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Cemetery with burials of Holodomor victims being destroyed in the Chernihiv region

Author:
Liza Brovko
Date:

A cemetery with the burials of victims of the Holodomor of 1932-1933

The Holodomor is a genocide of the Ukrainian nation committed in 1932–1933. It was committed by the leadership of the Soviet Union in order to subjugate the Ukrainians, finally eliminate Ukrainian resistance to the regime and attempts to build an independent Ukrainian state independent of Moscow.
is being destroyed in the Chernihiv region. This happened in the village of Ivkivtsi, Ladanska community, in Pryluky.

This was reported by the local TV channel "Pryluky" and the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide.

Journalists saw bulldozers and other equipment working at the mass grave site. Locals said they were not warned about the work or consulted. They appealed to the village head to stop the work because their relatives who died of hunger are buried in the cemetery.

A resident of Ivkiv Mykola Danilishin said, his grandfather Denys Cherep is buried in the cemetery.

"A third of this cemetery was filled during the Holodomor. People were dying. They were taken in carts and buried like cattle, without coffins. My grandfather was buried the same way. They took everything from the house, even the beans, they dug everything out... They dug a hole for my grandfather, and by the time they brought him in a cart, four people were already lying there. People couldnʼt even dig a hole, they didnʼt have the strength," the man shared his story.

The National Book of Remembrance states that at least 162 people died of starvation in Ivkivtsi during the Holodomor, many of them children. This figure is only those deaths that were officially recorded.

Village head Roman Yuvchenko says that work is being done on the cemetery site because there is a decision by the executive committee and in accordance with the improvement program. According to him, in the plan of the territorial community, this area is not considered a cemetery.

In fact, the cemetery in Ivkivtsi is listed as one of over a thousand mass graves in Ukraine in the geoinformation system "Mass Burial Places of Victims of the Holodomor-Genocide".

The National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide addressed the head of the Ladansk TG and the head of the Pryluky district state administration and informed them of the value and importance of preserving this burial site from the Holodomor period, and also called for maximum restoration of the landscaping of the memorial area and marking it.

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