Jen Skerritt
Winnipeg Free Press, April 20, 2008
Eighty-two-year-old Kanchir Eugenia’s voice quivers when she thinks about the hard times when she and her siblings had to scrounge the streets for a morsel of anything to eat. “There wasn’t enough food to eat,” Eugenia said, noting she cooked cats, dogs, and even eggs in a birds’ nest as a young girl in Ukraine. “We’d look through the streets and eat what we find.”
Eugenia was one of several survivors of the Holodomor who took part in Keep the Flame Alive, a special ceremony to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the Ukraine famine genocide at city hall Sunday afternoon (April 19). About 200 people gathered at the event, organized by the Ukrainian Canadian Congress, to remember the 10 million people who died during the famine between 1932 and 1933.
The famine was deliberately perpetrated by Josef Stalin’s communists to quash Ukraine’s aspiration for independence.
Stefan Horlatsch, an 87-year-old Holodomor survivor from Toronto, brought the International Holodomor Remembrance Flame to Winnipeg, and youth participants carried the torch during a march from the legislative building to city hall.
The Flame is slated to travel across Canada and the U.S. along with 32 other countries.
“This should never be forgotten,” Coun. Harry Lazarenko said. “When I went to school I never heard (of) such a thing.” Lazarenko said it’s important for today’s Ukrainian youth to honour the event to keep famine victim’s memory alive. He said many schools never taught children about the historical event since it was considered taboo.
The Ukrainian Canadian Congress is also circulating a petition to recognize the fourth Saturday in November as a remembrance day for victims of the Holodomor.
Eugenia said it’s still difficult to look back at the event that killed her father and grandfather and begins to tear up at the emotional memory. “Lots of people died,” she said.