Entitled Holodomor and New Genocide, the exhibition has been put together by the National Museum of the Holodomor-Genocide in the Ukrainian capital Kyiv, with assistance from the Warsaw-based Museum of Polish History and the Polish Institute in Kyiv.
In his remarks at the opening ceremony, the Ukrainian ambassador to Poland, Vasyl Zvarych, said that the aim of the Great Holodomor famine masterminded by the Stalinist regime in the early 1930s was to exterminate the Ukrainian nation.
“At present similar methods are being used by Putin’s criminal regime,” Zvarych said, adding that, on the eve of the 90th anniversary of the Great Famine, “Ukraine is reminding the world about this crime and would like to see it recognized as a crime of genocide.”
Poland is one of 19 countries that have recognized the man-made Ukrainian famine as a crime of genocide, Zvarych stressed.
The director of the Museum of Polish History, Robert Kostro, said that the message of the exhibition is that, "if some crimes are not accounted for and shown to the world," they are likely to be repeated in one form or another.
“This is why historians and museums play an important role in reminding people of difficult and dramatic moments in history so that they are not forgotten,” he said.
The exhibition documents the course of the Holodomor (Death by Hunger), which, according to historians, resulted in the death of 10 million people, some 30 percent of the Ukrainian nation.
The exhibition runs until November 30.
(mk/gs)