In the summer of 1933, our neighbor, who belonged to the committee that dispossessed villagers, came and told my mother “Leave, because tomorrow they’re going to take you away [arrest you].” So at night mother took us to Dnipropetrovsk. We were there for a couple of months, because villagers, and especially those who were dekulakized [dispossessed], didn’t have the right to vote or to hold passports. If you didn’t have a passport you couldn’t go anywhere, because if you came to the city, you had to register. And if you didn’t have a passport, the NKVD or GPU would take you away.
In the house across from the school an entire family died. We children would go and look. All that was left were bones. The teachers informed the village council and they came and tore down the house. Nobody buried the bones.
In Ukraine beggars walked around until WWII. During the Famine, everyone was a beggar. There was nobody to beg from.
In 1933 the collective farms were established, and cattle and horses were dying because there was nothing to feed them with. The dead animals were taken to a pit, and people would go and cut meat off the dead animals in order to get something to eat.
My mother told me that [our neighbor] Chorna was dying. She had a fifteen or sixteen year old son. This woman was dying, and I came there with her son Ivan. I had never seen a person die before. This was the first time in my life. When a person is dying of hunger, they wail like an animal. She was trying to eat her long hair. Somebody brought a small cup of milk and gave it to her. She drank the milk, recovered slightly, and died the next day.
During the Famine my mother told me not to let anyone in the house, except for her. My brother was in Dnipropetrovsk. People kidnapped children, killed them, made sausages and sold them in Dnipropetrovsk. But the death of Mrs. Chorna, I hear that wailing as if it were today.