Ukrainian Congress Committee of America Marks Genocide Awareness Month
The following was submitted by the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA).
In the United States and around the world, the month of April is recognized as Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month. Dr. Raphael Lemkin, the “father of the UN Genocide Convention,” defined genocide as follows:
“Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings of all members of a nation. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aiming at the destruction of essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be the disintegration of the political and social institutions, of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of the personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups.”
This year, the start of Genocide Awareness and Prevention Month coincided with the Days of Remembrance in the United States. Designated by Congress in 1978, this annual eight-day period begins on the Sunday before the Israeli observance of the 27th day of Nisan in the Hebrew calendar, and continues through the following Sunday. In Israel, and many other countries, the 27th day of Nisan is set aside as Yom HaShoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, marking the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
As we close this week of retrospection, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America (UCCA), the representative organization of nearly 2 million Americans of Ukrainian descent, solemnly remembers and honors the memory of the millions of innocent lives persecuted and murdered by Nazi Germany during the Shoah. May their memory be eternal.
Despite the existence of the United Nations Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide, the crime of genocide continues to be perpetrated to this day. Only by educating ourselves about the horrors of the past, including revisiting documentaries and video testimonies of survivors of genocide, can we help today’s students learn about genocide and what can be done to stop it from happening again.
When Dr. Lemkin was a university student, he was horrified to discover that no international laws existed to prosecute systematic, state-sponsored persecution and murder. “Why was killing a million people a less serious crime than killing a single individual?,” he remarked at the time. After forty-nine members of Lemkin’s own family were murdered in the Holocaust, Lemkin worked tirelessly to “strike at our consciousness” and bring to global awareness the horrors of genocide.
To this end, UCCA has advocated throughout its existence for greater awareness and recognition of the Holodomor, Stalin’s Famine Genocide of 7-10 million Ukrainians in 1932-1933. From successfully advocating towards Congressional funding to concretely study the matter, to proudly initiating both the U.S. Holodomor Memorial Project as well as the U.S Committee for Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness, UCCA remains a staunch promoter for the dissemination of truth about one of the worst cases of man’s inhumanity towards man.
In advance of the 70th solemn commemoration of the Holodomor, UCCA coordinated a wide-ranging effort to counter “Holodomor deniers,” and demanded that The New York Times strip its former Moscow correspondent, Walter Duranty, of his Pulitzer Prize for his reporting from the USSR. In response to this advocacy, the New York Times acknowledged in 2003 that Mr. Duranty’s work was “slovenly,” and Dr. Mark von Hagen, a Columbia University history professor hired by The New York Times, characterized Mr. Duranty’s Pulitzer Prize-winning articles as “apologist in purpose and effect in terms of justifying what the Stalinist regime was up to.” The Pulitzer Prize Board, however, steadfastly refused to posthumously revoke Duranty’s name from its list of awardees at the time.
The U.S. Committee on Ukrainian Holodomor-Genocide Awareness has recently begun a national campaign to ask the Pulitzer Prize Board to reconsider their 2003 statement and finally admit that they made a mistake. Duranty was the New York Times’ Moscow correspondent during Joseph Stalin’s murderous reign over the Soviet Union who lied about the circumstances of Stalin’s genocidal policies, included the Holodomor Genocide against Ukrainians.
The mission of the revamped Duranty revocation campaign is to recruit allies and coordinate efforts to convince the Pulitzer Prize Board to reverse its defense of the 1932 Pulitzer Prize to propagandist Walter Duranty. “For more than 20 years, the Pulitzer Prize Board and The New York Times have fallen silent to the pleas of Ukrainians to correct an unconscionable wrong – awarding the prestigious prize for journalism to a man who knowingly contributed to the starvation of millions of Ukrainians,” said Oksana Piaseckyj, chair of the Duranty Revocation Subcommittee.
For more information about the campaign, please contact the subcommittee chair at Holodomor.DurantyRevoke@gmail.com, or visit the US Committee’s site.
The U.S. Holodomor Committee announced the formation of the Holodomor Descendants’ Network (HDN) in November 2020. The Network brings together the descendants of the Soviet imposed famine – genocide against the Ukrainian nation in 1932-33 to remember and share the personal family stories of this horror during which 10 million people, including children, died from starvation in the “Breadbasket” of Europe.
For more information and how to register, please contact the Chairperson of the HDN at Descendants.Holodomor@gmail.com, or visit the US Committee’s site here.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC) calls on all descendants of Victims and Survivors of the Holodomor-Genocide of 1932-33 in Ukraine to join the Global Holodomor Descendants’ Network.
On April 21 at 8 PM EDT, the Network in Canada will be officially launched in an online event. During the event, information on how descendants can join the Network will be provided.
Registration for the event is open to the public and is available here.
Throughout the rest of 2021, please keep in mind the following recognitions of genocide and national tragedies:
May 18 – the 77th commemoration of the Sürgün, Stalin’s genocidal mass deportation of the Crimean Tatars from their indigenous homeland;
June 24-28 – the 80th commemoration of Soviet executions of Ukrainian prisoners in Western Ukraine;
August 23 – Black Ribbon Day, a Day of Remembrance for Victims of Stalinism and Nazism;
September 11 – the 20th National Day of Prayer and Remembrance for the Victims of the Terrorist Attacks on 9/11
September 12 – Ukraine’s Day of Remembrance of the forced resettlement of Ukrainians from their ancestral lands in Zakerzonnia
September 29-30 – the 80th commemoration of the “Holocaust by Bullets” at the Babyn Yar ravine on the outskirts of Kyiv;
November 20 – US Commemoration of the Holodomor Genocide
December 7 – the 80th National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day
December 9 – International Day of Commemoration and Dignity of the Victims of the Crime of Genocide and of the Prevention of this Crime (United Nations)
Source: UCCA