Residents of Kharkiv region are urged to help preserve the memory of the Holodomor.

Residents of the Kharkiv region are being asked to record the memories of their grandparents about the Holodomor.

As reported by "Dumka", this was mentioned in a broadcast on the "Nakypylo" radio by the head of the oral history department of the Holodomor National Museum of Holodomor-Genocide and PhD in History, Yulia Kotsur.

She urged the people of Kharkiv to document the memories of their great-grandparents, grandparents, and share them with the National Museum of Holodomor-Genocide. This can be done either in written form or by recording a conversation in audio or video.

Yulia Kotsur shared that museum staff continues to gather testimonies from those who experienced the Holodomor. Specifically, in the summer of 2024, during an expedition in Chernihiv region, researchers managed to capture the memories of a 106-year-old woman.

"Currently, we are recording the memories of individuals who experienced the Holodomor as children. They recall certain fragments from their childhood: how their family survived the famine or, conversely, how their parents or other relatives died. These individuals are now reminiscing about what they went through during that time and what was discussed in their families. They recount this in detail. Some even remember what the weather was like," Kotsur explained.

The employee of the National Museum of Holodomor-Genocide provided an example of a woman's recollections of how, as a child, she went with her mother to gather linden leaves, which they then dried on linden trees.

"The woman remembers that it was a sunny day. She describes in detail how they collected the leaves, how they carried and dried them, and how they later made linden cakes…", — she elaborated.

The researcher clarified that linden cakes are surrogate pancakes that Ukrainians prepared from linden leaves during the Holodomor. Sometimes, they dried them. There were several recipes for preparation, which included some bran, leftover flour or chaff, and water. After that, they formed a pancake from this mixture and baked it in the oven or on a stove or grill.

It is worth noting that, according to researchers of the genocide of the Ukrainian people in 1932–1933, so many people died from hunger that there was no one to bury them. Historians still cannot determine the exact number of victims of this tragedy. In the early 1930s, the Kharkiv region included parts of what is now Poltava, Sumy, and Luhansk regions. Considering this, researchers estimate that there were 2–2.5 million victims of the artificial famine. However, in terms of the modern borders of Kharkiv region, researchers and historians estimate that around 600,000 to 900,000 people died in these lands during 1932–1933. For many years, the Soviet regime used various methods to erase the memory of those who died from hunger, and under the threat of punishment, people were forbidden to speak about the family tragedy of the early 1930s.