KIEV, Ukraine -- His frail hand covering his heart, Mykhailo Matvienko, 92, peered at the yellow flame of a candle on his kitchen table on Saturday and recounted his childhood during the Great Famine.

A searing event seen as one of the great atrocities of 20th-century Europe, the Ukrainian famine of 1933 killed more than three million people, by most estimates, and has become a touchstone in post-Soviet Ukrainian society.

''It is very important to remember the famine,'' Mr. Matvienko said. He lit his first candle in the morning, and kept them burning through the day.

On Saturday, Ukrainians lit candles on their tables or windowsills to commemorate the famine, called the Holodomor, which means death by hunger in Ukrainian. The atrocity is marked annually on the fourth Saturday of November.

But every year, fewer survivors remain alive to offer their firsthand accounts of the famine, a brutal narrative that for many Ukrainians helps make the case against Russian influence...