Official registration data in the demographic studies of Holodomor losses are relative indicators

Museum staff of Holodomor Victims Memorial invited candidate of medical sciences, expert of the high qualification class, doctor of the highest category, criminalist and forensic expert Andriy Kis to speak about the results of the forensic examination, which was conducted during the criminal case on the fact of committing the crime of genocide in Ukraine in 1932 -1933.

On September 14, 2018, Andriy Kis, in the Hall of Memory of the National Museum “Holodomor Victims Memorial”, delivered a lecture “Forensic and Medical Aspects of Holodomor Studies”.

The first part of the lecture was devoted to the question of the authenticity of Soviet official statistics. Thus, according to the results of the analysis of registration books and death certificates stored in the registry offices, the total number of deaths in the Kharkiv region was 22 thousand people in 1933. However, in 1934 the authorities excluded the registration books for 1932-1933 years. Therefore, a group of experts began to study other documents. The lecturer emphasized the importance of forensic examination, which should be based not on fake documents, but on primary data from mortuaries. Back in 2001, Andriy Kis discovered 8 books for deaths registration of the Kharkiv Medical Mortuary in 1932-1933. This made it possible to dynamically compare the data from the mortuary and from the registry offices.