Every year, on the fourth Saturday of November, Ukraine commemorates millions of victims of Holodomor — the tragic events of 1921–1923, 1932–1933 and 1946–1947 years, which imprinted in minds of the Ukrainian people as the worst pages of the historical past.

The representatives of Karazin University community joined in the memorial events: the University History Museum hosted a requiem meeting with the participation of University President, Vil Bakirov, Vice-Presidents, deans, faculty members and students.

At the beginning of the event, the Director of the University History Museum, Viktoriia Ivashchenko said that for a long time it was not allowed to discuss these tragic events publicly. For the first time, a research on the Holodomor was initiated by American scientists. In particular, James Mace collected the first 200 hours of interviews with those who survived these events. He wrote a series of books and it was he who in 2003 proposed to celebrate this day, lighting up a candle. The University joined this action in 2008.

“Thank you very much to all of you for coming once again on this mournful day to pay tribute to the tens of millions of people (children, women, men, elderly people) who died. This is a terrible tragedy, which was hushed up for a long time. But now we recall it and remember, we try to ensure that such tragedies do not happen again. But I think that there is still a lot to be done for this,” said Vil Bakirov.

The Associate Professor of the School of History Department of History of Ukraine Denys Zhuravlov told those present that in this tragedy, it is not death itself that is terrible, as we are all mortal, but millions of unfulfilled opportunities, hopes, dreams, and plans. Perhaps among those who were not born, who died, could be the Nobel Prize winner or the one who would fly into space, invent a cancer vaccine, or would simply live a peaceful life and cultivate bread. But this was not destined to be realized.

At the end, those present joined in the All-Ukrainian "Light Up a Candle" Action commemorating Holodomor victims with a minute’s silence and lighting up memory candles in the University's windows.

Translation by Veronika Vetukhova