed a joint statement at the United Nations commemorationg Stalin's mass murder of Ukrainians. It was the first significant international recognition of the famine, which was always denied by the Soviets as well as by the leftist press and academics in Europe and America. The recent controversy about the 1932 award of the Pulitzer prize to New York Times' Walter Duranty, who reported from Moscow for the Times between 1922 and 1944, harks back to the days when Nazi dictator Adolf Hitler was denounced as evil by all, but Communist dictator Josef Stalin was seen as progressive and enlightened. Today the situation is still almost the same. That is why the Toronto Sun's Eric Margolis wrote on November 16:

"But who remembers Soviet mass murderers Dzerzhinsky, Kaganovitch, Yagoda, Yezhov and Beria? Were it not for writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn we might never know of Soviet death camps like Magadan, Kolyma and Vorkuta. Movie after movie appears about Nazi evil, while the evil of the Soviet era vanishes from view or dissolves into nostalgia. The souls of Stalin's millions of victims still cry out for justice."

Canada calls for day of remembrance

While liberal Western historians and journalists swallowed the Communist propaganda, the Catholic and Orthodox church communities knew better. In Canada, for example, faithful of both the Eastern-rite Catholic Church and the Orthodox Church have commemorated their national holocaust every year for decades.

Also on June 19, 2003, Canada's Senate unanimously adopted a motion by Senator Raynel Andreychuk calling upon the Government of Canada to recognize the Ukrainian Famine/Genocide of 1932-1933. It called for the fourth Saturday in November to be designated as a day of remembrance.

While the House of Commons has now set apart a day to commemorate the European Jewish Holocaust in Canada (April 19), it has not yet acted upon the Senate motion.

Fr. Bohdan Choly of St. Catherines, ON, writes as follows:

Pope Pius XI declared 1933 a special Holy Year marking the 1900th anniversary year of the death and resurrection of Jesus. Metropolitan Andrew Sheptytsky began the Youth for Christ movement in Lviv, Ukraine, in 1933.

That year 1933 was a Holy Year for the whole world, but for us this year 1933 was, is, and always will be, a Holy Year because Ukraine reenacted Golgotha, its crucifixion, and Jesus' suffering on a massive scale.

We, as people of Ukrainian descent, should never forget.

Vatican issues papal letter

On November 23, Pope John Paul issued a papal letter commemorating the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933. Entitled "May this never be repeated again", the Holy Father united with the Ukrainians in solidarity and prayer. He recalled the words of Pope Plus XI who, in his encyclical Divini redemptoris (March 19, 1937), saw a distinct difference between the rulers and the ruled. As he spoke in defence of the latter, he clearly revealed the responsibility of a system that "ignores the true origin and purpose of the State, when it denies the rights, dignity, and liberty of the human individual." In closing, the Pope expressed his trust "in the spiritual consolation of the Most Holy Mother of God for all those who still suffer from the consequences of these tragic actions."