В соборі Святого Патрика в Нью-Йорку відбувся молебень за жертвами Голодомору

The reverend clergy,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Dear guests and friends,

Дорога українсько громадо,

This month Ukraine and Ukrainians of the whole world commemorate the 83-d anniversary of a most terrible catastrophe, the artificial famine known as Holodomor of 1932–1933.

Holodomor is much more than our pain and wound. It is a black hole in our history.

It was a well-planned attempt to subjugate our nation.

It was the totalitarian communist regime that organized and carried out this plan.

The former Secretary General of the United Nations, Kofi Annan once said «A genocide begins with the killing of one man — not for what he has done, but because of who he is.»

Stalin, following a paranoic plan, chose the Ukrainian peasantry who were the core, the foundation, and the pillar of our nation, to be the victims.

His henchmen spared no effort to carry it out. At the Holodomor’s worst period of time 25 thousand people died every day.

First — the food was confiscated. Then the territories of Ukraine and Kuban were cordoned off by the military. A third of all Ukrainian villages were put on the «black lists»— and eventually turned into ghettos of famine, long before Hitler set up his own ghettos.

The harvested grain which remained available in huge quantities was instead exported abroad. The grain that could have saved millions of lives, was processed into vodka.

There was no chance to survive. People started to eat corpses.

Even now we don’t know the full scale of this tragedy, which took the lives of millions.

Today we traditionally light candles in memory of the Holodomor victims.

Today we honor every soul, every victim, and every martyr.

We pray for pure souls of innocent Ukrainian victims who are invisibly here among us.

History knows no «ifs», but it is my strong belief that the Holodomor would not have happened if we had not lost our statehood in the early 1920s. The Moscow Bolsheviks would not have gained victory in Ukraine if independence supporters united their forces rather than killed each other to the pleasure of Moscow.

Standing here today, I remember how deeply honored I was, speaking at similar event at St. Patrick’s Cathedral 19 years ago — in November 1997 — for the first time ever for Ukraine’s Ambassador to the United Nations.

I am saying this to you simply because we must remember our past and draw conclusions from it. The Ukrainian nation has survived a series of massive tragedies, and today unfortunately, our big trouble once again comes from the East.

As a great thinker Ortega y Gasset put it, nations are born and live until they have a program for tomorrow. That is why we should fiercely defend our place on the map of Europe and the world. We should develop more strength. Through resisting, we should reinforce our identity and consolidate our unity across the world.

The key to our victory can be only unshakable unity of the Ukrainian people. This is the imperative without which we cannot survive.