Politicians, civic leaders and historians from Germany, Poland and Ukraine have urged Germany's education ministry to make the Holodomor part of the history curriculum so that the wider public would be aware of these events. [Holodomor was a man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine which lasted from 1932 to 1933 and claimed the lives of millions of Ukrainians – ed.]

Source: a letter, signed by about 20 public personalities, as reported by European Pravda

Details: The appeal was sent to Federal Education Minister Karin Prien on the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holodomor. Signatories include Leipzig Mayor Burkhard Jung, former European Parliament MP Gisela Kallenbach, prominent East German dissident Wolf Biermann and Ukrainian writer and civic activist Oksana Zabuzhko. The authors are inviting others who share their arguments to add their signatures to the appeal.

Quote: "In 2022, the Bundestag [German parliament] classified the Holodomor as genocide and urged the federal government to raise awareness in Germany and Europe through educational programmes. However, almost nothing has happened since then, and only one federal land (state) has included the Holodomor in its curriculum and only as an optional topic."

More details: The letter draws attention to the fact that many children from Ukraine are now studying in German schools after fleeing the war and that some are almost certainly descendants of people who lost relatives during the Holodomor.

Quote: "German teenagers learn about this dark past of their classmates' ancestors only if they happen to have a teacher who feels a duty to raise the issue."

More details: The authors also highlight parallels between the Nazi regime's crimes against the Jewish people and Stalin's crimes against Ukrainians.

Quote: "Holocaust and Holodomor are linked not just by the first syllables of their names, which have different meanings, but above all by the scale of the crime. In both cases, millions of people were killed. We sometimes hear that the Shoah [the Holocaust in Hebrew] was unique. There are reasons for that, of course, but it does not mean that a mass crime that happened decades earlier and was at the time the largest crime against European people should simply be ignored.

How can young people understand the scale of Ukrainians' determination to resist without this historical knowledge? With it, they are more likely to agree that Europeans must not abandon this nation again and that support for a country under attack cannot be reduced."

More details: On the Day of Remembrance for the victims of the Holodomor, marked on the third Saturday of November, a number of countries issued statements recalling Stalin-era crimes and drawing parallels with current events.

Background:

• In 2024, the Swiss Parliament recognised the Holodomor of 1932-1933 as an act of genocide.
• The Holodomor has been recognised as a genocide of the Ukrainian people by the parliaments of about 30 countries, as well as the European Parliament and the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

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