Download & Print
Dignitaries from Ukrainian San Antonio, local leaders and members of the Bandera County Historical Commission attend the opening reception of the Holodomor exhibit at the Bandera Kronkosky Public Library on Tuesday, Oct. 11.
Photos by Jessica Nohealapa’ahi
October 14, 2022
Bandera Library hosts Ukrainian exhibit
By Jessica Nohealapa’ahi
The Bandera Prophet
The Bandera Kronkosky Public Library is hosting an exhibition commemorating the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor, the Great Famine genocide that took place in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933, that killed millions of Ukrainians.
Featured are diary entries - found at an estate sale - written by Teodora Verbitskaya and preserved by her daughter Nadia Werbitzky, who survived the famine, as well as the Holocaust during WWII. She died in 2005.
“…the parents all died, leaving the children, as a more survivable element (perhaps because the parents always gave the children their last morsel). These orphans were traumatized by their incessantly growling bellies, gnawed with hunger. They watched as their fathers were dragged away by authorities, and their mothers and grandparents withered, weakened and died slowly before their eyes,” Verbitskaya wrote.
The Holodomor, a Ukrainian word that literally translated means “death by starvation,” was initiated by Joseph Stalin to “annihilate Ukraine as a nation.” Farmers were taken hostage and educators were arrested, while schools, businesses and churches were shut down. Food sources were seized and controlled by the Soviet government, and any person who took an unrationed stalk of grain was punished by execution.
The exhibition was coordinated by Ukrainian San Antonio, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Ukrainian heritage and culture. Director Mauri Guillén Fagan said the Bandera Library is the exhibition’s first stop on a tour of several libraries and museums in the Central Texas area, including the Lakehills Area Library and Medina Community Library. It will be on display until Oct. 21.
The Bandera Kronkosky Public Library is open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Featured are diary entries - found at an estate sale - written by Teodora Verbitskaya and preserved by her daughter Nadia Werbitzky, who survived the famine, as well as the Holocaust during WWII. She died in 2005.
“…the parents all died, leaving the children, as a more survivable element (perhaps because the parents always gave the children their last morsel). These orphans were traumatized by their incessantly growling bellies, gnawed with hunger. They watched as their fathers were dragged away by authorities, and their mothers and grandparents withered, weakened and died slowly before their eyes,” Verbitskaya wrote.
The Holodomor, a Ukrainian word that literally translated means “death by starvation,” was initiated by Joseph Stalin to “annihilate Ukraine as a nation.” Farmers were taken hostage and educators were arrested, while schools, businesses and churches were shut down. Food sources were seized and controlled by the Soviet government, and any person who took an unrationed stalk of grain was punished by execution.
The exhibition was coordinated by Ukrainian San Antonio, a non-profit organization dedicated to preserving Ukrainian heritage and culture. Director Mauri Guillén Fagan said the Bandera Library is the exhibition’s first stop on a tour of several libraries and museums in the Central Texas area, including the Lakehills Area Library and Medina Community Library. It will be on display until Oct. 21.
The Bandera Kronkosky Public Library is open Monday to Friday, 9 a.m. to 6 p.m., and Saturdays, 9 a.m. to 1 p.m.