The Ukranian Church of St John the Baptist in Maylands held a Holodomor memorial service this week to remember the millions of people who died during a peacetime famine in 1932.
About eight million Ukrainians died of starvation during the man-made famine in Ukrainian SSR between 1932 and 1933.
A service was conducted by Fr Wolodymyr Kalinecki to remember the tragedy and was followed by a talk by the president of the Ukrainian Society Dr Lesa Melnyczuk.
Dr Melnyczuk is the author of Silent Memories, Traumatic Lives; Ukrainian Migrant Refugees in Western Australia, which tells of the genocide of the Ukrainian people by Soviet Russia under Stalin.
It has only been in recent years, since the demise of the Soviet Union that Ukrainian migrants living in WA have been able to speak of their experiences without the fear their relatives back home would be shot or sent to Soviet forced labor camps.
The Australian Government officially recognised the Holodomor as an act of genocide in 2003.
Dr Melnyczuk’s book is available for purchase at the WA Museum.