Include Holodomor in the Dictionary

While many people around the world have heard of the famine deaths in Ukraine, the word Holodomor, Russia’s premeditated murder by hunger of at least 7 million Ukrainian men, women and children in 1932-33, they may not be as familiar. Yes, 7 million killed. That number has been sanctified in the minds of generations of Ukrainians.

H-O-L-O-D-O-M-O-R

Planned, deliberate death by hunger. Moscow sought to deprive Ukrainian peasants or farmers of food to eliminate this excess population so it decided to seize wheat and other foodstuffs from them. Simple starve every one of them. It was the first time that food was used as a weapon. It was a genocide according to the United Nations. In the past eight decades many national parliaments as well as America states and municipalities have adopted resolutions denouncing the Holodomor as genocide.

However, sadly, if you were to open the latest edition of the classic Merriam-Webster dictionary you wouldn’t find any reference to the Holodomor. You wouldn’t learn how to spell it and you wouldn’t find even a cursory reference to what it was and why it should be remembered.

However, it you looked under “H” for Holocaust, you would rightly find a succinct, accurate definition:

Definition of holocaust

1: a sacrifice (see SACRIFICE entry 1 sense 2) consumed by fire

2: a thorough destruction involving extensive loss of life especially through fire a nuclear holocaust

3a usually the Holocaust: the mass slaughter of European civilians and especially Jews by the Nazis during World War II. Several members of her family died in the Holocaust. a Holocaust survivor

b: a mass slaughter of people especially : GENOCIDE a holocaust in Rwanda

Examples of holocaust in a Sentence

 The museum is devoted to the Holocaust. There were fears of a nuclear holocaust.

You would also find a definition of the Hebrew word Shoah:

Sho·​ah | \ ˈshō-ə  , -ˌä \

Definition of Shoah

: HOLOCAUST sense 3a

First Known Use of Shoah

1967, in the meaning defined above

History and Etymology for Shoah

Modern Hebrew shō'āh, literally, catastrophe, from Hebrew

But you wouldn’t find a definition for the world Holodomor. Instead you’d find:

“holodomor” – The word you've entered isn't in the dictionary. Click on a spelling suggestion below or try again using the search bar above.

It’s not that Merriam-Webster doesn’t include foreign words in its dictionary. Here’s what they say about blitzkrieg, Nazi Germany’s lightning fast invasion of Europe:

Definition of blitzkrieg

1: war conducted with great speed and force specifically: a violent surprise offensive by massed air forces and mechanized ground forces in close coordination

2: BLITZ sense 2a

Examples of blitzkrieg in a Sentence

The stunned survivors of the crash were then confronted with a blitzkrieg of in sensitive questions from the media

The war began with a blitzkrieg that was designed to shock the enemy into submission

A global campaign, launched by Bohdan Onyschuk, chair, Canada-Ukraine Foundation, and Chair, Holodomor National Awareness Tour, is currently underway by the Ukrainian World Congress, the Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, the Ukrainian Canadian Congress and others to rectify this hopefully mere oversight and not premeditated expurgation of the word Holodomor. They are asking the global community to view a video and then sign a petition in support of this effort.

You can access the petition on the website http://deeptruth.ca, where you can also view the “deep fake” video of Stalin finally telling the truth about the Holodomor, and the posters for the campaign which will be carried out on the Internet, Facebook, Twitter, other social media, and hopefully press stories and morning show interviews.

Using rare color film footage of Stalin, the Soviet dictator’s features have been painstakingly mapped onto the face of a modern-day actor, effectively bringing Stalin back to life. In the video, Stalin lays claim to his right to be credited as the true originator of “Fake News” by denying the Holodomor and successfully concealing from the world how he engineered the famine in Ukraine in 1932-33, killing millions of innocent men, women and children.

The campaign needs support by: (a) adding your name to the petition, which you can find on the deeptruth.ca website, or directly here: https://www.change.org/p/merriam-webster-dictionary-help-us-get-the-word-holodomor-included-in-all-major-english-dictionaries?use_react=false

(b) sharing this information, and the deeptruth.ca website with your organizations and your own personal contacts (including politicians at all levels), and

(c) offering any advice in areas where you could be helpful in expanding the campaign.

History and contemporary references to the Holodomor must be rectified for the sake of the innocent victims.