Holodomor Remembrance Day, 26 November 2011

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

Estimates of how many died vary widely, and the debate over the figure is a real scholarly one. But I have noticed that families do not talk about it in numbers. They talk about a village, a winter, a particular relative who did not come back from a particular journey.

The archival work of recent years — the books of memory, the local lists compiled from parish and village records — is doing something specific and valuable. It converts an estimate into names, and a name is much harder to argue away than a total.

To everyone lighting a candle tonight, and to the researchers doing the slow work of writing the names down: my respect.