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November 21, 2008 - Kyiv, Ukraine A Canadian delegation led by Jason Kenney, Minister of Citizenship, Immigration and Multiculturalism and Paul Grod, President of the Ukrainian Canadian Congress paid tribute to the more than 120,000 victims of Soviet oppression that were executed and buried in the Bykivnia Forest on the outskirts of Kyiv, Ukraine.
"Soviet Communist oppression was genocidal and methodical," stated Paul Grod. "The Bykivnia Memorial Compound is yet another example of the brutality and criminality of the regimes of Joseph Stalin and other Soviet rulers."
In 1936-1941, the Bykivnia Forest was used for mass burials of those repressed and executed by the NKVD (Soviet secret police) in Kyiv. In 1936, the construction of a special zone for secret burials officially began. Until Kyiv's occupation by the Nazis, the victims of the Communist regime had been systematically buried in the woods near Bykivnia. Also mass graves of WWII Soviet prisoners of the war and Ostarbeiters were found, who returned home from the German prison in 1941-1945. According to researchers some 120,000-130,000 people were buried in the Bykivnia Forest. The Bykivnia Graves State Historical and Memorial Preserve is today a national historical site. June 24, 2001, Pope John Paul II visited Bykivnia.
Joining Minister Kenney and Paul Grod were Senator Raynell Andreychuk Honourary Chair of the UCC National Holodomor Commemoration Committee, Eugene Czolij, President Ukrainian World Congress, Mary Szkambara, President World Federation of Ukrainian Women's Organizations, Ambassador of Canada to Ukraine, Daniel Caron, and Ambassador of Ukraine to Canada, Ihor Ostash.
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