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The Tribunal for Putin (T4P) global initiative was set up in response to the all-out war launched by Russia against Ukraine in February 2022.

Speech given by Moisei Fishbein at the Requiem Evening ““My People live!” on 25 November

13.12.2006   
Eternal Memory to the Murdered Victims of Holdomor 1932-1933

Mr President, Ladies and Gentlemen,

Friends,

The Ukrainian nation was killed, yet not to the last, devastated, yet not totally crushed. They took away Ukrainians’ land, their language, history, freedom, life itself. They rooted out the Ukrainian intelligentsia, the Ukrainian elite, imprisoning and executing them.  They destroyed the flower of the Ukrainian nation, the Ukrainian grain farmers. They were exiled to Siberia, starved to death. It was an act of genocide. Those who today dare to deny that Holodomor 1932-1933 was an act of genocide against the Ukrainian nation neither fear God, nor know Him. They know and fear only thugs and killers. . They’re lackeys.  “Slaves, sycophants, Moscow’s dirt”. They’re not Ukrainians, but Ukrainian devilish parodies.  Progeny of people killers. With those who deny that Holodomor was genocide, it is not publicists who should speak, not political scientists or politicians, but Ukrainian investigators (I stress, Ukrainian investigators). 

The Ukrainian President of Ukraine (I repeat the Ukrainian President of Ukraine) has taken a step not towards abstract people, but towards the Ukrainian nation. He has just in full voice named Holodomor genocide and the Ukrainian devilish parodies went crazy. “No need to use the word “genocide”, call it something else!”,. some said, while others: “He’s creating a rift between Slavs!”  That rift was created in 1933.  A massive rift.  A massive pit, a huge Ukrainian grave. In that grave lay not tens, not hundreds, not thousands, not tens of thousands, but millions of Ukrainian peasants: children, men and women. And there was nobody to help them.  The Righteous of the Nations of the World were not there beside them.

Do you know how the Ukrainian villages in the centre of Europe perished and starved to death?  First they ate the last potato peelings, then acorns and buds, then roots and leaves. They ate dogs, cats, sparrows, worms, leather. Then the village turned into a desert. Children screamed in the night, begging their mothers to give them a piece of bread. Their mothers had no bread. Then the children’s voices could no longer be held. Then the village began to wail in lament, and later in quiet moaning. Then it fell silent and became a graveyard. And the state had bread. This was the killing of a people. It was genocide. I know of Holodomor not from historians, nor from publicists, nor from writers. I know of Holodomor from my mother. My mother, Sarah Aronivna Matusovska in 1932 – 1933 was a teacher of Ukrainian language and literature in the village of Horozheno in the Mykolaiv region. She also gave singing lesions. The children were bloated from starvation. They fell asleep during lessons. And sometimes they did not wake up. And according to the school curriculum there was supposed to be singing. Singing! In spring they began to eat grass. They went to the cemetery – at the cemetery there was always abundant greenery. The neighbours’ lad went out of his home. He could scarcely make it to the cemetery. Exhausted, he fell on the grass. His mother was waiting, and he didn’t come. She began searching for him. She found him. Then suddenly she saw that they were burying somebody. She took the boy by the hand:

- Son, they’re burying somebody. See, the grave is ready. Let’s go, I’ll put you in there.  You can’t survive anyway, and I will die soon, and who then will bury you?

People managed to pull the child away. A few days later both mother and son died. People buried them.

How many are there, tragic mounds in Ukraine? Forgotten. Not forgotten. When will they try the murderers? When? I am waiting.

ETERNAL MEMORY TO THE MURDERED VICTIMS

25 November 2006

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