A traditional annual requiem for the Ukrainian Holodomor Remembrance Day (Great Famine 1932-1933) has been celebrated at St Patrick's Cathedral of New York.
Participating in the service for the Holodomor victims were Ukraine's Ambassador to the United States Oleh Shamshur, Ukraine's Permanent Representative to the United Nations Yuriy Serheyev, Ukraine's Consul General to New York Serhiy Pohoreltsev, top clergy representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church in the US, the Ukrainian Greek-Catholic Church, leaders of the Ukrainian community, US Senator Charles E. Schumer, officials of the diplomatic corps.
US Senator Kirsten Gillibrand sent an individual greeting, the Foreign Ministry press-service reported, according to National radio.
US President Barack Obama traditionally made a statement on the Ukrainian Holodomor Remembrance Day. Obama said 'we pay respect to millions of victims who showed tremendous strength and courage.
The Ukrainian people overcame the horror of the great famine and have gone on to build a free and democratic country'. He also emphasized that 'the remembrance of Holodomor will help prevent such tragedy in the future'.
In his speech, the Ukrainian ambassador pointed to a significantly raising attention to the problem of Holodomor and recognizing this horrible crime of Stalin and his aiders in the United States and other countries across the world over the past years.
According to approximate calculations, Holodomor 1932-1933 in Ukraine is thought to have killed 14 million Ukrainians.
Meanwhile, a pre-premiere screening of 'Holodomor: Ukraine's Genocide of 1932-33,' a full-length documentary feature film produced in Hollywood, took place at the Ukrainian Catholic University in Lviv with the assistance of the Ukrainian National Memory Institute.
The camera crew led by Hollywood Film Director Bobby Leigh, including U.S., Canadian and Ukrainian experts, worked in Ukraine and the United States in 2008-2009. The crew, along with Tomkiw Entertainment and Moksha Films, produced a full-length documentary film about the great famine in Ukraine.
The film was shot in Kyiv, Cherkasy, Chernihiv, Kharkiv, Mykolaiv and Dnipropetrovsk regions - the areas hardest hit by the famine in 1932-1933. The film is based on the archives, documentary videos and photos of the 1930s, as well as stories by live witnesses of the tragedy and comments by scientists from Ukraine, the United States, and Canada.
The film was produced in English, using the funds of the Ukrainian Diaspora in the United States. Film copies are later to be passed to the libraries of secondary and higher educational institutions in Ukraine and leading foreign universities.
