Holodomor Remembrance Day, 28 November 2020
A remembrance message for a year in which people could not gather, and what a candle in a window does instead.
Today Ukraine remembers those who died in the famine of 1932 and 1933.
This year the gatherings are smaller or absent, for reasons everyone knows. What remains is the part that was always the most important anyway: a candle placed in a window at the same hour, in houses that cannot see each other.
I have thought about why that gesture holds up so well. I think it is because it does not require an audience. A candle in a window is not a demonstration; it is a household saying, privately, that it has not forgotten. Multiply it by a country and the effect is not smaller for being unseen.
To everyone lighting one tonight, and to the families who carry particular names: my respect.
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