We’ve Seen This Before
Photo by Eelco Böhtlingk on Unsplash
Every literate Jew knows the word: SHOAH.
It’s the Hebrew word for the Holocaust, derived from the biblical word Shoah (שואה), meaning "catastrophe."
Most of us, me included, have never heard of the term: Holodomor.
According to the History Channel, it’s a combination of the Ukrainian words for “starvation” and “to inflict death,” and is a key event in Ukrainian history.
In 1932-1933, the Holodomor in the Ukraine is estimated to have claimed the lives of 3.9 million people, about 13 percent of the population.
Unlike other famines in history caused by blight or drought, this was caused when a Josef Stalin, the dictator of the Soviet Union, wanted both to replace Ukraine’s small farms with state-run collectives and punish independence-minded Ukrainians who posed a threat to his totalitarian authority.
In 1929, Stalin had imposed collectivization, which replaced individually owned and operated farms with big state-run collectives. Ukraine’s small, mostly subsistence farmers resisted giving up their land and livelihoods.
In response, the Soviet regime considered them enemies of the state and Soviet officials drove these peasants off their farms by force. Stalin’s secret police further made plans to deport 50,000 Ukrainian farm families to Siberia, historian Anne Applebaum writes in her 2017 book, Red Famine: Stalin's War on Ukraine.
Meanwhile, according to Applebaum, Stalin already had arrested tens of thousands of Ukrainian teachers and intellectuals and removed Ukrainian-language books from schools and libraries. She writes that the Soviet leader used the grain shortfall as an excuse for even more intense anti-Ukrainian repression.
As another historian notes, the 1932 decree “targeted Ukrainian ‘saboteurs,’ ordered local officials to stop using the Ukrainian language in their correspondence, and cracked down on Ukrainian cultural policies that had been developed in the 1920s.”
According to a 1988 U.S. Congressional commission report, as the famine worsened, many tried to flee in search of places with more food.
Ukrainian peasants resorted to desperate methods in an effort to stay alive, according to the Congressional commission’s report. They killed and ate pets and consumed flowers, leaves, tree bark and roots. One woman who found some dried beans was so hungry that she ate them on the spot without cooking them, and reportedly died when they expanded in her stomach.
By the summer of 1933, some of the collective farms had only a third of their households left, and prisons and labor camps were jammed to capacity. With hardly anyone left to raise crops, Stalin’s regime resettled Russian peasants from other parts of the Soviet Union in Ukraine to cope with the labor shortage.
The Russian government that replaced the Soviet Union has acknowledged that famine took place in Ukraine, but denied it was genocide.
Nevertheless, at least 16 countries, including the United States, have recognized the Holodomor, and most recently, the U.S. Senate, in a 2018 resolution, affirmed the findings of the 1988 commission that Stalin had committed genocide.
Why should we care about the Ukraine?
Because we’ve seen this before.
Because when autocratic rulers speak, they tell you who they are by projecting onto others what they themselves are thinking and planning, or by rewriting the facts of history — like accusing the Ukraine of genocide.
And what they say doesn’t have to make sense; in fact, it’s probably better if it confuses people, like calling for the “denazification” of the Ukraine, who’s president, Volodymyr Zelenskyy, is a Jew (whose paternal great-grandfather, among other family members, was murdered in the Shoah).
He was elected in 2019 with 73% of the vote.
In the March of the Living, we teach an entire unit on propaganda and how to spot it.
For example, on in February 1938, Hitler made a speech before the Reichstag and was relayed also by the Austrian radio network.
A key phrase in the speech, which was aimed at the Germans living in Austria and Czechoslovakia, was: "The German Reich is no longer willing to tolerate the suppression of ten million Germans across its borders."
Hitler sent an ultimatum to the leader of Austria on March 11, 1938, demanding that he hand over all power to the Austrian Nazi party or face an invasion.
The ultimatum was set to expire at noon, but was extended by two hours. Without waiting for an answer, Hitler had already signed the order to send troops into Austria at one o'clock.
The Nazi Anschluss into Austria took place the morning of March 12, 1938.
The campaign against the Jews began immediately after the Anschluss. They were driven through the streets of Vienna; their homes and shops were plundered. The process of Aryanisation began, and Jews were driven out of public life within months.
And of course, those who know history well remember British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain’s famous speech on September 30, 1938, about achieving “peace for our time” by compromising with “Herr Hitler” over his desire to control the Sudetenland part of Czechoslovakia.
After this compromise, Hitler (yemah shmo/may his memory be erased) announced that it was his last territorial claim in Europe.
Less than a year later, the German dictator (who was elected democratically and then seized absolute power, let us not forget) invaded Poland on September 1, 1939, and World War II began.
We’ve seen this before, and I pray that it does not turn out the way it did last time.
All I can tell you as a student of history is that appeasing dictators and autocrats historically doesn’t end well for those who love and want to preserve democracy and freedom.
What can we do?
Listen carefully. Learn history. Don’t trust the assurances of people who support and take anti-democratic actions.
Meanwhile, the Greater Miami Jewish Federation has opened a Ukraine Emergency Fund. Click here to support this effort and help the 200,000 Jews still living there (many are elderly Shoah survivors) and the many others who need our support. As always, 100% of the funds go straight to the people that need them the most.
Shabbat Shalom
