Chicago Metropolitan Community to Honor the Memory of the Victims of the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine!

UKRAINIAN ORTHODOX CHURCH OF THE USA
OFFICE OF PUBLIC RELATIONS
PRESS RELEASE

Chicago Metropolitan Community to Honor the Memory of the Victims of the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine!

His Grace Bishop Daniel has issued a letter urging the clergy and the faithful of the Chicago Metropolitan area to participate in an Ecumenical service honoring the memory of the victims of the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine. The bishop wrote in his letter: "This year marks the 75th anniversary of the Ukrainian famine. During the winter of 1932-33, some ten million Ukrainians living in the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) died of forced starvation. They perished during a Genocide Famine engineered by the Soviet government.

Although the Genocide Famine in Ukraine is one of the most horrific examples of man’s inhumanity to man ever perpetrated in history, Western society is barely aware of it!

Throughout the history of our Holy Ukrainian Orthodox Church here in the United Sates of America we have always remembered the victims of this horrific crime against humanity in general and Ukrainians in particular.  The very first monument to the victims of the Famine was dedicated at our Church’s spiritual Center in South Bound Brook, NJ – St. Andrew Memorial church. This year, wherever Ukrainians are in the world, our communities mark the 75th anniversary of this tragedy. From Washington, DC to San Francisco, CA – the eternal flame of the Famine has traveled throughout our country, including to South Bound Brook and Chicago, witnessing to people of all ethnic backgrounds and races about the crime against Ukrainian people.

On November 15th of this year, the Chicago Metropolitan community will once again honor the memory of the victims of the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine.  We will gather this year at Holy Name Roman-Catholic Cathedral in Chicago (735 N. State Street) for an Ecumenical Memorial service, honoring the lost lives of millions of Ukrainians. The site has been selected in order to increase awareness in the greater Chicago community, and the world, about the tragedy of Ukrainian people and our history. I am directing you to join me at this ecumenical memorial Panakhyda, which begins at 11:00 a.m.  Please arrive no later than 10:30 a.m. so that we can properly prepare for the service.

On this day we will honor the memory of our deceased brothers and sisters, who perished only because they were willing to stand up for their rights to own their own small part of God’s green Earth, rather than to submit to the collective farm policy of Josef Stalin.  We all know how important the land is to every Ukrainian for sustenance of life.  Their brothers and sisters – Ukrainians throughout Ukraine and the world commemorate them and express their gratitude to them for the sacrifice they made. Demographers estimate that had these ten million people not perished – without reason – the population of Ukraine today would be somewhere between 80 and 100 million!

Although stifled, the memory of those victims and the memory of the famine festered beneath the surface consciousness of the people of Ukraine and maintained, I believe, regardless of all efforts of the communist regime, maintained a subconscious self-identity, which led to the independence of our nation – an independence achieved without the shedding of blood.  The endurance of the horror of the famine – and other almost incredible conditions of life through most of the 20th century – preserved within the conscience and social fabric of the nation – that self-identity which serves as the foundation for building Ukraine today and tomorrow into one of the most important productive and freedom loving nations of the world.

So, let us come together in humility on November 15, 2008 to share in prayer and beseech our Lord’s eternal blessings upon us as we commemorate our brothers and sisters, praying that He will grant them eternal rest in a place where there is no more suffering, no more sorrow, no more sickness, but only life eternal for those who perished without reason.  We pray that their memory will be eternal."

Click here for the poster.