The “Greens” of Germany are ready to recognize the Holodomor as genocide

First published on golos.com.ua (Voice of Ukraine newspaper).

Manipulation of public ideas about the historical past, which became possible in the Soviet Union and the current Russian Federation thanks to the total limitation of information, especially affected the topic of the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

Moscow tries to present the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as a “common tragedy of the peoples of the USSR” and not as purposeful destruction of the Ukrainian nation. However, thanks to the efforts of Ukrainian sciholars in recent decades, the misanthropic, Ukrainophobic essence of the Soviet empire has been proven.

The publicized terrible statistics of the loss of the Ukrainian population as a result of the Russian communist rule and the disclosure of the mechanism of preparation and implementation of the Holodomor of 1932-1933 irrefutably proved the genocidal nature of this crime. The publication of its consequences received a legal assessment not just in Ukraine but in many countries in the world, which recognized this Holodomor as genocide against the Ukrainian nation.

Preparations were also made for such an event in Germany, where before bringing this issue to the consideration of the Bundestag, a special Ukrainian-German commission of historians headed by Yaroslav Hrytsak, Lviv professor, was created. Unfortunately, it did not fulfil the mission assigned to it, because of which it received a harsh assessment of its activities from the ambassador of Ukraine to Germany, Andrii Melnyk.

Under such circumstances, Ukrainians there, together with the Ukrainian Holodomor Famine Foundation (Chicago, USA), the International Association of Holodomor Genocide Researchers, and the Association of Holodomor Researchers in Ukraine, organized the International Scientific and Practical Conference “The Genocide of Ukrainians: From the Past to the Present” in the large industrial centre of Germany, Essen.” The mayor of Essen, Rolf Fliess, who represents the Green Party of Germany, was personally involved in this event, welcoming scholars from different countries.

And the researchers, both directly and online, told those present and the whole world about this large-scale tragedy of our nation with convincing arguments. At the same time, German diplomats of the 1930s, were also mentioned, who were the first to name the numbers of losses during the Holodomor: from 7 to 10 million. By the way, the upper limit of which has already been confirmed today thanks to a thorough study of the primary documents of the Ukrainian archives.

Along with this, the conference discussed in detail the issues of other Holodomors and mass terror of the 20th century — the main means of enslaving Ukraine by the Russian communist regime and destroying the national identity of Ukrainians. In the end, the Holodomor turned out to be a tool for implementing the misanthropic ideology of the totalitarian regimes of the USSR and modern Russia.

The spread of this information among the citizens of independent Ukraine, has already become a kind of vaccination against the ideology of the “russian peace,” confirmed by the first weeks of Ukrainian resistance to the large-scale Russian invasion. Its organizers, and performers must be brought to justice. That is why it emphasized the importance of forensic knowledge in the investigation of the facts of genocide in the conditions of the current military aggression and its features, which must be understood in accordance with the relevant UN Convention of 1948.

The fate of Ukraine and the peoples of the whole world, the address to the Bundestag and the government of the Federal Republic of Germany emphasizes, today depends on whether the Kremlin succeeds in conquering Ukraine. Because just by enslaving Ukrainians, Russia will be able to restore its status as an imperial superpower and thus threaten the entire world. In order to stop the newest aggressor, it is necessary to expose its crimes, including such a terrible one as the Holodomor of 1932-1933.

That is why the participants of the International scientific and practical conference “Genocide of Ukrainians: from the past to the present,” which took place on June 10, 2022, condemning the war crimes and the crime of genocide committed today in Ukraine by the occupying forces of the Russian Federation, appealed to the parliamentarians and the government of Germany with the following requests:

1. To recognize the Holodomor of 1932-1933, committed by the communist totalitarian regime of the USSR, as the genocide of the Ukrainian nation.
2. To promote joint Ukrainian-German scientific, cultural and artistic projects that will present the international community with reliable information and a cultural understanding of the genocidal and totalitarian practices of the communist regime and its successor — modern Russia.
3. To promote the spread of information about the Holodomor-genocide of 1932-1933 by publishing scientific works on this topic in German.
4. To recommend that educational institutions of the Federal Republic of Germany include information about the Holodomor crime of 1932-1933 in their curricula.
5. To activate the diplomatic mission of the Federal Republic of Germany in Ukraine to honor the memory of the victims of the Holodomor of 1932-1933, which takes place yearly on the fourth Saturday of November, and to ensure access to Ukrainian historians to work in German archives.

It is worth saying that the Green Party of Germany, represented in the Bundestag, promptly responded to this appeal. It called on the parliamentarians of the country to recognize the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as a genocide of the Ukrainian nation.

Volodymyr SERHIYCHUK, Head of the Department of History of World Ukrainians at Taras Shevchenko Kyiv National University, Chairman of the International Association of Holodomor-Genocide Researchers of 1932-1933.