From Edmonton to Moscow, Holodomor deniers rose to the occasion of the
Still, there are those out there today who would claim that the Holodomor was not genocide. Those folks should take the time and learn what the man who coined the term “genocide” had to say on the issue.
In his unpublished book “History of Genocide,” Rafael Lemkin (
He had no doubts that Soviet policy was directed at “the destruction of the Ukrainian nation.”
Lemkin did not limit his description of this “classic example of Soviet genocide” to the Holodomor of
“The first blow was aimed at the intelligentsia, the national brain, so as to paralyze the rest of the body… Going along with this attack on the intelligentsia was an offensive against the churches, priests and hierarchy, the ‘soul’ of Ukraine… The third prong of the Soviet plan was aimed at the farmers, the large mass of independent peasants who are the repository of the tradition, folk lore and music, the national language and literature, the national spirit, of Ukraine… The fourth step in the process consisted in the fragmentation of the Ukrainian people at once by the addition to the Ukraine of foreign peoples and by the dispersion of the Ukrainians.”
Lemkin was in a very unique position to know exactly what was happening in Ukraine. Born in what is now Belarus, the Polish-Jewish lawyer studied in Lviv. During the Holodomor, he worked as Deputy Prosecutor in the town of Berezhany in Ternopil oblast – less than one hundred kilometers away from Soviet Ukraine.
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