Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskiy has thanked the German parliament for recognizing the 1932-33 famine in Ukraine, known as the Holodomor, as a genocide of the Ukrainian people.
"Germany recognized the 1932-1933 Holodomor as a genocide. I thank the members of the Bundestag for this historic decision. The truth always wins," Zelenskiy said on Twitter.
The Bundestag voted on November 30 in favor of the resolution, which was submitted by three parties of the ruling coalition and the main opposition bloc. It passed with their support in a show of hands, while the two other opposition parties abstained.
The vote took place after a debate attended by Ukraine’s ambassador to Germany and comes days after Ukrainians marked the 90th anniversary of the start of the famine, which is believed to have killed millions of Ukrainians.
Historians say the failure to properly harvest crops in Ukraine in 1932 under Soviet mismanagement was the main cause of the famine.
Zelenskiy said on November 26 as he marked the anniversary that Ukraine “cannot be broken” in its current fight against Russia's ongoing unprovoked invasion.
"Ukrainians went through very terrible things.... Once they wanted to destroy us with hunger -- now, with darkness and cold," Zelenskiy said.
The resolution states that “the mass deaths from hunger were not a result of failed harvests; the political leadership of the Soviet Union under Josef Stalin was responsible for them." It adds that all things Ukrainian were “deeply suspect” to Stalin and notes that “the whole of Ukraine was affected by hunger and repression, not just its grain-producing areas.”
The resolution says that from today's perspective, “a historical and political classification as genocide is obvious. The German Bundestag shares such a classification.”
Such resolutions aren't binding and don't mandate government action, but Foreign Minister Annalena Baerbock has thanked lawmakers who championed it.
Lawmaker Robin Wagener of the Green party told the Bundestag that the “horror” of the Holodomor “had its cause in the Kremlin,” where “the dictator took the cruel decision to push through collectivization by force and cause hunger.”
He said that “the parallels with today are unmissable.”
According to the Holodomor Museum in Kyiv, in addition to Ukraine and Germany the states that so far have recognized the famine as genocide are Australia, Ecuador, Estonia, Canada, Colombia, Georgia, Hungary, Latvia, Lithuania, Mexico, Paraguay, Peru, Poland, Portugal, the United States, and the Vatican. Some other countries, including Argentina, Chile, and Spain, have condemned it as “an act of extermination.”
The resolution calls on the German government to work against “any attempts to spread one-sided Russian historical narratives” and to keep supporting Ukraine as a victim of the current war.
It notes that the famine in Ukraine happened in a period of massive crimes against humanity in Europe, which included the Holocaust “in its historical singularity,” the war crimes of the German military, and the systematic murder of millions of civilians as part of the “the racist German war of annihilation in the east.”