Passers-by and the corpse of a starved man on a street in Kharkiv, Ukraine, USSR, 1932. Public domain photo by Alexander Wienerberger — Diocesan Archive of Vienna (Diözesanarchiv Wien)/BA Innitzer, via Wikipedia. Many Ukrainians marked the 90th anniversary of the Holodomor by sharing the memories passed on by their families about the experience of the man-made famine in Soviet Ukraine from 1932 to 1933 that killed millions of Ukrainians. That got me wondering how informed the world at large was about it at the time. The Holodomor, a term that can be translated as “mass murder by hunger,” was part of the wider famine that affected the major grain-producing areas of the Soviet Union, including Kuban in southern Russia, Kazakhstan and the Caucasus. However, the Moscow regime's actions included repressively targeting the Ukrainian peasant populations and depriving them of food, leading scholars and governments to classify it as genocide. According to Encyclopedia Britannica, “of the estimated five million people who died in the Soviet Union, almost four million were Ukrainians.” Before November this year, Ukraine and 14 other countries recognized the Holodomor as an act of genocide against Ukrainians by the totalitarian regime of Joseph Stalin. By the 90th anniversary this year, Germany, Ireland, Moldova, Romania, Brazil, the Czech Republic and the Vatican, as well as the Belarus opposition in exile also did so, raising the number to 22. Deliberate repressive measures that targeted Ukrainians in the USSR in 1932 and 1933 included appropriating Ukrainian grain while closing off the border between Ukraine SSR and other Soviet republics, and prohibiting the transport of food to affected areas. In Ukraine, Holodomor Memorial Day is commemorated every fourth Saturday of November. However, remembrance of the Holodomor is not commonplace outside of Ukraine. Therefore, many Ukrainians used social networks as a way to raise awareness especially because they see the ongoing Russian aggression against their country as a continuation of the same imperial repression. Journalist Margo Gontar, for example, explained how her great-grandfather used his boots to steal grain from a warehouse to feed the family: My great-grandfather Mykola was tall and handsome man. When Soviets started Holodomor – they were taking food from Ukrainians, were starving us – Mykola got a job at grain warehouse. Every time he went to work, he put on boots with wide lapels and walked around the warehouse. — Margo Gontar 🇺🇦 (@MargoGontar) November 26, 2022 Other accounts listed short, heartbreaking excerpts from family oral histories. #Holodomor youngest brother of my grandmother died without food. His dad, my grandgrandfather, went to Moscow from Ukraine for get some food for his wife and 5 children. When his came back, his son, Vasily, was already died. He was smallest, weakest.Never forgive you, russia — levkin (@levkin35239116) November 25, 2022 On the other hand, historian Taras Bilous offered an “unconventional” story about how the father of his Russian grand-grandmother smuggled a bag of grain from the Lipetsk region in Russia to the Donbas in Ukraine. Today is Holodomor Memorial Day. Probably, most Ukrainians (with the exception of Western Ukraine, which was not part of the USSR then) have a family story about the Holodomor. Me too, but a little non-conventional. 🧵 pic.twitter.com/RQYBVed5wC — Taras Bilous (@ahatanhel) November 26, 2022 Reading these testimonies, I began to wonder what my own ancestors who lived in the 1930s knew or could have known about these events. I couldn't get any first-hand accounts from my own grandparents since they are all deceased, so I decided to look for archived copies of newspapers from that time period available in the Kingdom of Yugoslavia, using the online archive of the National Library of Serbia. I doubt any of my grandparents read them at the time because they were just kids in 1932, but I think they reflect the public awareness within the Yugoslav media sphere at the start of the famine. The first such article, from the front page of the newspaper Vreme from Belgrade published on November 30, 1932, is short enough to be translated in its entirety. Ужасна глад у Совјетској Русији Глад је већа од оне 1921 године Варшава, 29 новембра. — Пољски листови објављују онеспокојавајуће вести о глади у Русији. Садашња глад, у погледу ужаса, надмаша глад иѕ 1921 године. Цене намирница скачу из дана у дан, и достижу већ фантастичне бројеве. Пола килограма масла продаје се данас ѕа 20 рубаља (400 динара), кило сапуна за 20 рубаља, четврт литра млека за четири рубље… Чак и страни инжињери пате од ове несташице, јер се у провинцији ништа не може купити, чак ни са страним валутама.