This week the local Ukrainian community is holding an annual feast to commemorate the Holodomor which occurred in the Ukraine in 1932/1933. Although my own Ukrainian ancestors left Europe in the 1900s, and were therefore not affected by it, it is still worth remembering the dark times some people have lived through, in the hope that it will never be allowed to happen again.

The Holodomor was a famine in the Ukraine and Cossack territories that last through 1932 and 1933, and which killed millions of people due to starvation. Although estimates vary, it is now believed that three or four million people died of starvation, and perhaps another six million babies were not born at all or did not survive long if they were.

The Holodomor is especially noteworthy, as it was not caused by war or by natural disasters. It was caused by the Russian authorities confiscating food and supplies from the peasants, probably to quell rebellion although other scholars have argued that it was due more to economic difficulties throughout the region. Either way, it was a mass death (and some would say genocide) of the Ukrainian people.

Let us hope that such events remain only in history, and will never be repeated again.