Journalism, protests, and disinformation
This changed in March 1933, when a Welsh journalist named Gareth Jones returned from a reporting trip to Ukraine and held a press conference in Berlin where he spoke about the famine. His strong knowledge of Russian allowed him to communicate with villagers, and he gained unparalleled insight into the situation as a result. Jones went on to write articles about the famine in Ukraine for The Manchester Guardian and New York Evening Post. His reporting was responsible for breaking the news of the famine to much of the world. But by that time the famine was already reaching its deadly heights.
In addition to the writing done by Gareth Jones, other journalists reported on the famine as well. Malcom Muggeridge, who was also affiliated with The Manchester Guardian, traveled to Ukraine in 1933 and sent reports about the famine back to London. Together, Jones and Muggeridge’s accounts helped to provide more accurate assessments of the famine situation in Ukraine. Others, such as Harry Lang of the Jewish Daily Forward, also traveled to Ukraine where they spoke with Ukrainians and witnessed the horrors of the famine first-hand. Rhea Clyman, a Polish born Canadian journalist, wrote several articles about the famine in Canadian newspapers as well.
By late spring 1933, news of the famine could be found in papers across the world. This included outlets in Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, France, Germany, Norway, Poland, Spain, Switzerland, and the United States, among others. The news, however, came too late. By that time, millions of Ukrainians had already died of malnutrition, starvation, and famine-related diseases. Despite this, Ukrainian-language publications in Poland and the U.S. continued to write about the famine during the summer and fall of 1933. Their advocacy efforts helped to establish a day of national protest and mourning in late October 1933 where funds were raised for those Ukrainians who were still going hungry.
In Svoboda, news about the Holodomor was competing with headlines about the Depression, labor activities, Polish depredations on Ukrainians, the rise of Hitler in Germany, the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, and the lifting of Prohibition.