Commemorating Gareth Jones

04.05.2022

On 12 May The National Library of Wales will hold a special event in the Senedd to mark the contribution of the Welsh journalist Gareth Jones, who reported on the Holodomor in Ukraine, the tensions in Europe in the mid 1930s and the rise of the Nazi Party in Germany.

His exposé on the famine in Ukraine, which was made deadlier by a series of political decrees and decisions, was based on his own eyewitness testimony after travelling in the region and revealed the scale and horror of the Holodomor to an international audience.

This event is being held to honour the contribution made by Gareth Jones to journalism and international affairs and to celebrate the conclusion of the digitisation of much of his archive held at the National Library of Wales. Key to completing this digitisation project has been the generous financial support provided by the the Ukrainian National Women's League of America, Temerty Foundation, the Ukrainian Canadian Civil Liberties Foundation, the Holodomor Research and Education Consortium (HREC) and Russ and Karen Chelak.

Pedr ap Llwyd, Chief Executive and Librarian of The National Library of Wales said:
"I am very grateful for the financial support we received to digitise Gareth's archive as part of the Library's digitisation strategy. It is an extremely important archive and can now be shared with historians and researchers across the world. We also owe a great debt to Gareth's family for depositing the papers with us in the Library."

Lubomyr Luciuk, Professor of Political Geography at the Royal Military College of Canada added:
“Gareth Jones paid with his life for being a truth-teller, one of the first journalists to break the story about the genocidal Great Famine of 1932-1933 in Soviet Ukraine, the Holodomor. This brave Welshman's commitment to reporting on the horrors of what was happening, even as the Soviets, their fellow travellers, and even Western governments covered up the truth, needs to be remembered and hallowed, particularly at a time when Ukraine is again a victim of war, invasion and the genocidal agenda of Vladimir Putin and his KGB confederates."

Oksana Lodziuk Krywulych, Officer-at-large of the Ukrainian National Women's League of America (UNWLA) said:
"The UNWLA is honored to be a sponsor of the digitization of Gareth Jones diaries. The UNWLA remains steadfast in its commitment to be a vehicle of awareness and education about the Ukrainian genocide, known as the Holodomor. The Ukrainian nation owes a debt of gratitude to Gareth Jones, a great man, who was not afraid to accurately report on the horrors of the Holodomor. He deserves to be honored and remembered for documenting the truth when it was denied by many in the West. His reporting is especially telling today as Ukraine is once again suffering a genocide at the hands of the same perpetrator, while the world watches in real time."

Sponsored by Mick Antoniw MS, the event will include presentations by Professor Lubomyr Luciuk and journalist Martin Shipton, together with readings of extracts from Gareth Jones’ diaries and letters by Julian Lewis Jones.

Coffáu Gareth Jones | Commemorating Gareth Jones
Senedd building, Cardiff Bay
Thursday 12 May at 12:00pm

Notes for editors:
Gareth Vaughan Jones (1905–35) was a gifted researcher, journalist and author who met his death at the hands of supposed Chinese ‘bandits’ in Inner Mongolia in August 1935. During his career he travelled the world, reporting on the Holodomor in Ukraine and Nazism in Germany.

The archives include the famous ‘Hitler diary’ kept by Gareth during his visit to Germany in the spring of 1933 and describes conditions and various events in Nazi Germany shortly after the Fuehrer had come to power there and presents uncannily perceptive pen-portraits of Hitler himself and Goebbels.

A further group of six pocket diaries describe in some detail Gareth’s visits to the Soviet Union between 1931 and 1933, especially his travels there, the people whom he meets and graphic accounts of the conditions of the Holodomor, the severe famine which accounted for millions of deaths in Ukraine, and which Gareth Jones almost alone reported in British newspapers and journals at the time. Gareth Jones’s diaries, perhaps represent the only independent verification of arguably Stalin’s greatest atrocity.
Gareth Vaughan Jones Papers
A selection of his collection is now digitised and can be viewed on our website.

**Mae'r datganiad yma hefyd ar gael yn y Gymraeg**

--ENDS--

Further information:

Nia Wyn Dafydd

nia.dafydd@llgc.org.uk