An incredibly emotional speech by Lisa Yasko about the truth of the Holodomor genocide at the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe.

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"Dear colleagues,

I want to tell you thank you for each of you who are giving a speech now about Holodomor.

I'm going to say thank you to the rapporteur, for the current chair who are presenting these.

[For] so many years, Ukrainians were waiting until Holodomor would be recognised as a genocide.

You know, at that time, times in the thirties, during Stalin's times, it was such a dramatic time. My great-grandmother used to be telling my mother that during Holodomor, she would go to her work, seeing some people on the street waiting for something. And a few hours later, when she would be going back, these people would be already dead, lying in the street because they didn't have food.

And I want to ask here one question actually: why was the world silent about that?

Was there, at that time, no information about the fact that there was a famine? What was actually happening?

The fact was that there were reports, and there were countries, there were embassies that were present in Ukraine from different countries that were reporting to their capitals. But what was happening?

According to the archives, for instance, there were Italian diplomats who were reporting to Italy at that time. But at the time, there was Mussolini in Italy. So the Italian authorities actually said, we're not going to talk about that. The same was happening in Germany. There were reports coming to Germany.

Was the United States vocal about that? Unfortunately, no.

And there was one journalist that you may be aware of, a British journalist, his name is Mr Gareth JONES, who travelled to Ukraine. And he reported that there was a real famine, that when he was traveling, the people were screaming and saying, please say it to all the world, we don't have bread.

What happened to him? He was killed after some years, by – there are different versions, but the NKVD probably killed him. So that was the moment when actually the truth was so uncomfortable for so many countries. But there was no will to recognise this truth.

I am calling on this assembly that we talk about such things because the historical truth is so important.

You know, in Ukraine, you still have many families that will be saying today children, please don't leave your food. Always finish the food on your plate. The same would be happening with a piece of bread. If you have a piece of bread and you didn't finish eating it, never throw it in the trash bin. For us, this is something that is very deep in our genetical DNA, and everything that is connected to the grain and to the bread is very important.

I'm asking this Assembly, please, let's make sure that such terrible disinformation or silence about certain truths in history are not silenced for years. We are working on it, and never again.

Thank you".

#lisayasko #ukraine #politics #history #diplomacy