Gareth Jones (1905-1934), the young Welsh investigative journalist, is revered in Ukraine as a national hero and is now rightly recognised as the first reporter to reveal the horror of the Holodomor, the Soviet Government-induced famine of the early 1930s, which killed millions of Ukrainians. Gareth Jones - Eyewitness to the Holodomor is a meticulous study of the efforts made by the the Aberystwyth and Cambridge-educated journalist, a fluent Russian-speaker, to investigate the Soviet Government's denials, that its Five Year Plan had led to mass starvation, by visiting Ukraine in 1933 and reporting what he saw and witnessed: `I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, "There is no bread. We are dying"'. Determined to alert the world to the suffering in Ukraine and to expose Stalin's policies and prejudices towards the Ukrainian people, Jones published numerous articles in the UK (The Times, Daily Express and Western Mail) and the USA (New York Evening News and Chicago Daily News) with headlines such as `Famine Grips Russia. Millions Dying', but soon saw his credibility and integrity attacked and denigrated by Soviet sympathizers, most famously by Moscow-based Walter Duranty of the New York Times. Gareth Jones was killed by bandits the following year, on the eve of his 30th birthday, whilst travelling in Japanese-controlled China. There remain strong suspicions that Jones' murder was arranged by the Soviets in revenge for his eyewitness reporting which brought global attention to the Holodomor.

Since Gareth Jones's historic press conference in Berlin in 1933 when he became the first journalist to reveal the existence and extent of the Holodomor, a Soviet-induced famine in Ukraine in which over four million people died, Jones and his professional reputation have been the focus of a determined campaign by those who deny the famine ever happened. Attempts to destroy Jones's character, which would de facto undermine the reliability of his reports of the Holodomor, have increased in recent years following global recognition and acclaim for the importance of his work. Citing his professional connections with the Nazis, including: Flying on Hitler's plane on the day he became German Chancellor Having a front row seat at a Nazi rally in Frankfurt Noting that he enjoyed a private dinner with Goebbels Having several acquaintances who later took key roles in the Third Reich His 1935 obituary in a Nazi paper which stated Jones was 'one of us' and his self-confessed love of Germany, speaking fluent German, and making annual visits from 1923-34, there have been a number of accusations that Jones was, in fact, a Nazi sympathiser and fascist collaborator. In this groundbreaking new study, Ray Gamache, an acknowledged expert on Gareth Jones and the reporting of the Holodomor, thoroughly examines Jones's extensive notebooks, letters, articles and speeches to investigate these claims. In Gareth Jones - On Assignment in Nazi Germany 1933-34, Gamache provides a compelling narrative which refutes claims of Jones's Nazi sympathies, stating: 'That he encountered some of the most impactful historical figures and events of the 1930s is beyond dispute, and his reporting of those events offers considerable insight into what responsible journalism looked like at that time.'