Holodomor Remembrance Day, 28 November 2015

This evening a candle stands in windows across the country, and the gesture is deliberately domestic. Not a monument, not a parade: a light in the place where a family eats.

That choice of form says what the day is about. The famine happened in houses and in villages, to people counted one at a time, and it is remembered in the same register.

I am not from here and I do not carry this memory the way my neighbours do. But a candle is easy to light, and standing quietly with people who are remembering is something a guest can do.

Eternal memory to those who were lost.