Holodomor Remembrance Day, 28 November 2009

Today Ukraine remembers those who died in the famine of 1932 and 1933.

The observance asks very little. No attendance is required, no expenditure, no arrangement. A candle placed in a window at four in the afternoon, when it is already dark, and a few minutes of not doing anything else.

I have come to think the modesty is deliberate. A commemoration with a large ceremony attached to it becomes an event people either attend or do not. One that consists of a candle in a private window cannot be attended or skipped in the same way. It is simply done, in hundreds of thousands of separate rooms.

My respect to everyone marking today.