Discussion in Cologne about the ‘Holodomor perpetrator’ Lev Kopelev

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Coming to terms with the own guilt

Discussion in Cologne about the ‘Holodomor perpetrator’ Lev Kopelev

Until December 20, 2026, the travelling exhibition ‘Why are you still alive?’ will be on display at the Lev Kopelev Forum in Cologne city centre. Founded in 1998, the Forum – an NGO with its own event spaces – is named in memory of the Germanist and civil rights activist Kopelew (born in Kyiv in 1912, died in Cologne in 1997). In his youth, Kopelew, as an enthusiastic communist, had been involved in confiscating grain and other food from farmers on behalf of the state. These actions led directly to the Holodomor in 1932–1933, which claimed the lives of some 3.9 million people in Ukraine alone. He later regretted his involvement in these violent actions and wrote about them in his books (‘The Education of a True Believer’, published in English in 1980).

In Cologne, the historian Professor Tanja Penter (University of Heidelberg) spoke at the opening of the exhibition on the Holodomor and its aftermath. She described not only how it unfolded, but also the reaction abroad, where people were surprisingly well informed about the famine. For instance, Reich Chancellor Adolf Hitler said in a speech on February 10, 1933 at the Berlin Sportpalast: “Millions of people have starved to death in a country that could be a breadbasket for the whole world.” Moscow protested against this statement. When the Nazi regime later sought to ease tensions, it temporarily banned negative reports about the Soviet Union; after the German invasion in 1941, it exploited the issue, partly to divert attention from its own crimes. Democratic states were also informed of the famine at an early stage, but remained silent on the matter so as not to jeopardise relations with the Soviet Union, according to Penter.

According to the historian, after 1945 there was “virtually no interest in Germany in the history of the Holodomor”, primarily due to the “Russia-centred nature of German research on Eastern Europe”. Her colleague, Professor Gerhard Simon, who was also present, was an exception in this regard. Even in the so-called ‘Historians’ Dispute’ of the 1980s, the persecution of the kulaks was discussed, but not the Holodomor. Regrettably, it was only the Russian attack on Ukraine in 2022 that “brought about a significant change” in this regard.

Following the lecture, a controversial discussion ensued regarding the extent to which a direct line can be drawn from Stalin to Putin. Tanja Penter also expressed expectations of her colleagues in Ukraine: in future, she said, they should not always insist on the “singularity” of the Holodomor, but rather seek comparison and cooperation with colleagues in, for example, Kazakhstan, which was affected by famine to an even greater extent in relative terms as a result of Stalin’s policies. Research into the perpetrators of the Holodomor should also be deepened; there are already initial steps in this direction – and the forum’s namesake set a personal example in this regard. Kopelev and his wife Raissa Orlova were stripped of their citizenship in 1981 and settled in Cologne. In the Federal Republic of Germany, Kopelev was for a long time the best-known civil rights activist from the former Soviet Union.

Part of the exhibition on the Holodomor presented by the MHZ is a table displaying ‘emergency rations’ made from tree bark, leather, pine cones and other items that people in Ukraine ate in 1933 in order to survive. The evening’s musical programme was provided by jazz singer Kateryna Kravchenko and double bassist Béla Bluche. Among other pieces, they performed an excerpt from the moving ‘Holodomor Requiem’ (1991) by Yevhen Stankovych, set to poems by Dmytro Pavlychko. On 1 December 2026, there will be a film screening and discussion on the subject of the Holodomor.