Audio Transcript

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You're looking at the Holodomor statue, an exact copy of the one located near the entrance to the national Holodomor museum in Kiev, Ukraine. The sculpture is titled 'Bitter Memories of Childhood', and is a memorial to the millions of Ukrainians and Cossacks who died during a man made famine from 1932 to 1933.

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The famine is also known as the terror famine, famine genocide, great famine and the Ukrainian genocide. It was part of the wider Soviet famine, which affected the major grain producing areas of the country. During the Holodomor, millions of inhabitants died of starvation in a peacetime catastrophe unprecedented in the history of Ukraine.

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Early estimates of the death toll by scholars and government officials varied greatly. A U.N. joint statement signed by 25 countries in 2003 declared that 7 to 10 million perished in the famine. Research has since narrowed the estimates to between 3.3 and 7.5 million.

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Some scholars believe that the famine was planned by Russian leader Joseph Stalin to eliminate a Ukrainian independence movement. The rejection of outside aid, confiscation of all household food and restriction of population movement all point to the famine being man made rather than resulting from natural causes. The loss of life has been compared to that of the Holocaust. The causes are still a subject of academic debate, with some historians disputing the characterization of genocide.

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Regardless, statues like this one help pay tribute to the millions of victims of the tragedy.