LEH GCSE and A-level History students took part in a fascinating workshop led by the Foundation for the History of Totalitarianism, learning about the Holodomor. Upper 6 student, Tillie gave us this account of the trip:
“As A level History students we have recently been learning about Stalin’s use of terror to control the people of the USSR and therefore we were interested to discover more about the Holodomor, the man-made famine that occurred in Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of people, which is so often wrongly overlooked, especially in comparison to other genocides.
The workshop primarily focused on the work of Welsh journalist Gareth Jones who was working for David Lloyd George at the time and who had been interested in Ukraine and its culture from a young age. Jones travelled to the USSR and revealed that the Ukrainian people were starving, risking his life in the process by travelling to areas of Ukraine that foreigners were not supposed to visit. Looking at this tragedy through Jones’ work and hearing individual stories from people in Ukraine gave us a personal perspective on the Holodomor, allowing us to think about individual
experiences, which made the talk more meaningful for me.
Despite the difficult nature of the talk, I am so glad that I learnt more about the Holodomor through this workshop, which I knew little about before, because it is important to be aware and spread awareness about the suffering of the Ukrainian people at this time in their history and about the journalists who fought so hard to reveal the truth in order to avoid future genocides and protect freedom of speech.
Thank you to Sean from the Foundation of the History of Totalitarianism charity who delivered the workshop for making it so engaging and to Mrs Allison for organising it for us! “