"To Eat Your Children is a Barbarian Act"

Famine can cause a spread of a large group of men cannibalizing each other.  This apparently happened during the Holodomor also known as the “Famine-Genocide in Ukraine”.  During the man-made famine millions of people who reside in Ukraine died from the starvation.  It was also regarded by other countries as the genocide of Ukraine.

The death toll was estimated by the scholars at around 1.8-12 million individuals perished on the said famine.  It is said that in order for one to survive, one has to result to desperate measure.  Based on the work of Timothy Snyder’s “Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin”:

“Survival was a moral as well as a physical struggle. A woman doctor wrote to a friend in June 1933 that she had not yet become a cannibal, but was "not sure that I shall not be one by the time my letter reaches you." The good people died first. Those who refused to steal or to prostitute themselves died. Those who gave food to others died. Those who refused to eat corpses died. Those who refused to kill their fellow man died.”

During the Holodomor at least 2,500 individuals have been imprisoned due to the act of cannibalism.  The Soviet officials spread posters saying “To eat your own children is a barbarian act” in hopes of minimizing the terror of cannibalism.

Below is the account of Rev. E.E. Shields about the Cannibalism in Ukraine.  It was found in the Edmonton Journal published on the 17th of February 1933.

Toronto, Feb. 17 - "There are well-authenticated reports of cannibalism in certain areas of U.S.S.R.," declared Rev. E.E. Shields of Chicago in an address Thursday night on what is happening today "in red Russia." Figures from the London Times of March 16, 1922, were quoted by the speaker, showing "the wholesale slaughter of 1,766,119 men and women" and indicating that "the test, upon which depending either life or death, was the nature and condition of the hands. If they did not indicate toil, the person was taken out with less than scant ceremony and destroyed."