You're reading: Euro 2012 blog: Teams honor Holocaust, ignore Holodomor

Team after team arriving for the Euro 2012 championship is making a well-publicized point of visiting the Nazi extermination camp of Auschwitz. No teams, however, have indicated they plan to visit any memorials linked to the Holodomor – the devastating man-made famine that ended the lives of up to seven million Ukrainians in the 1930s – or even that they actually know what it is.

Hosts Poland and Ukraine have in recent weeks been criticized by foreign media as harboring a culture of vitriolic racism and anti-Semitism, sparking outrage and condemnation by many in the football community. Critics of the two countries often applauded the teams’ decision to visit the Nazi death camp of Auschwitz-Birkenau.

One of the most prominent anti-racism activist, British parliamentarian Lord George Ouseley, said he was impressed by the English teams to visit the death camp.

“I think that’s great. A lot of players will be moved by such an experience. It is always humbling for people to go through that experience of going to somewhere like Auschwitz, to understand the suffering, the incarceration and the unimaginable things that went on,” he said in an interview London’s Daily Telegraph.

Poland and Ukraine make up the biggest part of the Eastern European region described as the Bloodlands by Yale historian Tymothy Snyder for the mass murders that took place there. According to Snyder’s estimates, some 14 million non-combatants were murdered by Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union between 1932 and 1945, mostly Belarusians, Jews, Poles and Ukrainians.

But any interest in the region’s history appears to be largely limited to Auschwitz and the media attention it can generate.

Indeed, the English team came under criticism for allowing only two – later extended to three – journalists to participate in the visit. Telegraph journalist Paul Hayward wrote this suggested the most important part of the trip were the quotes that would come from English players.

“What it says is that the most important aspect of a football team visiting Auschwitz is the quotes: the reactions of the players. How completely misguided that is,” he wrote.

Meanwhile, it appears unlikely any team will visit the Holodomor memorial, which honors the victims of the man-made famine that devastated Ukraine in 1932-1933, ending the lives of somewhere from five to seven million Ukrainians, according to various estimates.

Holodomor translates as killing by hunger in Ukrainian. Intent on destroying the Ukrainian peasant class, which was opposed to the collectivization of farms, Stalin ordered grain to be seized, banned relief, and had the country methodically stripped of any comestible products as fines for not meeting grain targets.

The Holodomor has been recognized as an act of genocide by multiple countries, including Canada and the U.S. But it seems unlike to interest the foreign teams playing in Ukraine.

When contacted by Kyiv Post, spokespeople for the Dutch, German and English teams all said that the teams had no time to for any visits to local memorials, and would simply be flying in and out for the games.

“There’s no time to visit some other monument,” said a spokeswoman for the Dutch team when asked if the team would visit the Holodomor memorial in Kyiv or Kharkiv.

At present, Auschwitz has been visited by the Dutch, English, German and Italian teams, the first three of which are playing all their games in Ukraine but reside in Poland.

The visit has already been used to pontificate after a controversial training event in Krakow. During the Dutch team’s open training, a group of local Wisla Krakow held up a “F*ck Euro” banner and hurled insults at supporters from their rival Cracovia team. Several Dutch players claimed they heard monkey noises from one end of the crowd.

"It is a real disgrace, especially after getting back from Auschwitz, that you are confronted with this, said Mark van Bommel, the team’s captain. "We will take it up with UEFA and if it happens at a match we will talk to the referee and ask him to take us off the field."

Initially denying any racist implications, UEFA spokespeople later said that isolated chanting had occurred. This version of events was challenged by local reports. These claim that Wisla fans were protesting against the use of their stadium for training purposes given that Krakow, one of Poland’s leading soccer cities, was denied the right to host any events..

For many Poles, like myself, it is always somewhat of a disappointment to see foreigners limit their cultural experience to visiting death camps – the legacy of an invading power – while many of the unique, beautiful vestiges of local history are sidelined or ignored. There are 14 UNESCO World Heritage Sites in Poland, yet it is the one linked to genocide that tourists focus on, returning home with sombre associations of a country that has done much to move beyond its cruel past.

But that is still better than the situation of Ukraine. A never-ending source of sensationalist stories, the country is frequently stereotyped and patronized, but in all other matters it is mostly ignored.

Kyiv Post staff writer Jakub Parusinski can be reached at [email protected]