Editor’s Note: The following is an English-language translation of remarks made on Nov. 23 in the Verkhovna Rada, Ukraine’s parliament, by Volodymyr Viatrovych, the head of the Ukrainian Institute of National Remembrance.
To destroy Ukrainians as a nation is the goal of the organizers of the Holodomor. Ultimately eliminate language, culture, history, all that made us unique in this world. Therefore, the scale of the crime is so great, so many millions of people are killed.
His victims were those who survived in 1932-1933. For they had to forget who they were, who their ancestors were, who should preserve their descendants for the world. We had to forget who and for what they were killed.
Death and oblivion are the purpose of Stalin and his cousins towards Ukrainians.
It has not been achieved.
Ukrainians have survived and have not forgotten. We exist and remember. We exist because we remember.
Remember Holodomor.
We remember how internal controversy helped an outside enemy.
We remember what happens to those who lack the ability to defend freedom. Who changes her to bread. As a consequence of freedom, he will lose.
We remember how valuable it is to believe in attractive slogans. As “land to the peasants” turned into “the land of the peasants”.
But we also remember the Ukrainians who rose to fight against the communist regime. Through their uprisings, they inflicted sensational blows on them, made them weaker, unable to repeat the Holodomor scale, somewhere else, in the enslaved part of Europe.
We remember those Ukrainians who shared the last piece of bread, as the weakened by starvation showed the world the power of humanity.
We remember the revenge of a young Ukrainian in Lviv for the murder of millions of his brothers and sisters, which was a manifestation of national dignity.
We remember those Ukrainians who took the memory of experience, although they paid for it by will or even life.
We remember those non-Ukrainians who had the power to tell the truth to the world, even when nobody wanted to hear it.
This memory is our revenge for millions of dead. It makes us stronger because they come to life in memory and become close to us in the current struggle.
Therefore, the heirs of the then-murderers still seek to erase it. They tried to rewrite history textbooks in Ukraine, to close archives here, and spread a lie about the Holodomor in the world.
But the truth was stronger, memory – insurmountable. And the enemy did the same to us again.
The hands of the child, who twenty years ago first lit a candle of memory, became the hands of a soldier who holds a machine gun, protecting parents.
The eyes that were then washed away by tears from the story of the grandmother about experiencing in 1932-1933, are now confidently looking at the enemy through the sight.
The nation, united in the minutes of commemoration of those who died of starvation in the past, united to protect its future, and created a powerful army.
Sorrow for the dead ancestors gives the power to protect themselves and the descendants.
We remember! We are strong!
