BY THE beginning of May, our village had become a desolate place, horror lurking in every house and in every backyard. We felt forsaken by the entire world. The main road which had been the artery of traffic and the center of village life was empty and overgrown with weeds and grass. Humans and animals were rarely seen on it. Many houses stood dilapidated and empty, their windows and doorways gaping. The owners were dead, deported to the north, or gone from the village in search of food. Once these houses were surrounded by barns, stables, cattle enclosures, pigpens, and fences. Now only the remnants of these structures could be seen. They had been ripped apart and used as firewood.
Not even the trees were saved from the destruction. The willows, a common sight in Ukrainian villages, stood stark, stripped of branches. It had been too much for the starving villagers to cut down their heavy trunks, and so now they stood alongside the roads, monuments to the battle between the cold winter and the dying people. The fruit trees met the same fate. Half of the famous Ukrainian orchards had been destroyed and consumed as fuel. The remnants were in bloom: one could still see cherry blossoms, apricot blossoms, and blossoms of other trees. But the blooming this spring was different.
In the front yards, backyards, gardens, and all around the villagers’ homes, the ground was pitted with open holes, reminders of the Bread Procurement Commissions’ searches for “hidden foodstuffs.”
The village looked like a ghost town. It was as if the Black Death had passed through, silencing the voices of the villagers, the sounds of the animals and birds. The deathly quiet lay like a pall. The few domestic animals that miraculously survived the famine were looked upon as exotic specimens.
At the end of May 1933 the starvation abated. The mass hunger ceased. Vegetables and fruits were plentiful for everyone who was able to go out and look for them. Also, the authorities needed farm workers, and they had no choice but to supply the working kolhosp members with sufficient food rations to sustain their existence. Thus, the villagers who still managed to stand—numb, oppressed, exhausted by starvation as they were—tried their best to reach the kolhosp and earn their food rations, a piece of bread and a scoop or two of some buckwheat or millet gruel. Those who were not able to work were left at the mercy of their relatives or friends, provided any survived.
I was lucky. In spite of my wretchedness and exhaustion from starvation, my dream to attain higher education never left me. And because of this drive for further education I managed to escape from the village for good.
Thus, starved as I was, living in absolute poverty amidst corpses of farmers and their families, I nevertheless had been doing my utmost to complete my secondary education.
At that time, our village had a nine-year school which was a combined four-year elementary and five-year secondary school. Such a school prepared the students for higher education.
In 1933 I was a senior and our graduation was supposed to take place in June. But many of the members of our graduating class never saw their diplomas. With the famine’s onslaught, our number decreased precipitously. Some died of starvation. Others left the school and went foraging for food. Still others managed to migrate to other parts of the Soviet Union, mainly to Russia, where there was no famine. Many were deported together with their families to faraway places, into exile. Consequently, early in March, our school was closed and those few of us who still held on had to fend for ourselves. But, in spite of all the odds, I wouldn’t give up my dreams, and my persistence was crowned with success: I was accepted at the secondary school of a neighboring village and I graduated at the end of June. This was a turning point in my life. I decided then to escape. I cannot remember the date exactly, but it remains the most important day in my life.
One night, with a piece of bread in a bag and five karbovantsi, or rubles (less than one dollar), in my pocket, dressed in a patched pair of pants and an oversized shirt, and barefoot, I stole out of the village toward the county seat. There, I had heard, college preparatory courses were opened for those with secondary diplomas. Luck was with me: with the help of some good people, I was admitted to the courses, and after completing them, I eventually enrolled at the Teachers’ College. I was graduated from it in four years and started my career as a secondary school teacher. Then World War II broke out and I became a soldier and, eventually, I was taken prisoner of war by the Germans and interned in STALAG 3 in Germany.
After the war was over, knowing that all Soviet prisoners of war were declared deserters and traitors by Stalin’s order and faced the firing squad, and because of my desire to live in the free world, I decided to stay in West Germany as a displaced person, and later on I emigrated to the United States where I found my new home.
My mother and my brother, who suffered with me, who shared with me the last morsel of food, and to whom I owe my survival, remained in the village. They had no other choice but to continue working on the collective farm. World War II separated us and what happened to them afterwards I don’t know.