December 4, 2006

                                                                                                           

  UKRAINIAN WORLD CONGRESS OFFERS ASSISTANCE TO UKRAINE FOR
75^TH ANNIVERSARY HOLODOMOR OBSERVANCES

      In a letter to Ukraine’s Presidential Secretariat and the Institute of National Memory, the UWC has offered assistance in the implementation of Ukraine’s recently passed “Holodomor was Genocide against the Ukrainian People “ resolution. In its letter the UWC informed the Chief of the Presidential Secretariat Victor Baloha and the Chair of the Institute of National Memory Ihor Yukhnovsky that for more than five years the UWC has been working through its member central organizations on foreign parliaments enacting resolutions condemning Ukraine’s Great Famine of 1932-33 as Genocide and that a model resolution  is available in English, Spanish, and Portuguese.  Further, the letter advises that in addition to the already adopted legislation in eight or nine countries, serious efforts are being made by many other Ukrainian Diaspora communities to have their parliaments pass such resolutions by the 75^th anniversary.

       Additionally in the letter,  the UWC offers Diaspora’s assistance in providing archival material, witness testimony as well as helping to fund the Memorial complex to be opened by the 75^th anniversary observances in Kyiv which is specifically referred to in the recently passed resolution and which in the opinion of the UWC is its most tangible section requiring immediate attention. Several years back, long before the Memorial discussions within Ukraine’s Presidential administration, the government, the parliament and the Kyiv State Administration which have delayed this project several years, in a letter to Ukraine’s then  President Kuchma, the UWC had offered to construct at the Diaspora’s cost and expense, a suitable Holodomor Monument  in Kyiv. The UWC has never revoked this offer and stands willing today to facilitate and expedite this long overdue project.