My Grandparents were Holodomor Survivors. Yes they too were traumatized for life. My Grandmother was the only survivor on her side of the familly. Her first born was a girl and the baby starved to death in her arms. She described trying to extract milk from her breasts for the baby but since she was starving there was no milk for the baby either. She went out after dark to secretly bury the baby rather than have the baby taken away on a cart with the other bodies. Still brings ters to my eyes when  think about them.

My grandmom lived though this as a kid. She remembered the horrors until her very death, this scarred her more than WW2 did.

My family lived through this. My great-grandfather worked at the local kolkhoz as a security guard, and stole a bag of flour to keep gis wife and my grandmother from starving. Being the kind soul he was, he shared some with his neighbor, who then proceeded to snitch on him to the party. He spent almost a decade in Siberia for it, and never was the same after he returned.

My grandparents lived through this, a few short years later, they were forced into Nazi work camps, fortunately they survived both and made it to America where my mother was born. Thank you for this video.

There’s a sign less than a mile from my house saying to remember the holodormor and I’ve been wondering what it meant, thank you for covering it. How very sad….

my grandma survived this as well. A part of me is glad she passed a few years ago because if she were alive today i know this war and what russian soldiers are doing would have triggered her PTSD. A lot of whats happening now happened to her and it is horrific.

Is it any wonder Ukraine never wants to be under the yoke of Russia again... even symbolically?

Never forget the new york times denied that this happened.

My grandparents somehow survived this, but they said that people were forever changed, they lost their spark and nothing ever was the same.

I've heard you talk about this a bit. I'm so glad you're deep diving into it

"This surprised the Bolshevik who thought the peasants would support them!" Mate, you overthrew landlords and aristocracy who overtaxed them, only to flip around and basically take everything they made and maybe give some of it back if you felt like it. If there's a prime loser in communist revolutions it's peasants who were hoping for more freedom and less taxes who instead fought and died only to end up with less than they started with

Thank you. My great grandmother went through this. And through WWII and Nazi work camps after that with her two little children (my grandmother was one of them). After my great grandmother passed away and we started to clean her room, we were shocked to find food hidden everywhere: grains, dried bread, flour... under her bad, in mattress, behind the sofa, among her clothes and even under the floor board. She was afraid of hunger till her last days. My grandmother went through this as well, but she was a 4 years old girl back then, she remembered the horror of wwii and nazi camps much better. She passed away 3 years ago and on February 24 the only thing I was thinking about was "Thank God my grandmother doesn't see this" and it's a terrible thought, but I can’t imagine how she would have lived through another war. And the thing is a lot of elderly people now reliving the horrors from their childhood and it breaks my heart. This and the understanding that my daughter is repeating their fate - child of war.

Please note that Holodomor happened at the same time (1931-32) in Georgia, with at least one million of victims. And then, another Holodomor, almost never talked about - but well known by the survivors and their children and grandchildren - took place from 1947 in what is today the country of Moldova!

Wow. That's some of the most sadistic sh*t I've ever heard.
History, although full of unimaginable death, suffering and dispair, SHOULD be remembered.  
Especially the really hard stuff to stomach.
This hurt my soul a bit actually.

There's a horrific similarity between what the Holodomor means to Ukraine and the Great Famine, An Gorta Mor, is to Ireland. During my time in Ukraine this year, humanitarian project, I had the honour of paying my respects at the simple memorial of Holodomor in Kyiv. Never forget...

My ex-husband's grandfather, he died in 1973 therefore this is a theory his family supports, left Russia (Ukraine) sometime prior to 1933. Ended up in Serbia, married my ex-husband's grandma, lost 3 kids to starvation and illness due to WW2 before immigrating with his 3 surviving kids (including my ex-mother in law)  in 1951.

Thank you for this Simon. This is an important piece to either reaquainte or open people's eyes to.  I had relatives  that survived the holocaust and moved to South Africa post war and they told me about fleeing Ukraine at that time when the purges started happening to Poland .  I also learnt this in school growing up in Holland but that that was 40+ odd years ago.
In  Australia and I'm sure other "new world" countries, throughout the 80 and 90s (and probably particularly still so in many places), learning history was fairly low on the scale in secondary education so unless people as adults have taken the trouble to find out or utilise  history in what they do, they unlikely would know about this.  (The net as most people know it hasn't realistically existed as an easy access public tool since 1997 thru 2005 or so depending upon where people grew up).
Thanks again for all the fine work you always do.

PS. My wife loves your "A casual criminalist" podcasts on spotify.

My mom told me stories of my great grandma spending 12 hour shifts at the docks with handful of grain in her boots so she could bring it back home to her kids to feed them. If she would’ve been caught “stealing” the grain they probably would’ve killed her. My grandma never talked about it, she would only get very nervous when I tried to throw away stale bread. Mom to this day scolds me for throwing away food. Generational trauma is no joke. Thank you very much for brining light to our painful history.

Thanks for bringing attention to important history that needs to be learned from.

I've graduated from a Russian school in Bishkek, Kyrgyzstan. I've studied Russian history for five years. They never told us anything about Holodomor at school. They never told us about any of Russian or Soviet atrocities.