Holodomor -- Remember those murdered

Saturday marked the start of the 75th anniversary of the Holodomor, the nightmarish famine that killed millions in the Ukraine in the early 1930s.

This was no natural disaster but was the result of deliberate Soviet policy -- Soviet leader Joseph Stalin's collectivization of grain and other foodstuffs that left millions of people without adequate food supplies. There was intent to starve millions to death.

Estimates put the number of dead anywhere between two and 10 million; because the Soviets held power for so long after the Holodomor we will likely never have a solid figure for the number murdered.

In the spring of 1933 Malcolm Muggeridge, at considerable personal risk, went to Ukraine without permission.

What Muggeridge witnessed, he never forgot.

In a series of articles smuggled out in the diplomatic pouch, he described a man-made famine that had become a holocaust: peasants, millions of them, dying like famished cattle, sometimes within sight of full granaries, guarded by the army and police. He saw sights that, tragically, would seem not so strange as the Century went on:

"At a railway station early one morning, I saw a line of people with their hands tied behind them, being herded into cattle into trucks at gunpoint - all so silent and mysterious and horrible in the half light, like some macabre ballet."

He saw peasants kneeling down in the snow, begging for a crust of bread.

In his diary, Muggeridge wrote: "Whatever else I may do or think in the future, I must never pretend that I haven't seen this. Ideas will come and go; but this is more than an idea. It is peasants kneeling down in the snow and asking for bread. Something that I have seen and understood."

Earlier this year, Prime Minister Stephen Harper supported a private member's bill that acknowledged the famine as a genocide, following the lead of a dozen or so other countries. For this act the Prime Minister deserves praise -- he did the right thing and showed leadership.

Memorial services will be held at Ukrainian churches across the country today. Regardless of background or faith we should all say a prayer and remember what happened.