ML – It started in 1932. Right after the harvest, there was nothing left in the stores. People went [to the fields] to collect stalks, but it wasn’t allowed; they were chased off. And they searched and searched the villages for food. In the cities they didn’t do searches, because there was nothing to take; we could only buy food for the day. But when we ate what we bought for the day, the next day we couldn’t buy anything [at that store]. [The stores] were empty everywhere. What to do? We’re hungry. We felt this. We’d get up, hungry, and ask "Mother, what’s there to eat?" She’d reply, "What can I give you? Father went to see, and there’s nothing to buy. What to do? Well, there’s still a bit of millet, I’ll make you some porridge." And then there’s nothing. So every day we felt this hunger. [Our parents] would take their rings, spoons, dishes, paintings, and trade them [for food]. But we couldn’t get enough food. My mother would ration the food out to us in spoons. We were hungry from day to day, and getting thinner by the day, and after the winter of ’33, we were barely alive. The spring of ’33 saved us because the beets that we planted, we’d rip them out, cook them with whatever we could, and that was [luxury]. That’s how we lived until the harvest of ’33.
Obviously we all knew that this Famine was man-made, because in 1932 there was a very good harvest. They couldn’t even ship all the [grain] out. At the railroad stations, there were piles of grain that they hadn’t been able to ship out yet. And during the winter of 32-33 this grain lay under the rain and snow, and if someone, hungry, tried to go there and take a handful of grain, they were shot on the spot. In the villages people were suffering very badly as well. Mother was very scared that her parents would die there and because we still had at least something to eat, she brought our grandmother to stay with us. My grandmother saw that she was eating her grandchildren’s food, and couldn’t take [food from her grandchildren], and asked to be taken back [to the village]. She said it was a sin to take food from the children and give it to her. So they took her back to the village, and after a short time, she died of starvation. Grandfather was already gone.
INTERVIEWER – Did they take him away?
ML - Grandfather died from starvation before they brought grandmother back.
We had a wooden fence and when I came out onto the street, I saw that a woman was lying by the fence. She was as big as a mountain. I ran into the house and called mother, telling here that a woman had fallen. Maybe she was asleep; I was afraid to say that she was dead. My mother took me by the hand and she saw that it was a dead person. My mother closed the gate, and begged me not to go [outside], so that I wouldn’t see these horrors. Later, I saw a woman walking down the street holding a boy by the hand, and she fell. She and the child both fell. I had come out on the street and saw this, and I became agitated, thinking that she’s probably died, that’s why she fell. I went back to the house and called my mother, and she said, “You’ve gone out on the street again. What did you see?” I said that I saw a woman and a boy walking, they were both very thin. Mother went out, closed the gate, and said a prayer. This I saw with my own eyes.
Of my mother’s siblings, in the village, three died. My mother’s youngest sister, Maria, Natalka, the third [oldest], and Vera all died. Of four sisters, the only one left alive was my mother, [who lived] in the city.