{"id":146,"date":"2021-02-22T19:57:46","date_gmt":"2021-02-22T22:57:46","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/wordpress\/?p=146"},"modified":"2021-02-22T19:57:46","modified_gmt":"2021-02-22T22:57:46","slug":"pages-of-holodomor","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/2021\/02\/22\/pages-of-holodomor\/","title":{"rendered":"PAGES OF “HOLODOMOR”"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

(Courtesy: Achievements News – Great Britain)<\/strong>
\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(by\u00a0Alexander Feldman – Member of Parliament of Ukraine)<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the light of the recent negotiations with the Israel Ministry of Foreign Affairs and the Knesset representatives on recognition of the Holodomor (famine) of the 1932-33 by Israeli Knesset as genocide against the Ukrainian people, I was astonished at one fact \u2013 basically, the Israeli policymakers are ready to support Ukraine and take the corresponding decision on the state level. Moreover, the Israeli parliamentarians kindly consented to help with exhibition arranging in the Knesset. The unclassified historical records of the Security Service of Ukraine on the Holodomor were intended for this exhibition.       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       However, as it proved to be, in course of communication with the foreign policymakers, the Holodomor issue is raised not only by those ones who strive to support Ukraine in the communist regime crimes condemnation but those ones who actively oppose this action. An impressing fact is not the Verkhovna Rada\u2019s deputies raising these initiatives but an absurd reasoning. It\u2019s delivered as \u201cthe next historical myth ordered by the new Ukrainian authorities\u201d, and its support could spoil relations of Russia with Israel and cause ambiguous reaction of the Ukrainian society\u2026<\/strong>
      <\/strong>
       To strengthen solidarity of the Jewish and Ukrainian people banded but not limited by the centuries-old friendship as well as to make the political speculators break off facts distorting process, it\u2019s necessary to throw some light upon the Jewish page of Holodomor tragedy, which is still unknown\u2026<\/strong>
       <\/strong>
       As it\u2019s known, at the beginning of the 1930es there were 25 national districts in the administrative-territorial system of Ukraine, including seven German, three Bulgarian, three Greek, three Jewish, one Polish and eight Russian districts. The Holodomor did not pass around any of those. Facts of starvation in three Jewish national districts, Kalinindorphskiy, Novo-Zlatopolskiy and Stalindorphskiy (today, Dnepropetrovschina, Zaporozhye and Khersonschina) have been documented. At the beginning of the 1930es the Jewish agricultural settlements were powerful and profitable economies. They had tens of thousands of agricultural machineries and the first-class equipment. In March 1933 the head of the Ukrainian communists, S. Kosior, fixed a very hard situation in the national districts. The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine was informed of real disaster in the south of Ukraine. One of the documents stated: \u201cResidents of the Voroshilovogradskoe village of the Stalindorphskiy district are starving. Four children at the age from 5 to 10 were waiting for help in the house of the collective farmer Braverman, who had been arrested for stealing collective farm\u2019s bread. They were lying immovable with open wounds at the initial stage of decay\u201d. There is another record describing the situation in this national district: \u201cIt\u2019s a real disaster. People are not even looking forward to any help. They are just lying in cold, unheated houses and waiting for their death.\u201d      <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       Famine was also documented in other districts, in particular, the cities with traditionally high share of Jewish population: Zhitomir, Berdichev, Korosten, Kamenets-Podolskiy, Proskurov, Odessa, etc.       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       The Jewish handicraftsmen, who served the Ukrainian villages, were in a particularly difficult position. As a rule, Jews were involved in bakery, repairing, construction, sewing and trading job. In the period of \u201cbloody thirties\u201d the Ukrainian village was dying. It was turn for the Jews families\u2019 death. As the State Archives\u2019 records of the Vinnitsa oblast state: \u201cThe tragedy touched upon the Jewish settlement: from 5 to 10 people starve in Ilyintsy, Zhornischy, Kitaigorod every day. There are 11 artels combining up to 605 families in the region. They are cut off from the district heating supplies. Up to 80 people, members of artels (tinmen, tailors and boot-makers) have swelled of hunger and 12 people died\u2026\u201d       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       Famine was ferocious in Zhitomirschina. There are some figures fixed in the records on Berdichev: \u201cStarvation touches upon workers – 208, handicraftsmen \u2013 429, disabled and pensioners – 261, unemployed \u2013 562, declassed poor people, small traders \u2013 710, others \u2013 48. The total amount is 2281 people.\u201d<\/strong>
      <\/strong>
       Desperate position incited people to any steps and trials to save their lives. In a blank despair about not getting any support from authorities, the wife of the Berdichev tannery\u2019s worker Shraber decided to write a letter to N. Krupskaya: \u201cYou will get this letter from a woman sitting and waiting for her starvation death. Oh, if only you knew what a feeling, torture and the hell it was to starve and know that nobody will come to you, except for the vile starvation death\u2026If I could get a piece of bread\u2026If I could die the soonest to get rid of these unbearable torments. I am lying withered, with face and legs edema, yellow body, and waiting for the same starvation death as my husband got. Help us! We want to leave and work. We don\u2019t want to starve and let hunger win us. Don\u2019t leave us without help\u2026\u201d (Reference to the reports collection \u201cFamine of 1932-1922, 1946-1947\u201d. Vinnitskaya oblast. Documents and materials. Compilers: F. Vinokurova, R. Podkur. Vinnitsa. 1998)<\/strong>
      <\/strong>
       Heartless silence and repressions was the answer of authorities to any attempts of doomed people to save from starvation. Any attempts to save the crop sowing or minimum living fund as well as deviation from the bread supply over-planning entailed immediate punishment. The following Jewish collective farms in the south of Ukraine, which met bread supply plans, fell under the \u201cCheka” (Extraordinary Commission) controlling methods: \u201cSots Dorf\u201d, \u201cForoys\u201d, \u201cKrasniy Bessarabets\u201d, the Jewish collective farm named after K. Libknekht, \u201cFeuer Peuer\u201d, etc.       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       The draconian measures have been applied to the collective farms heads and the Jewish collective farmers. For example, the Soviet government\u2019s decrees stressed the failure to carry out state supply plans, facts of hiding grain, the criminal negligence of the collective farm heads as well as illegal grain dissemination among the collective farmers. Hence, the following repression steps were taken: 1. All bread reserves should be used to meet the state plan. 2. The grain given to the collective farmers should be taken back in advances. 3. The collective farm should be included in the \u201cblack list\u201d for not fulfilling state tasks (should be deprived of any state support). 4. Heads of the listed above collective farms should be arrested and brought to legal liability.<\/strong>
      <\/strong>
       In the lean years the high death rate among children was high. The most typical diseases were dystrophy, severe enteric diseases, typhus. For example, there were some cases when in the town of Chudnove during the lessons Jewish pupils died because of malnutrition.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       There were plenty of similar cases. A famous Ukrainian film director, Boris Khandros, recalled his childhood: “In 1933, as many of my coevals, I suffered from hunger and, as everyone, nibbled a cattle cake, ate nettle, acacia flowers and \u201cration\u201d bread with sawdust and eventually, after famine passed away, I was almost dead of dysentery and survived by miracle.\u201d Boris Naumovich has studied the history of his town and finally written down his compatriots\u2019 painful recollection of the famine of 1932-1933. This is one of Semen Reutberg\u2019s remembrances: \u00ab\u2026They carried 10-12 dead bodies and passed by our house to lead the way to the graveyard. But it was just an insignificant part – the rest dead bodies were carried along the other way\u2026The cannibalism rumors were spread saying that children are kidnapped, killed for meat-jelly and bouillons cooking. The Iser Landau\u2019s family lived next door. His daughter Rosa studied with me and her brother was 4-5 years. Suddenly, he disappeared and panic has arisen. People said he was killed and boiled. The whole town was looking for this boy. In the evening or at night they found him. A lot of countrymen swelled and died.\u201d       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       These abovementioned extracts from the archive records and remembrances of the Holodomor tragedy witnesses is a small piece of illustration of the great disaster that Ukrainian people went through together in those years. Remembering of that tragedy\u2019s victims is our solemn duty.       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       We arranged it in Kharkiv, Ukraine to prevent political cynics from saying to Kharkiv people that \u201cit did not happen\u201d and this \u201cproblem seems alien\u201d to residents of Kharkiv region that made up a quarter of the former Soviet Ukraine\u2019s territory.       <\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

       In spring we are supposed to run an exhibition of the Soviet State Security\u2019s archive records named \u201cUnclassified memory\u201d in the Knesset of Israel, where people are ready to accept this exposition. This will be followed by a range of exhibitions in the USA, Canada, Australia, Argentina and the CIS.<\/strong>
      <\/strong>
       I am sure that we will be able to step in the future only by defending the historical truth.  <\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

(Courtesy: Achievements News – Great Britain)\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0(by\u00a0Alexander Feldman – Member of Parliament of Ukraine) In the light of the recent negotiations with the Israel Ministry of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[3],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=146"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":147,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/146\/revisions\/147"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=146"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=146"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/berdichev.org\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=146"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}