The exhibition "Holodomor: Genocide by Famine," about the horrific event known in Ukrainian as the Holodomor (literally, murder by starvation), is now availble in the Richard Schimmelpfeng Gallery in the Dodd Center for Human Rights.
The Holodomor took place in 1932-1933, less than twenty years after Ukraine was forcibly incorporated into the Soviet Union.
Determined to force all Ukrainian farmers onto collective farms, to crush the burgeoning national revival, and to forestall any calls for Ukraine's independence, the brutal Communist regime of Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin embarked on a campaign to starve the Ukrainian people into submission.
The Soviet government confiscated all the grain produced by Ukrainian farmers, withheld other foodstuffs, executed anyone trying to obtain food, and punished those who attempted to flee. As a result, in the land called the Breadbasket of Europe, millions of men, women, and children were starved to death.
Despite the magnitude of the atrocity, the Soviet regime, behind its Iron Curtain, denied the existence of the Holodomor for decades, denouncing any reports as "anti-Soviet propaganda." It was not until the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991 and the subsequent establishment of an independent Ukraine that the contents of many sealed government archives were uncovered, exposing a wealth of gruesome information.
The exhibition is available Monday through Friday, 9:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m. and will remain up through the end of Spring semester.
For more information, contact: Laura Smith at laura.smith@uconn.edu