Victor Yushchenko and his family have attended a ceremony to lay the cornerstone for a Holodomor Memorial in Kyiv’s Sichnevogo Povstannya (January Uprising) Street. It will consist of black plates with the names of villages and regions of Ukraine affected by the Holodomor (Such plates were used in 1932 to register villages that could not receive food and were thereby doomed), according to the President`s press-office.
“Today we are honoring ten million innocent victims killed in 1932-33,” he said in a speech.
The President said researchers in Ukraine were now studying those events to discover the truth about our history.
“In this truth, we want to honor those who perished. Their tormentors will face God and His judgment.”
The President urged Ukrainian politicians to unite and “not to disgrace” themselves when arguing if it was necessary to recognize the Holodomor as genocide. He expressed hopes the issue would unite the nation in a couple of years.
Verkhovna Rada Speaker Oleksandr Moroz, Kyiv Mayor Leonid Chernovetsky, Secretariat Chief of Staff Viktor Baloha, Acting Head of the National Memory Institute Ihor Yukhnovsky, Humanitarian Premier Dmytro Tabachnyk, Youth and Sports Minister Yuriy Pavlenko, Foreign Minister Borys Tarasyuk, Kyiv Governor Vira Ulyanchenko, as well as parliamentarians, religious, public and cultural leaders, attended the event.
Following the ceremony, Mr. Yushchenko planted the second section of the snowball tree garden in Kyiv’s Glory Park.
