This year marks the 75th anniversary of the 1932-33 genocide in Ukraine when 10 million Ukrainians, 3 million of them children, starved to death as a result of dictator Joseph Stalin's policy of deliberate grain and food confiscation in Ukraine, "the breadbasket of Europe."

The "Holodomor" --- for the Ukrainian words "holod" (hunger) and "moryty" (kill) --- was a man-made famine designed to crush the will of the Ukrainian people and to solidify Soviet control and authority.

As early as 1929, Stalin, head of the Communist party in Russia, initiated policies to transform the Soviet Union into an "industrialized power" in as short a time as possible regardless of the cost in human and material resources. To finance the industrialization, Stalin enacted a policy of "harsh collectivization" of agriculture directed at the nationally conscious Ukrainian peasants.

A lethal war against the most recalcitrant farmers and their families resulted in the confiscation of their property, deportation to Siberia or the execution of all resisters. Contrary to the plan of the Communist party, the Ukrainian peasantry, whose cultural and social norms valued the principles of private property and individual endeavors, continued to resist. A literal struggle to the death ensued.

To break the resistance of all Ukrainians, the Soviet government then imposed crippling grain quotas on the peasant farmers in order to make it unprofitable for them to sustain their small holdings and thus pressure them to join collective farms. When the peasants continued to resist, the Moscow government sent thousands of Communist agents to terrorize the countryside and confiscate all grain, foodstuffs, personal property, including beautifully hand embroidered clothing that could be sold for food, from the homes of villagers, leaving them with nothing!

Everything that the Ukrainian peasants had owned - homes, livestock, wheat, grains, gardens, orchards --- were now owned by the State (Soviet Union). The first shadows of famine fell upon Ukrainian villages and towns and people began to die by the thousands, despite reports of a record harvest in 1932.

Peasants who attempted to hide grain or other sources of food were deported or executed. Withholding or "stealing grain" became a crime punishable by death. Heavily guarded grain silos, filled to capacity, lay just within reach of the starving peasants. Rather than feeding the starving Ukrainians, the Soviet government sold the grain in Western markets, and the proceeds were used to finance Stalin's industrialization plans for the Soviet Union.

The Soviet government rejected all offers of humanitarian aid, continuing its propaganda campaign by insisting that the famine was a slanderous fabrication by enemies of the Soviet Union. "There is no famine in the Ukrainian SSR" proclaimed the Soviet government. Moscow sealed Ukraine's borders making it impossible for anyone to escape in search of food and to conceal this act of genocide from the outside world. The systematic murder of 10 million men, women and children went virtually unnoticed.

In 1948 the United Nations Genocide Convention legally defined the issue of genocide as "acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group," including "deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part." The Holodomor falls squarely within the terms of this definition.

On Nov. 9, an inter-faith commemoration of this event will be held at the Cathedral of Our Lady of the Angels. The 3:30 p.m. memorial service ("Panakhyda") will be con-celebrated by Metropolitan Constantine, Prime Hierarch of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA, and Bishop John Bura of the Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitan Archeparchy of Philadelphia for all Ukrainian Catholics in the USA. The Panakhyda, a traditional Ukrainian Memorial Service, will honor and pray for the 10 million victims of the Holodomor. Those attending are invited to join the candle-lit procession from the Cathedral, one block to the Holodomor Memorial Site at the Los Angeles County Mall.

Luba S. Keske is a member of the Nativity of the Blessed Virgin Mary Ukrainian Catholic Church, Los Angeles.