Genealogical Gems

Today is the International Holodomor Memorial Day. Today, Ukrainians worldwide remember the 81st anniversary of the Holodomor, Famine Genocide of 1932-33.  A Holodomor is a man made famine or genocide. In 1932, the Soviets increased the quota for grain by 44%. They were well aware that this ridiculously high quota would cause a grain shortage. The grain shortage in turn would result in Ukrainian peasants starving. At that time, Soviet law dictated that no grain was allowed to be given to the peasants for food until the quota for the government had been reached. Hence, there were peasants working in wheat fields day in and day out, seeing a wealth of grain every day and knowing that they would go hungry that night and that their children would go hungry. This unnecessary government induced famine resulted in the death of between 7 to 10 million people, mainly Ukrainians. It was instigated by Soviet leader Joseph Stalin and his henchman Lazar Kaganovich to break the spirit of the...

I was 10 when Three Mile Island (TMI) happened. That was big news here locally. It was the worst nuclear incident in history at that time. Safety precautions were put in place from the lessons learned. No one wanted to believe that anything like that would ever happen again. Then, in my junior year of high school, On This Day in 1986 … Chernobyl happened.   The Chernobyl power-generating station is located in Pripyat , Ukraine , north of Kiev . There was an explosion and subsequent fire in one of the units, specifically Unit 4. The incident, which was a combination of design issues and operator errors, occurred during a system test. As a result of the incident a large quantity of radioactive contamination was released, spreading over much of Russia and Europe .     Approximately 350,000 people were forced to evacuate their homes and essentially their lives as a containment zone was set up around the plant. The radius of the zone measured 19 miles. Chernobyl...

Irek Jaworniciki is looking for former residents/descendants of ULUCZ. An announcement in a publication of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the USA reads: "Attention former residents of the village Ulucz, present day Poland, and their descendants. Please help us build the web site ( www.ulucz.org ) and create the monography of the Ukrainian village Ulucz, whose residents were forcibly resettled in 1947 as a result of 'Akcja Wisla'. Email us your memories, articles, old photographs and interesting stories about Ulucz. You may contact us at irek-jawornicki (at) wp.pl. "