How were the people affected?
Nearly 10 million people died due to the famine headed by Joseph Stalin. People lost many family members and it was a really tragic year for most people. Since 2006 Ukraine has a Holodomor remembrance day that takes place on November 25. The first public monument of the famine-genocide is outside of city hall in Edmonton, Alberta, Canada for the 50th anniversary of the genocide caused by Joseph Stalin. There are many other memorials around the world as well. Here is a actual story from someone who survived the famine.
"They were horrible years! Mothers were slicing their children and sticking
them in pots to cook them, and then ate them. My mother went into the field
where some horses were dying and brought back a horse's head. About five
women bit into this horse's head. What a horror it was; people were dropping
dead on the road. If you pierced them the blood was like water. So many
people died. I remember every thing in the village, including the time they
took the crosses off the churches. Two members from the Komsomol
(Communist Youth Organization) went up and took the crosses down. They
buried them two meters into the ground and old women would go to kiss that
plot of ground...
Then they filled the wooden church full of wheat. During the night mice made
their way through the walls, leaving little holes from which women filled their
buckets with the wheat. The Komsomol took the wheat from the church, and
afterward it stood empty. So many people died in the village that in the
cemetery they stopped putting up crosses. During the winter an old woman
would take a cross from the cemetery to make a fire in her house so that her
children would not freeze."
Nina Popovych - Genocide Survivor - born 1925, Lysycha Balka, Ukraine
"They were horrible years! Mothers were slicing their children and sticking
them in pots to cook them, and then ate them. My mother went into the field
where some horses were dying and brought back a horse's head. About five
women bit into this horse's head. What a horror it was; people were dropping
dead on the road. If you pierced them the blood was like water. So many
people died. I remember every thing in the village, including the time they
took the crosses off the churches. Two members from the Komsomol
(Communist Youth Organization) went up and took the crosses down. They
buried them two meters into the ground and old women would go to kiss that
plot of ground...
Then they filled the wooden church full of wheat. During the night mice made
their way through the walls, leaving little holes from which women filled their
buckets with the wheat. The Komsomol took the wheat from the church, and
afterward it stood empty. So many people died in the village that in the
cemetery they stopped putting up crosses. During the winter an old woman
would take a cross from the cemetery to make a fire in her house so that her
children would not freeze."
Nina Popovych - Genocide Survivor - born 1925, Lysycha Balka, Ukraine