On Saturday 24 November, our parish will commemorate the 85th anniversary of the Holodomor—from морити голодом, ‘to kill by starvation’—, the man-made famine that killed millions of Ukrainians in the 1930s. The full extent of this famine has only become known in the years since the collapse of the Soviet Union and the opening of historical archives in Russia and Ukraine. Although the exact number who died as a result of the famine cannot be known, recent scholarship suggests it is between 3.3 and 7.5 million.
At the end of our liturgy on that day, we will have Panakhyda (memorial prayers) for the victims of the Holodomor, and after the service will gather in the parish hall to watch the film Bitter Harvest. This 2017, English-language film mixes romance and action genres to tell the story of the Holodomor through the experience of two young lovers struggling to survive and resist the Bolshevik forced collectivization of farms and starvation policies.
We expect to start the film at about 12:30 PM, and it is 1 hour and 43 minutes long. All are welcome.