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Documentaries: Holodomor Remembrance Day
The Holodomor, the Ukrainian famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s, was not widely known or acknowledged until the fall of the Soviet Union in the 1990s. Established in 1998, Holodomor Remembrance Day is observed on the fourth Saturday of November to remember the one-quarter of Ukraine’s population who died during the Holodomor.
Join us for Palo Alto City Library’s inaugural program commemorating this event and its lasting effects for some in our community today. Three short documentaries will give us the historical background that reverberates in current events. Descriptions of the documentaries below were written by their creators.
Holodomor: How Millions of Ukrainians Died of Starvation During Stalin-Era Mass Famine (Radio Free Europe, 2019, two minutes). Each year, on the fourth Saturday of November, Ukraine remembers the millions who died during the Holodomor, the Stalin-era famine that devastated the population in 1932-1933. Many countries consider it to have been genocide.
Minnesota Memories of the Holodomor (PBS, 2025, 26 minutes). In an extraordinary exploration of the transmission of traumatic memory within families, communities and across generations, Ukrainians in Minneapolis-St. Paul share their family stories about the Holodomor artificial famine of 1932-33 and the local community’s efforts to come to terms with genocide, even as war once again threatens the existence of Ukrainians as a people.
Holodomor: Voices of Survivors (2015, 30 minutes). Twenty-five Ukrainian Canadians tell their stories of survival during the Holodomor–death inflicted by starvation–a genocide of Ukrainian people engineered by Joseph Stalin during 1932 and 1933. Through compelling eyewitness accounts, the film brings into focus a pivotal and little-known period in history, the consequences of which continues to reverberate today.
Books on this reading list will be on display and available.
Registration is not necessary, but registering means you will receive a reminder email the day before.