This website tells about phase II of the National Holodomor-Genocide Museum construction project

The Holodomor Museum Fund has presented an updated crowdfunding platform Grains of Truth, with a new function of Holodomor victims search by name and/or population centre. Sprout the Grains of Truth: find your family in the Holodomor victims Martyrology, an interactive event in partnership with Vsi.Svoi shop, was held in the heart of the capital, Khreschatyk.

19 volumes of the National Book of Memory of the 1932–1933 Holodomor Victims were fully digitised for the online database. The Martyrology contains information on 805,000+ names of Holodomor-Genocide victims from 17 Ukrainian Oblasts where the Soviet regime was annihilating Ukrainian peasantry. From now on, anyone who wishes can get truthful information about Holodomor victims on the Grains of Truth platform at any time. Search can be done by family name or population centre.

At the event, the full digitised National Book of Remembrance was officially handed over for use to the National Holodomor-Genocide Museum.

The crowdfunding platform Grains of Truth is based on the philosophy of commemorating each of the millions of Holodomor victims, as every grain is individual. For decades this information was being destroyed and concealed, and now it is ‘sprouting’ along with the open grains. You can ‘sprout’ a grain of truth by making a donation in any bearable amount to commemorate a victim, whose name, after almost a century of hushing up, will see the light again.

Yuliya Novobranets, creator and manager of the Grains of Truth project, tells how the Martyrology search works:

“Any user can enter a name of the victim or the population centre in the search engine from the Grains of Truth platform home page and learn the history of their kin in the times of 1932–33 Holodomor. Information about Holodomor-Genocide victims is taken from the Martyrology compiled in 2008 as part of the government project National Book of Remembrance of the 1932–33 Holodomor Victims in Ukraine.

Some of the victims records are incomplete: occasionally only the family name is stated, no given name or age. But often you can find full information about a person: family name, given name, patronymic, age, and place and cause of death.”

The event gathered Kyivans, who had an opportunity to use the search right on site and learn more about the history of their family during the 1932–33 Holodomor. By using the search, Kyiv resident Liubov found names of her relatives:

“Here I found the name of my grandmother, who died in Staiky. But in Poltava Oblast, the village of Boliasne, Dykanka Rayon, died almost the entire family of my father, Hryhorii Pavlovych Sotnyk.”

The Holodomor Museum Fund would like to thank the speakers who joined the event and shared with us the value of accessing truthful information about Holodomor victims. The speakers themselves also made use of the search and found mentions of their relatives.

The event speakers were:

  • Yuliya Kotsur, Deputy Director General, National Holodomor-Genocide Museum
  • Ihor Kulyk, Director, National Memory Archives
  • Anatolii Khromov, Chairman, State Archive Services Ukraine
  • Anzhelika Rudnytska, artist, conceiver of the Candle of Memory. Power of Memory initiative
  • Olesia Shliakhtych, head of the Jazz-modern ballet OSDC
  • Serhii Nizhynskyi, public figure, Grains of Truth project ambassador

How was it digitised?

The Holodomor Museum Fund involved four typists in this work: Olha Fil, Olena Naumova, Olha Makarova and Tetiana Filipovych. Ukrainian historian Andrii Kozytskyi, Assistant Professor at the Chair of Modern and Contemporary History of Foreign Countries, Ivan Franko National University of Lviv, Ph.D., author of Ukraine’s first Guide on Human Genocides, joined the expert consultation.

The digitisation work lasted for almost a year. Every entry, every name, every letter from the 19-volume edition was manually entered into the database. The online search would not be possible without the dedicated work of these people.

The presentation of the all-Ukrainian online search of Holodomor victims on the Grains of Truth platform is timed to the Holodomor Victims Remembrance Day, November 27.

The Grains of Truth platform was put in operation in 2020. Ukrainian ІТ company SoftServe developed the platform on the pro bono basis. A branding and communication strategy for the project was developed by Ukrainian creative agency Postmen.

The purpose of the platform is to collect charitable contributions to create and implement the main exhibition of the Holodomor Museum. All donations made through the platform go into the account held for the Holodomor Museum and are used solely for implementation of the Holodomor Museum Creating Project. Here you can learn more about application of the donations raised by the Fund: shorturl.at/adpuK

Share

More news

WANT TO FOLLOW PROJECT NEWS?

Subscribe to the newsletter

To top