Recognizing the Annual Commemoration of Holodomor

Floor Speech

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Mr. LEVIN of Michigan. Madam Speaker, I rise today to recognize the annual commemoration of Holodomor, the Genocidal Famine inflicted upon the people of Ukraine by the Soviet Union in 1932 and 1933.

In the early 1930s, the Soviet Union engineered a famine to ensure the Ukrainian people could not resist Joseph Stalin's totalitarian policies. This famine, known and remembered as Holodomor, led to the deaths of at least 3.9 million people, or 13 percent of the population of Ukraine at the time. Some estimates of the number of those who died are much higher. ``Holodomor'' is a combination of the Ukrainian words ``hunger'' and ``to inflict death'', a fitting name for the tragedy that occurred.

While Soviet bureaucrats suppressed the facts of Holodomor at the time, including instructing Western journalists not to write about it, it is widely acknowledged as a genocide today. In fact, in 2018, the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Senate each unanimously passed resolutions citing previous declarations of Holodomor as a genocide committed by Joseph Stalin and those around him. The vibrant Ukrainian- American community in Michigan's Ninth District comes together each year in solemn commemoration of the millions of innocent lives taken and to ensure that this horrific event is never forgotten.

As a member of the Ukrainian Caucus, I am honored to stand with Ukrainian-Americans in my district and throughout our country in witness of Holodomor. I encourage my colleagues to join me in reflection and remembrance and recommit ourselves to preventing genocide anywhere on Earth in the future.

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