MONTICELLO — During the agonizing Ukrainian famine in the 1930s, Nadia Rajsz's grandmother got an up-close dose of Soviet cruelty.

“She told a Russian that her son was hungry,” said Rajsz, who is the Sullivan County Legislator from the Town of Lumberland. “He said, “sell him, get rid of him.'”

Joseph Stalin's enforced starvation of between seven to 10 million Ukrainians from 1932-1933 is a little-known atrocity.

“It is is our solemn responsibility to remember so that the world never forgets,” said Rajsz.

Vice chair of the Legislature, Rajsz is Ukrainian on both her mother and father's side. She lives in Glen Spey, which, with its 2,000 Ukrainians, represents one of the strongest Ukrainian strongholds, percentage-wise, in the U.S.

Last Monday the county's Human Rights Commission featured Rajsz's presentation on the famine, known as the Holodomor (from the Ukrainian words for “inflicting death by hunger.”) In the hearing room at the Government Center in Monticello, Rajsz noted that this year represents the 85th anniversary of this massive attempt at genocide.

It began with Stalin's plan to industrialize Russia and, to fund the plan, do away with individual farms for large state collective farms. But the hard-working Ukrainians have historically valued their independence and sovereignty, said Rajsz. They rebelled against the plan that would force them from their homes and land. The Soviet government responded by imposing crippling grain quotas in order to make the farmers capitulate.

Finally, thousands of Soviet agents went from house to house, literally confiscating all of the farmers' food and often executing people.

Hungry families died in the shadow of packed grain silos. Russia was exporting Ukrainian grain to the West while the Soviet government engaged in a huge cover-up of the starvation campaign. Ukrainians were not permitted to leave their area and news agencies were kept away.

At the height of the year-long famine, some 25,000 people died each day, Rajsz said.

The story of the Holodomor is particularly pertinent to today's geopolitical climate, she added.

“We continue to witness the horror of rising dictatorships throughout the world,” she said.

With the collapse of the USSR, Ukraine gained independence in 1991. But in 2014 Russian President Putin ordered the invasion and annexation of Ukraine's Crimean Peninsula. Then last month, Russian border guards intercepted and seized three Ukrainian navy boats sailing in international waters off Crimea. Meanwhile, Russia is now sending more troops to the border of Ukraine.

“We must ensure that despotism does not win out over democracy,” said Rajsz.

As for the victims of the 1930s Holodomor, “May you rest in peace,” she said. “You will always be respected and honored.”