As soon as a person died, they were placed on a cart, not every day, and taken to the cemetery. Some were taken on wheelbarrows, some on carts, all thrown into one pit, and now there is a field overgrown with weeds and acacias...

 

Every year, and when I started working... I worked as a paramedic. Due to my job, I needed to compile lists of the population — children, schoolchildren, each class, women... Going from house to house — some were home, and some were not... So, it was done practically like this: I would go to the village council, take the books, and make extracts... Those household books were available to me in both Novomoskovsk district (in Dnipropetrovsk region) and Krasnohrad district (in Kharkiv region), where I worked. These books contained all the information about each family: when someone was registered, when someone was deregistered, who was born, who died, everything... So, for the years 1932-1933, there were no records of people being born at all.

 

The winter of 1932-33, as my grandmother told me, was dry, almost without snow. In the spring, there was not a single rain, and throughout the summer, while they were harvesting grain, there were no rains either. Because of that drought, the yield was only half of what it should have been. From the field that used to yield ten sacks, they now only got five. But even with such a harvest (these are my grandmother's words, not mine), it would have been possible not to exterminate and to keep the poultry, feed the livestock, and we would not have died of hunger.

 

Well, no. They drove three carts into the yard; there was a commission from the village council, and a Komsomol member, my mother's cousin, Aunt Maria, was in that group. My mother used to say: “The little lords are worse than the lords themselves”. Blame Lenin, blame Putin... “The little lords are worse than the lords themselves”. They entered the house, and the first thing Maria did was rip the curtains from the windows, rip, rip — she tore them down. The men with rifles went to the chest, and Grandma Nastya said, 'Listen, guys, tell me what you need, and I'll take the lock off and open the chest for you, why break it?' — 'Stand still, shut up!' They emptied the blankets out of the chest, and laid everything, everything, on them, shaking it out. What were they looking for — documents or money, or some valuables? They rummaged through everything in that chest, tied it up in bundles, and loaded it onto the carts...

 

Then they tied up all the chickens, the pigs, tied up the cow and the horses behind the cart, the calves. They took everything they could. They even took the cooked food from the pots. The only thing they didn't take was the grain. But they threatened Grandpa in front of the children: at the time, my mother was 9 years old, she was born in 1924, Aunt Katya was ten, born in 1923, and Uncle Fedya was 3 years old. “I’m telling you, Sylvester, here, in front of your children, if you take even a handful of this grain tomorrow, we won't even take you out of the house, we'll shoot you right here in front of your children. Understood?” And they left.

 

They came back the next day, and Aunt Maria was with them, a Komsomol member and part of this food requisition squad. The first thing she did, no one forced her, was climb into the stove. Grandpa wasn't afraid and took some grain, maybe a liter or a liter and a half, and hid it in the stove, covered it with ash. And, as my mother used to say, may her hands wither, she pulled out that pot.

 

Leaving the village was impossible; the father of my mother-in-law left to try to find a job in Dnipropetrovsk, and he was never seen again. It seems that those who tried to leave were shot... I doubt he ever made it to Dnipropetrovsk. Leaving the village was forbidden.

 

They would lay them on a cart... Or they would take them out on wheelbarrows. Whoever had the strength. No one had the strength to dig graves, everyone was swollen. They would place the bodies on a cart or wheelbarrow used for manure and take them to that ditch... And no one buried them either, only later, when the pit was full, did they cover it up. No one had the strength to dig and to bury. People didn’t have the strength to walk across the house, let alone lift a shovel.

 

My mother’s sister, Aunt Katya, survived until the greenery came out. They would pick young shoots, dig up edible roots, gather grass and leaves, but most of all, they relied on acacia blossoms, from which they made flour, baked fritters, and ate them raw. When cucumbers started to grow, Aunt Katya, who was a year older than my mother — Uncle Fedya was 3 years, my mother was 9, she was was ten, and more cunning, went to the garden, ate a cucumber, probably more than one, and developed bloody diarrhea, from which she died. And Grandpa Sylvester also passed away.

 

My father was also from this village. My grandmother tells the same story: they came to the yard... My grandfather, Sidor Hryhorovych Letuchy, born in 1886, had some desyatinas of land, a cow, and a horse. They came to the yard and took everything. And my grandmother Palashka, whom everyone called Pavlivna, said: "Where we now have a bed in the house, there used to be a “polaty” — four poles and boards, and he threw straw up there, lay down, son of a bitch, and didn't get up, until he was swollen. I was swollen too, and the children were swollen, but he didn't want to join the kolkhoz. If he had joined, he might have survived, but he was hurt because they took everything from him. But "those who are offended are made to fetch water". He lay there, the bastard, until he was swollen and didn't get up until he died.

 

And after they took everything, I went to the kolkhoz. It was still dark when we started hoeing, and it was dark again when we were still in the field, only returning from the steppe. For that, they gave us “kulish” once a day. Truthfully, it was only called kulish. Because in real kulish, there should at least be a potato, but there were only peels, which we now give to pigs. Also, there should be millet in kulish, but instead, they put millet husks. So you could say it was a big bowl of hot water they gave us in the middle of the day. It was dark when they went to work. And they weeded millet, and potatoes, and beets. Everything was weeded, and even the wheat was weeded. And you sip this hot kulish, even though you were hungry, but still, even though it’s food for pigs, it doesn’t suit your soul, but it’s still hot. You need to survive, you need to work.

 

They ate this, and with it they were given another 100 grams of so-called bread — cake with something black-spotted, similar to pulp. Baba did not eat it — three children were waiting at home: Vasily was 16 years old, Mikhail was ten and Shurka was three. She would wrap that piece of bread in a handkerchief and tuck it under her clothes. “They wouldn’t sleep, waiting for me to come home from work and divide that 100-gram piece of bread among the three of them,” — Grandma said. “They were swollen, and so was I...”

 

My father used to say that he survived thanks to potatoes – when they finish blooming, they produce green berries – seeds. He ate those. So he never ate potatoes again. He ate so many that he couldn't stand the sight of potatoes for the rest of his life. Borscht or soup had to be served to him without potatoes, and if any slipped in, he might hit you on the head with a spoon. He would say, "I had my fill of them in 1933, when I was 10 years old. I had enough for a lifetime." ...And he lived to be 86.