PRINTER'S NO. 1340
THE GENERAL ASSEMBLY OF PENNSYLVANIA
SENATE RESOLUTION
No.
244
Session of
2017
INTRODUCED BY GREENLEAF, ARGALL, EICHELBERGER, BROWNE,
TARTAGLIONE, HUGHES, KILLION, HUTCHINSON, MENSCH, HAYWOOD AND
COSTA, NOVEMBER 15, 2017
INTRODUCED AND ADOPTED, NOVEMBER 15, 2017
A RESOLUTION
Designating the month of November 2017 as "Ukrainian Genocide
Remembrance Month" in Pennsylvania and urge all individuals,
groups, organizations and institutions to remember the
Holodomor with appropriate activities designed to honor its
victims and educate the world about this tragic episode in
the world's history.
WHEREAS, Eighty-five years ago, Soviet leader Joseph Stalin
and his totalitarian regime committed an act of genocide through
the implementation of an engineered famine, confiscating land,
grain and animals from the Ukrainian people resulting in the
deaths of up to 10 million innocent men, women and children; and
WHEREAS, This genocide, Holodomor, meaning "murder by
starvation," was specifically designed by the Soviet regime to
punish independent-minded Ukrainians for their resistance to its
economic, political and social oppression; and
WHEREAS, At the height of the Holodomor in 1933, Ukrainians
died at the rate of 25,000 a day with nearly a third of its
victims being children less than 10 years of age; and
WHEREAS, Even as the Soviets continued to export Ukraine's
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grain to the rest of the world, Ukrainian farmers, who tended to
the farms in the "bread basket of the U.S.S.R.," were tragically
starved to slow and painful deaths; and
WHEREAS, Hundreds of archival KGB documents created during
this genocide detailed and described the Soviet regime's actions
and intention to destroy Ukraine's national identity by
deporting and executing Ukraine's religious, intellectual and
cultural leaders, and by prosecuting or executing any others who
dared to speak of the famine or to speak against the Soviet
authorities publicly, further destabilizing Ukraine's political
structure; and
WHEREAS, Under the global theme "Ukraine Remembers, the World
Acknowledges," it is necessary that the Ukrainian Genocide of
1932-1933, Holodomor, be officially recognized by the global
community as a tragic and heinous crime against humanity in
order to prevent similar tragedies from occurring in the future;
therefore be it
RESOLVED, That the Senate designate the month of November
2017 as "Ukrainian Genocide Remembrance Month" in Pennsylvania
and urge all individuals, groups, organizations and institutions
to remember the Holodomor with appropriate activities designed
to honor its victims and educate the world about this tragic
episode in the world's history and to reflect upon the
historical truth of the heinous crimes of totalitarian regimes,
so that we may one day eliminate tyranny from our world.
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