Painful Reminders . . .

Of sorrow . . . .
    suffering . . . . .
         of death . . .

Trying to grasp where we are in history and trying to understand a people among whom we live, we have to be reminded of centuries of heartache across this ravaged land.

In World War II alone think of the 60,000,000 people who lost their lives. About 43% of them or over 25,000,000, were from the Soviet Union, and that number is about 14% of the area's total population. (Poland suffered the most with over 1 person in 6 killed.)  Compare that 14% in the Soviet Union with fatalities which amounted to less than 1/3 of 1% of the United States population.   

This will help you feel their mourning, or understand, to a small degree, their "drinking away their sorrows" celebrations commemorating their war dead. 

 Tanks and statues of soldiers are everywhere and a lot of holidays have been established to this end. Kharkov was the chief tank manufacturing city amidst all this steel mining country. This park proclaims their pride and sorrow.

Painful reminders. . .of ambition, and greed, and conquest and resistance. . .

Painful reminders of hunger, of starvation, . . . . . . of dying.


Hanging over the collective memory of these people is the heavy and, until recently, hidden atrosity of Stalin killing his own people. It ranks as equal to or worse than Hitler's Holocaust but was kept from the knowledge of the world.  There are some who would like to erase this part of history that leaves such a foul smell on the system that promoted it. Between 1932-1933 Stalin starved to death, with murderous intent, 7,000,000 people right here in this area. His purpose: to put an end to the "ukranization" of this area, fearing the strength of their family ties, religion and culture. "The Bolsheviks took four steps to destroy the Ukranian nation: destroying 1) the intelligencia; 2) the national churches; 3) a significant part of the peasantry; and 4) the fragmentation of the Ukranian people at once by addition of foreign peoples into Ukraine and by the dispersal of Ukranians throughout eastern Europe- thereby separating families."

This area was all the little farms...the peasants.  Their land was wanted for the rich ore under it so the government took 100% of the farmers crops, stationed armies around the farms to prevent any new seeds or products from coming in, and then let the 7,000,000 inhabitants starve to death. 

Ah, now the land was empty and they could bring others in to work the mines. Donetsk, our city, was renamed Stalin. "Genocide, the product of an extreme manifestation of social engineering, transformed the traditional forms of land ownership and use and swept everything peasants could eat, down to the last crumb, from their villages."

  

Nor did the Jews escape Satan's grasp. Just out side of Kharkov is a pretty little valley where 17,000 women and children were machine gunned as they knelt on the edge of the ravine so they would fall into it.  That would make the task of covering them over easier. 

Today, on the hill overlooking that peaceful valley, a somber black menorah points heavenward in memory of those lives, senselessly destroyed and the beliefs for which they died. 
As part of the memorial, giant stone tablets display in many different languages the words:
"Thou shalt not kill."
            

                             

Painful reminders . . .   

              . . . of hate.

     . . . of intolerance.

          . . . of injustice.



                                          Reminders of sorrow. . . of parting

 . . . of loving and waiting and longing. . .

. . . painful reminders . . . .  

Now there is a very large and beautiful park where we could feel all this sorrow.  There is a tangible spirit there.  The feelings are embodied in a mammoth statue of a mother mouring her dead. The  "Motherland Statue" representing Ukrainian mothers sending their sons off to war. You can see her tears and hear her heart beat as you stand close to the eternal flame burning at her feet.

This century of sorrow is but a mirror of the centuries of the past.

Do you feel a small part of the tragic history in this land?

It is in the eyes and hearts of this people.

Our hearts reach out to them.