Execution by Hunger (25 page)

I
CANNOT find the words to describe what my eyes saw in the spring of 1933, but since those awesome memories still haunt me, I shall endeavor to convey my recollections of the sufferings and deaths of my fellow Ukrainians.

World War II was a reality, and I was a part of it. I saw the multitude of dead and mutilated bodies; I heard the cries of despair, and the moans of agony all around me. Day after day, I felt cold and hunger. I was constantly in fear of death. But all of that is now seen through the mist of time. In the haziness of those memories, I see a dim spark of light. This spark is the recognition that those sufferings were caused by war, that I and others at that time had a chance to fight for our lives, to defend ourselves no matter how slim those chances might be. Above all, I realized that while fighting in the war, I had not been completely abandoned. The military was always there with daily food rations, no matter how deficient in quantity and quality. We were also clothed (after a fashion), and barracks as such for sleep when possible were provided. The sufferings of war pale in comparison with the events in our village, all of which remain in my memory as absolute in horror.

Those of us who were still alive harbored a secret and final hope that the coming of the spring of 1933 would bring us some relief. We thought that the new vegetation would help us live through the long months of waiting for the new bread. Nourished by this hope, we were able to carry on until we saw the first signs of green. Sadly, however, many of the villagers were no longer alive by the time the long-awaited spring finally arrived. And many of those who lived long enough to see the passing of winter found their death in the very vegetables and grasses they were so hopefully and patiently awaiting.

That spring of 1933 in Ukraine was unusually cold. In our region, the spring weather usually set in around the beginning of April. The snow would melt quickly, and the green blanket of vegetation would immediately appear in its place. But in 1933, snow was still visible everywhere in mid-April. An icy-cold wind blew continually. It would often bring heavy clouds of rain or snow, or both, and the village would sink deep into mud and slush again. Then a freeze would turn all that into knobs of dirty ice.

Starvation in our village now reached a point at which death was a desirable relief. Many houses around us had already been standing for a long time with no signs of life. As the snow slowly melted away, human corpses were exposed to view everywhere: in backyards, on roads, in fields. Those dead bodies constituted a pathetic problem for the living. As the weather warmed, they started to thaw and decay. The stench which resulted plagued us, and we could do nothing about it. The villagers who survived were unable to bury the dead, and no one from the outside seemed in a hurry to do it, so the bodies were just left wherever they happened to die. Those in the fields or in the forest, fell prey to wild animals; those in their homes became the prey of countless rats.

For the third time, the village was stricken with panic. Those who were fortunate enough to remain alive were in the depths of despair. The resources they possessed had been used up long ago. They all finally had to face the shocking truth that there was nothing to eat, and no hope of getting any help: that death from starvation was their imminent fate.

Most of these desperate villagers reconciled themselves to this fact. They stayed at home, and their conditions were indescribable. They were unkempt and haggard, and so weak that they could hardly drag one foot after the other. They just sat, or lay down silently, too feeble even to talk.

The bodies of some were reduced to skeletons, with their skin hanging grayish-yellow and loose over their bones. Their faces looked like rubber masks with large, bulging, immobile eyes. Their necks seemed to have shrunk into their shoulders. The look in their eyes was glassy, heralding their approaching death.

The bodies of others were swollen, a final stage of starvation. Their faces, arms, legs and stomachs resembled the surfaces of plastic balloons. The tissues would soon crack and burst, resulting in the fast deterioration of their bodies.

The thaw brought with it a new wave of beggars. Those who still had strength enough to move left their dwellings and took off in search of food. Old and young, mostly women and children, slowly moved from house to house dragging their rag-covered feet. They pleaded for food: a potato, or a piece of bread, or at least a kernel—a single kernel!—of corn. At the onset of the famine, I remember how the emaciated would come to the doorstep, often sobbing, and would ask for some spare food. If refused, they would excuse themselves politely and go away, apologizing for bothering us.

But this spring's beggars presented an entirely different picture. These desperate people, numbed by cruelty and injustice as well as hunger, were no longer the modest, honorable small farmers they had been before. Their fear of starvation was so great that they lost all semblance of self-control, becoming more like wild, hungry beasts in their search for food. They no longer distinguished friends from enemies and were ready to commit even murder for a mere scrap. Their clothes had long ago turned to rags, and they themselves were worn out and exhausted to the point of collapse.

With protruding frightened eyes and outstretched hands, they would approach someone, but this time they did not plead: they were voiceless; they just cried. Often their heavy tears were mixed with fluid slowly oozing out of the cracks in their swollen faces. They whispered and begged for a crumb of bread.

Another sign of almost imminent death from starvation was the body lice, those small, flat, wingless, parasitic insects who were the constant companions of the wretched and impoverished. The starving villagers were no longer able to take care of their sanitary needs, nor had they strength to fetch water, let alone heat it in order to bathe themselves, or wash their clothes and their bedding. Those who still had strength could do some washing, but not properly because they had no soap. For a few years now, not a single bar of soap had been seen in the village. But, even if soap had been available, we could not buy it. First, we had no money; second, we were prohibited from buying any merchandise in the stores as our grain quotas had not been met. As a result, all of us were dirty and infected with lice.

As the limbs of a starving person turn cold with the approach of death, the lice begin to migrate to the warmer facial areas such as the eye sockets, ears, mouth corners, and nostrils. When this happened, it was an unmistakable sign that the starving person's sufferings would soon come to an end.

 

The plight of the children was one of the most heartbreaking experiences for me during that time, and their pathetic faces, parched or swollen, and streaked with tears, will remain in my memory forever.

They could not understand why they couldn't get a piece of bread or something else to eat. They were not able to comprehend what was going on in their own small world. Thinking of them still makes me tremble with horror. God is my witness that as I write these words, the paper is wet with my tears.

Not many children in our neighborhood had survived the terrible winter, but those who had were reduced to mere skeletons, too weak to cry. The heads on their small thin necks looked like inflated balloons. Their small bony arms and legs were like sticks protruding from their little bodies. Their stomachs were bloated to unusual proportions, and water flowed uninterruptedly from their genitals. Those childish faces looked prematurely aged and twisted. They resembled old folks: wrinkled, listless, and very, very sad. At their stage of starvation, they were in a constant stupor which is peculiar to those who suffer from extreme hunger. It seemed as if nature itself had conspired with the Communist regime to add a final touch of pathos and horror to the sufferings the children had to endure. Hair had started to grow on the faces of some, mainly on their foreheads and temples. I saw a few such children and they looked so strange to me—like creatures from another planet, and they left me with a feeling of helplessness and doom.

Often starvation would sweep away an entire family. The adult members would die first, leaving the children alone in a cold house, half-naked and hungry, to fend for themselves. One can imagine what happened to such hopeless children: these orphans, scantily clad and feet wrapped in rags, joined the rest of the beggars. Struggling in the snow, they would first go to their nearest neighbors only to find that they too were dead. Then they would go to another house and yet another farther away. Compassionate villagers who were still alive would let a child or two stay with them only to watch them slowly die.

Yet miraculously, some children managed to survive. These were mostly boys and girls between ten and fifteen years of age. With the coming of spring, they saw their chances of survival in terms of leaving home, and going to the city. A few, but
very
few, children managed to do just that and were fortunate in finding help and understanding from some of the urban dwellers. Others, less fortunate, were picked up by the militia and locked up in the Children's Detention Home. These children had a better chance of surviving the famine, although we heard that many of them also died. And then, there were those whose fate it was to join the ranks of the city's juvenile criminals. God alone knows what happened to them. Finally, there were those who neither reached the city nor were picked up by the militia. They lay dead wherever they had fallen for days or even weeks, until someone would drag them out of sight into some ditch like a dead animal.

I saw many tragic events in which children were the innocent victims, but one episode in particular emerges from my memories of that spring as a symbol of humanity gone completely mad. It was sometime at the onset of April. One early morning while we still lay in our beds, we heard a child's cry and a weak knocking on the door. I was the first to jump out of bed. As I opened the door, I saw a small girl of about four. She stood trembling from the cold and exhaustion with streams of tears flowing down her famished little cheeks. We knew her! It was Maria, the daughter of our neighbor Hana, who also had a seven-year-old son and lived about half a mile from us. Hana's husband, a young and industrious farmer, had been arrested like many others, for no apparent reason, and exiled somewhere to a concentration camp about two years before. Hana was left alone with her two children to struggle for food, like all the rest of us. However, as winter came and starvation struck us, we lost track of her.

I let the child into the house.

“My mommy won't wake up!” the child announced, wiping away the tears with the sleeve of her dirty coat.

Mother and I glanced at each other. A short while later, my brother Mykola and I were on our way to Hana's home. When we entered the house, our fears were confirmed. Hana was dead, lying on her back on the sleeping bench. Her bulging glassy eyes seemed to be looking at us. Her widely opened mouth still seemed to be gasping for air. We could see that she had met her death not too long before Maria had knocked on our front door. On Hana's cheek we could still see the traces of her tears; we could also see the lice still moving back and forth like ants, in search of a warm spot. Next to her, wrapped in some cloth, lay her dead son. The one-room house was empty and dirty. There was no furniture except for two benches, and no trace of food. The mud floor had been dug up all over, and there were holes in the walls. The chimneys of the cooking and heating stoves were totally ruined. We recognized immediately the work of the Bread Procurement Commission. There was no doubt that they had been there recently, searching for “hidden” foodstuffs.

Mykola and I stood there aghast. I felt the impulse to either run away screaming, or to sit down next to their dead bodies and hold their cold hand in mine in sorrow and sympathy, but I did neither. I just stood there petrified, and looking at the dead mother and her young son, I asked the question:

“Why? Why did they have to die?”

We left the bodies in the house hoping that soon the kolhosp burial brigade would pick them up on their daily search for bodies. This brigade was set up about two months before for the purpose of collecting and burying the corpses of the starved villagers.

Little Maria survived the famine. She stayed with us for a while until her relatives, who lived in one of the cities, took her into their family.

O
NE DAY, at the end of April 1933, I remember my mother suggesting that my brother and I make a visit to our distant relative Priska, who lived about four miles from our home. We gladly agreed. On our way we could also visit some of our acquaintances and school friends whom we had not seen since the beginning of last winter. We often wondered what had happened to them, and we were prepared for the worst.

We took the road along a strip of sand dunes that separated the woods from our neighborhood. It was here we had hidden some of our food. It was a pleasant, sunny spring day. All around us birds fluttered form bush to bush, chirping cheerfully. New greenery was visible everywhere, but not a single human being was in sight; there were no human voices to be heard. We did not see any cats or dogs. It was as if some terrible plague had passed through the village, leaving alive only the birds and the insects.

We passed by Antin's house on the hill where a few weeks before we had looked for our friend Ivan. Approaching closer, we heard to our surprise some boisterous voices. There was activity around Antin's house: some people were searching for something. We couldn't help stopping to see what was going on, and what we discovered was the Hundred's Bread Procurement Commission in action. The village Thousander, Comrade Livshits, was personally overseeing the search and seizure operation. He stood in front of the house shouting orders from time to time. Several Commission members were digging around the house with spades. Others were busy inside the house and in the shed.

Absurd as it may seem, the Bread Procurement Commission in our village continued its search for “hidden” foodstuffs, in spite of the mass starvation raging all around them. They continued going from one house to another, paying special attention to those who showed some signs of life. They also continued demanding grain quotas, or simply searched farmers' premises without even bothering to ask their permission. It was also necessary and mandatory for us to attend meetings and listen to propagandists, agitators, and other Party officials harangue us endlessly about the merits of grain delivery to the state, or what the Party and government position was on certain issues and events, or what decrees had newly been passed by the state. Naturally, only a very few individuals were seen at such meetings since many of our number had already been killed by famine. Those left alive no longer had the physical strength to leave their homes.

But thanks to those meetings, those of us able to attend learned that sometime in January the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, after accusing Ukraine of deliberately sabotaging the fulfillment of grain quotas, had sent Postyshev, a sadistically cruel Russian chauvinist, as its viceroy to Ukraine. His appointment played a crucial role in the lives of all Ukrainians.

It was Postyshev who brought along and implemented a new Soviet Russian policy in Ukraine. It was an openly proclaimed policy of deliberate and unrestricted destruction of everything that was Ukrainian. From now on, we were continually reminded that there were “bourgeois-nationalists” among us whom we must destroy. They were the ones causing our “food difficulties.” Those hideous “bourgeois-nationalists” were starving us to death, and on and on went the accusations. At every meeting, we were told that the fight against the Ukrainian national movement was as important for the “construction of socialist society” as the struggle for bread. This new campaign against the Ukrainian national movement had resulted in the annihiliation of the Ukrainian central government as well as all Ukrainian cultural, educational, and social institutions. There were also arrests in our village as a result of this new policy.

With the arrival of Postyshev, the grain collection campaign was changed into a Seed Collection Campaign. The fact that the farmers were starving did not bother the authorities at all. What they worried about was the lack of seed for the spring sowing. I remember one of Postyshev's speeches in which he instructed all Party organizations to collect seed with the same methods used in collecting grain. He also ordered the expropriation of grain seed which had supposedly been stolen or illegally distributed as food for the members of collective farms. It was made clear that the needed seed must be collected and delivered immediately and at all costs. But it was beyond our comprehension that the Communist authorities could so ruthlessly demand grain at a time when the bodies of starved farmers were littering the roads, fields, and backyards. As we listened to these harangues, we often thought that perhaps there was hidden sabotage at work to discredit the Communist Party. But we were naive. Devoid of all human emotions, the Party wanted grain from us; starvation was no excuse. The Party officials treated us with contempt and impatience. All this was heightened by the traditional Russian distrust and dislike of Ukrainian farmers. Thus we were forced to listen to the endless lies of these Russian officials that there was no famine; that no one was starving. Those who died were the lazy ones who refused to work at the collective farm. They deserved to die.

But, let's return to Antin's house, where the Bread Procurement Commission members were searching his premises on the hill. There were rumors that Antin and his mother, deranged by hunger, had become cannibals. But that was not the reason the commission had come there on that particular day. We learned that Comrade Thousander had once met Antin and noticed he still looked well fed and vigorous. To Comrade Thousander that only meant that Antin had some hidden food, so he arranged with the First Hundred commission to have a thorough search made of Antin's place for “hidden” foodstuffs. Imagine their surprise that instead of finding grain, they found human remains. We, at that point, noticed Antin and his mother standing at some distance from Comrade Thousander. Their hands were tied behind their backs, and they were guarded by one of the Thousanders armed with a shotgun. In front of them, was a heap of human remains, bones and skulls. It was a nauseating sight, and so is its sordid memory. There was no doubt in our minds that the remains of our friend Ivan were in that horrible pile.

We left the scene with revulsion and disgust, hurrying on to Priska's house.

 

Priska's fate was not much different from that of many of the unfortunate villagers' families. For refusing to join the collective farm in 1930, and then failing to meet the state taxes and delivery quotas, her husband was labeled a kurkul and banished like many others to a distant notorious concentration camp. Later on, her husband was interned in a forced labor camp from which news reached Priska that he had died while digging the Baltic Sea-White Sea Canal. Priska was left alone with her two children: a boy about seven and a five-year-old daughter.

Priska was at home when we reached her place. She was famished to such a degree that she could hardly move. She told us her sad story laboriously since it was already difficult for her to talk.

Left alone, she had to work hard to support her children. Her work consisted mainly of running around searching for food. There was not much she could find: a couple of beets, a few potatoes, a slice or two of bread. Still, it was not so bad during the summer and autumn when she was able to work at the collective farm. While working there, she received two pounds of either bread or flour. In addition, she, like the rest of the kolhosp members who were able to work, received two hot meals daily. It was usually some kind of millet or buckwheat gruel or porridge. With her food rations, she was also able to feed her children, but when winter came work stopped at the kolhosp, and her bread rations and hot meals also ceased. The small amount of food that she had received as payment in kind for her labor didn't last very long. Nevertheless, she and her children managed somehow to stay alive until March. Then came the inevitable: her son succumbed to starvation. She buried him in the orchard under a cherry tree. She also wished to be buried under a cherry tree after her death.

Now left with her little daughter, Maria, she knew that soon it would be their turn to die. She was afraid of the possibility that she would die first, leaving her young daughter all alone. That thought was unbearable to Priska; she had to do something to save little Maria from that fate. She had heard rumors about a Children's Shelter in a town about twenty miles from our village. One April morning, the two of them started their twenty-mile journey on foot. Arriving at the so-called Children's Shelter, she discovered that it was a Militia Detention Home for Children. Even though she was frightened, disappointed, and frustrated with this turn of events, she decided that even that place would be better than caring for her child alone. After thinking very carefully, she instructed little Maria what she should do and say and sent her to the entrance door. As soon as the door was opened and little Maria entered, Priska disappeared around the street corner, never to see her little daughter again.

At this point in her story, Priska became silent. Her bulging glassy eyes had a stunned look, and her lips trembled, but she did not cry. We just stood there watching her silently.

After Priska regained her composure, she completed her story. She had no peace in her heart after giving up Maria and leaving her to an unknown destiny. She was heartbroken and had feelings of great guilt and remorse. She could not stop the tears from flowing. During the long cold sleepless nights, in her hallucinations little Maria would appear before her. Sitting down on the bench in the corner under the icons, Priska could sense her staring at her. Then Maria would burst out crying, begging for bread and saying:

“Mama, why have you abandoned me? Don't you love me anymore?”

Each night her little daughter would appear, Priska said, and each time she would ask her the same question:

“Mama, why have you abandoned me? Don't you love me anymore?”

Finally, in her frenzied state, she walked those twenty miles again to where she had left Maria. Her efforts were in vain, and she never did see her again.

It was growing dark by the time Priska finished her story, and we had to leave for home. The next day, Mother sent us back to Priska's house with some food, but it was too late. We found her dead on the floor. In her despondency, she chose to die a quicker, less agonizing death. She mustered all her remaining strength to poison herself by inhaling charcoal fumes.

We remembered her desire to be buried under a cherry tree, and at nightfall we buried her close to her young son.

Such suicides became a common occurrence in our village at that time. Many people took their lives by carbon monoxide poisoning like Priska did. It was simple and painless. Those who decided on such a step were mostly women whose husbands had been arrested and sent to concentration camps, and who had lost their children in their heroic struggle with starvation. They would seal the chimneys, the doors, and windows, make a fire in the oven or in the middle of the room on the mud floor, and die from the deadly fumes. Others would set the whole house on fire.

But the most common form of suicide was by hanging. Among those who chose this way were the village functionaries, especially the leaders of the Tens and Fives. Some members of the Communist Party also committed suicide in one way or another. The authorities were aware of these mass suicides, but did nothing to stop them.

 

During the following days, we visited other relatives and friends about whom we were anxious. Anything could have happened to them since we last saw them.

First, we stopped at my friend Vasyl's house. His father had been arrested and banished to some northern region. He had lived with his mother and two little sisters, but we had heard nothing from him since he had dropped out of school sometime in December of last year. As we entered the house, we saw the two famished girls and their mother. All three of them looked like living mummies. They were crouched silently in the middle of the room on the mud floor. They were cooking weeds, orach and nettle, which grew abundantly in our region. The girls left our greetings unanswered. All their attention was concentrated on the bubbling liquid in the pot. They watched it greedily, with spoons in their hands. The mother started weeping upon seeing us. It took us quite a while to calm her down so she could answer our inquiries about Vasyl, and then she told us his story.

At the onset of the famine, Vasyl had joined some men experienced in traveling to distant places. He went with them to Russia to buy food. He was lucky. He returned home with several loaves of bread and about thirty pounds of flour. That was last December. In March of 1933, when the famine reached its most disastrous proportions, Vasyl decided to repeat his trip, but this time he was not so lucky. He somehow managed to catch a train to a small Russian town not far from Moscow. From there, he was able to inform his mother in some way that he was on his way home. However, he never returned. His mother later learned that he had been arrested at a border railroad station, and eventually tried as a black marketeer, convicted, and given a sentence of five years of hard labor. No one had heard from him since.

There were many cases like Vasyl's. Despite the official prohibition against travel in search of jobs and food, and in spite of our miserable living conditions and the fact that we were practically in a state of collapse from hunger, we couldn't simply give up. No one who could still stand wanted to resign himself to death without a struggle.

There was no attempt of any kind to organize some relief for the starving families in our village either by the authorities or by private individuals. On the contrary, when a local teacher tried to put some relief in motion, he was arrested and sent to dig the Baltic Sea—White Sea Canal. He was accused of “spreading false rumors that our villagers were starving.” The idea of organized relief vanished together with him. We were on our own to fight the disaster individually without the benefit of social organization. The mass exodus of the villagers was not only to neighboring towns and cities. Many, like Vasyl, went to farther regions and even to Russia where there was no famine. It was not easy to do, even if one had money. As I've noted before, we were not allowed to buy train tickets, except when we had special permission from the village soviet. In 1933, the ordinance was being enforced much more strictly. The trains were guarded by soldiers of the special forces, and it was impossible to sneak onto a train without showing a ticket. Besides that, the villagers did not have the passports which had been introduced the previous December, so it was easier to check all passengers traveling north or east from Ukraine and catch the “illegal” ones. Anyone caught was forcibly returned to his village or sent to a labor camp.