An emotional powerhouse of a film, it is an emotionally resonant, riveting telling of history. BITTER HARVEST is both haunting and engrossing. To see this piece of history now unfold on the big screen is even more shocking than when I first learned of it decades ago. I first learned of Holodomor in junior high school from a classmate whose grandparents and parents (children at the time) fled the Ukraine and escaped Stalin’s rule, eventually making their way to the United States to build a future of freedom. Some people escaped and have either lived to see this story told or have passed the experiences on to their children and grandchildren so they may tell the story.
Pits were dug into which the dead bodies were cast away like garbage. Between 2.5 and 7.5 million people died from not only starvation, but from ensuing violence of Stalin’s regime in enforcing his orders. Holodomor (meaning “death by hunger” in Ukrainian) was the forced famine of the Ukraine people as ordered by Joseph Stalin between 19. Mendeluk’s mother was a survivor of Holodomor. Bachynsky Hoover’s family fled the Ukraine in the 1940’s. Both men are not only of Ukrainian heritage, but have a direct tie to Holodomor.
It’s a piece of world history that, like so many cases of genocide and horror, had been pushed under the rug until someone dared to shine a light and tell the story in this case, director George Mendeluk and screenwriter Richard Bachynsky Hoover with the historical drama, BITTER HARVEST. For too long, it was an event denied, much like the Holocaust. How many of you know about “Holodomor” or have even heard about it in world history classes in school? Probably not many.
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