Join us at the Verona Public Library for a community program dedicated to raising awareness about the Holodomor, the Soviet-engineered famine that devastated Ukraine in 1932–1933.
Designed especially for American audiences who may know little about this genocide against the Ukrainian people, the program brings together historical scholarship, family history, storytelling, and the recorded voices of survivors. It will explore what happened, how this brutal history was suppressed, and why remembering it matters today.
The program will feature two authors whose work approaches the Holodomor from different but complementary perspectives. Dr. Daria Mattingly, Lecturer in Contemporary International History at the University of Chichester, England and author of Stalin’s Activists: The Rank-and-File Perpetrators of the Holodomor, will draw on her research into the people who implemented Soviet policies on the ground and the difficult questions of perpetrators, responsibility, and memory.
Tammy Borden, author of The Harvest Keeper: Based on a True Story of Surviving Stalin’s Holodomor Famine in Ukraine, will explore this dark chapter through family history, research, and storytelling, sharing how the experiences of one family can preserve memories across generations and bring this history to new audiences.
The program will also include a short film featuring the recorded voices of Holodomor survivors, connecting historical research and family stories with the testimony of people who lived through the famine.
The afternoon will conclude with refreshments, conversation, and a book signing with Tammy.
This is a community event sponsored by Friends of Ukraine, Madison.