In the village of Ivkivtsi, Chernihiv region, bulldozers razed a cemetery with burials of Holodomor victims of 1932-1933. The village council stated that according to the documents there is no cemetery there and called the work as landscaping of the territory
The National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide reported this: “Part of the cemetery with burials of Holodomor victims was razed to the ground in Chernihiv region, while carrying out landscaping and organizing works. This happened in the village of Ivkivtsi, Ladanska community, in Pryluky region. The Pryluky TV channel reported on this incident.
For his part, the village head Roman Yuvchenko explained that the work on the cemetery site is being carried out by decision of the executive committee and in accordance with the landscaping program. He added that in the plan of the territorial community, the area where the grading is being carried out is not considered a cemetery, and the work of cutting down bushes and leveling the land was carried out precisely on the part of the old cemetery plot that does not contain visual signs of any burials.
Local residents say that no one warned them and no one consulted with them about the work in the cemetery. They immediately turned to the village head with a request to stop the work: the old-timers of the village know from their relatives that it is in that part that the burials of the Holodomor period are located.
After all, as is known, during the Holodomor years, funeral rites according to the Christian tradition were not performed over the deceased, and the burial of the deceased took place in mass graves, where from several dozen to several hundred bodies of people were placed. A separate person specially appointed at the collective farm level was responsible for this.
According to the National Book of Remembrance, during the Holodomor years, at least 162 people died of hunger in Ivkivtsi, including a large number of children. And these are only those whose names have been established. Most of the deceased found their final resting place here, in the old cemetery. Villagers still visit the graves of their relatives.
The cemetery in Ivkivtsi is listed as one of over a thousand mass burial sites in Ukraine in the geoinformation system “Mass burial sites of Holodomor-Genocide victims”, which was created by the employees of the Holodomor Museum back in 2019.
The National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide addressed the Head of the Ladansk TG and the Head of the Pryluky RDA with a message about the value and importance of preserving this burial site from the Holodomor period, as well as with a request to restore the landscaping of the memorial area as much as possible and mark it.
Photo: National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide, Ukrainska Pravda
National Museum
of the Holodomor-Genocide
