The daughter of Holodomor witness Serhii Plachynda handed over her father’s belongings to the Museum

Halyna Plachynda, the daughter of the Ukrainian writer, publicist and public figure Serhiy Plachynda (1928–2013), visited the Holodomor Museum. She gave her father’s, a Holodomor witness, personal belongings to the funds of our institution. This is an embroidered shirt that belonged to Serhii Petrovych and a family photo from 1930, of two-year-old Serhiiko Plachynda with his parents. This is the only photo of that period that has survived in the family.

We also recorded an interview with Ms Halyna, in which she told about her father’s experiences during the Holodomor, about the story he wrote at a young age with memories of dekulakization and hunger, which the district newspaper advised him to “quietly take out and throw away in the closet , so that not a trace remains”, about a trip back in Soviet times to Moscow, to Gorbachev, with a demand to remove the taboo on the topic of the Holodomor, about persecution by punitive authorities and a mysterious explosion in the country, in which Serhii Plachynda miraculously survived. The interview will be soon on our website.

We express our sincere gratitude to Ms Halyna for the donated family heirlooms and the preservation of her family’s story.