Scholars from the Kolomyia Educational and Scientific Institute of PNU, together with research staff from the National Museum of Folk Art of the Hutsul and Pokuttya Region named after Y. Kobrynsky, held a round table discussion titled *”Holodomor 1932-1933: Genocide of the Ukrainian People: Victims, Witnesses, Perpetrators.”*
The event was moderated by Associate Professor of the Department of Philology at the Kolomyia Institute, Halyna Voloshchuk. The discussion was attended by the Director of the Kolomyia Institute, Olga Slypaniuk; the Head of the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, Oksana Poyasyk; Associate Professors of the Department of Philology, Candidates of Philological Sciences, Olga Rusakova and Yevheniy Lepyokhin; Lecturer of the Department of Pedagogy and Psychology, Mariya Chepil; Deputy Director of the Museum, Iryna Fediiv; museum researchers; students; and the local community of Kolomyia.
“The United Nations Convention recognizes only four groups as victims of genocide: national, ethnic, religious, and racial. Five years after the term ‘genocide’ was coined, its author, American and Polish scholar and Jewish descendant Raphael Lemkin, applied this term to Ukraine.
In his report, presented in 1953 in New York on the 20th anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine, he stated: ‘The Holodomor is an expression of genocide, the destruction not only of individuals but of culture and nation.’ Thus, this authoritative scholar recognized the Holodomor as a ‘classic example of Soviet genocide,’ aimed not only at Ukrainian peasants but at the entire Ukrainian nation, including intellectuals, clergy, and rural inhabitants. He also noted that after the famine exterminated Ukrainian peasants, the lands were deliberately settled by ethnic Russians,” reported Yuriy Plekhan, Director of the Museum of the History of the City of Kolomyia.
Participants discussed the causes of the Holodomor and drew parallels with the present: elements of genocide against the Ukrainian nation are still present in territories temporarily occupied by the Russian aggressor.
Associate Professor Halyna Voloshchuk highlighted the importance of studying the Holodomor in schools and higher education institutions, stressing the significance of reading literary works on the topic, such as Ulas Samchuk’s *Maria*, Vasyl Barka’s *The Yellow Prince*, Svitlana Talan’s *Shattered Sky*, and Tetyana Pankova’s *The Age of Red Ants*.
Students of the “Secondary Education (Ukrainian Language and Literature)” program, Anna Butorina, Viktoriya Motruk, Khrystyna Tymkiv, and Oksana Cherkas, read excerpts from Svitlana Talan’s *Shattered Sky*.