A renovated monument commemorating the victims of the Holodomor genocide, a mass famine engineered by Soviet authorities in Ukraine in 1932-1933, was unveiled in the Dnipro Railway Station Square.
The veneration cross pays tribute to the Ukrainian peasants who were dying in the square en masse in early 1930, fleeing from starvation to the city.
Radio Svoboda reports that the site earlier hosted a wooden cross, erected by activists in 2006 without the relevant permit of municipal authorities.
The current monument is made of granite.
Lilia Bohacheva, chief of the Holodomor Resistance Museum, said that the renovation of the cross was purely a public initiative.
“This is the result of coordinated work of non-government organizations. December 9 marks the International Day of Remembrance for the Victims of Genocide Crimes. We decided to present and consecrate the cross today, and on the 9th people will be able to come to the site and pay their honors. We are preparing a historical certificate to submit paperwork to the regional administration for the cross to be approved as a cultural heritage monument,” she said.
The renovated cross was consecrated by priests of the Orthodox Church of Ukraine.
“We deliberately did not time the renovation of the memorial to Holodomor Remembrance Day because we believe that it’s every day that we need to remember the tragedy that happened in our fertile lands almost a hundred years ago,” said OCU Military Chaplain Dmytro Povorotnyi.
Radio Svoboda recalls that a monument of a Communist figure Hryhoriy Petrovsky used to stand at the site before it was demolished in January 2016.
