Of memory and truth

Our editors recently learned about the reaction of Ukraine’s foreign ministry to a letter from The Day’s editor-in-chief Larysa Ivshyna. Our newspaper proposed that the 1932-1933 Holodomor be placed on the list of the world’s greatest disasters maintained by the Geneva-based Red Cross and Red Crescent Museum. This action would be quite appropriate because in 2007 Ukraine will again raise the question of international recognition of the Holodomor as an act of genocide. The Day requested the foreign ministry to help implement this idea. In his reply, Minister of Foreign Affairs Borys Tarasiuk noted: “The permanent mission of Ukraine to the UN Office and other international organizations in Geneva has been instructed to establish contacts with the Geneva- based Museum of the Red Cross and Red Crescent in order to study this matter thoroughly.” The foreign minister thanked the newspaper for “the desire to join the efforts aimed at the international recognition of the 1932-1933 Holodomor as an act of genocide against the Ukrainian people.” “It has been irrefutably proven that it was a pre- planned act of terror aimed at exterminating the Ukrainian people,” the minister’s letter says. He then quotes a Time journalist’s comment about the victims of the Holodomor: “Their extermination was a matter of state policy just like the Dachau ovens were a matter of Hitler’s policies.” “It is from this angle that the truth about the Holodomor should be spread,” the letter says. The diplomat’s letter also points out that “the world should clearly understand that it was not a natural calamity but a well-organized crime that has all the hallmarks of genocide.”