Execution by Hunger (23 page)

After we finished shopping, we left the store as unobtrusively as possible and started our trip back home. We did not fear robbers during daylight, for we were in the same position as the rest of the starving villagers, and moreover, looked like them: thin and haggard, dressed in rags, with beggars' sacks on our shoulders. No one in his right mind would have suspected that in those potato sacks we carried a few pounds of salt pork and other staples which to us were the greatest treasures on earth.

Already on the way home, we could not resist the temptation to eat some of the bread and salt pork. It tasted heavenly. Mother suggested that we not eat too much for fear we would become sick. Now it was getting dark, and we were afraid to walk home the same way we had come. Consequently, we decided to go to a railroad station in the hope of catching a train to a station just three miles away from our village. This would shorten our walking distance and it would keep us in a safer populated area.

As we approached the station, a freight train slowly passed to our right. We noticed people gathered around something on the tracks. We joined them, and saw a pile of mangled human bodies in a pool of blood. Somebody said that it was a suicide; a woman carrying a child had jumped under the oncoming train. The onlookers began leaving the scene one by one, and the crushed bodies of the mother and her child remained lying there without any further attention. No one shed a tear or showed any emotion for their tragic end; all were too numb.

We walked to the station building. There were great crowds of people there also, both inside and out. They had come, as did all of us, from the surrounding villages. This was their last hope to find some food. They hoped that some sympathetic traveler would throw them a piece of bread from the train window. Some had hopes of finding a job. Still others brought with them the best of their belongings with the prospect of exchanging them for food, or selling them for money. They sat patiently on the cement floor of the platform, wet from snow, exhibiting their wares: beautifully hand-embroidered Ukrainian national costumes made of homespun materials, along with homemade richly embroidered tablecloths, embroidered towels, handwoven rugs. Some of them had been kept in trunks or in the hopechests of women for decades or even centuries as family heirlooms. But these valuable articles found no buyers at this time. Very few passenger trains passed by, and local people were not interested in buying anything but food. Except for Party and government officials, and black marketeers, all were hungry or starving.

Most of those who were crowding the station's waiting hall inside were trying to buy tickets somewhere north of Ukraine, to Russia, where there was no famine. But their efforts were futile. Train tickets to Russia were officially prohibited to Ukrainian farmers with few exceptions. Only those with special certificates permitting them to leave the collective farm for a specific place could buy a train ticket to Russia. Nevertheless, the starving people tried their luck. They had nothing more to lose and nothing else to do, especially now that the fields, rivers, and forests were covered with deep snow. As a result, they flocked to the railroad stations because each train was bringing some ray of hope, some good news. Above all, there was the possibility that in spite of all prohibitions, one would somehow be able to board the train to the north. They kept dreaming of the impossible. They had thoughts of traveling on the roof of the train, or underneath the railroad car, on the steps, on buffer platforms, and on the bumpers.

But, for the most part, these dreams were never realized. The crowds in and around the railroad stations would be rounded up periodically by the militia and
GPU
men, loaded onto trucks like stray animals, and dumped somewhere outside the town limits.

We had better luck in obtaining train tickets because we were going south, not north. Soon we were on our way home, but the horror pictures of starvation were not over.

There were very few people in the car we entered as there wasn't much traffic to the south—to the interior of Ukraine. There were many vacant places, and soon after we occupied our seats, a woman entered our compartment followed by two small emaciated boys. What a pitiful sight they were! Their faces were skin and bones; their eyes were bulging, dull, and listless. They were unkempt; their clothes were ragged and dirty.

After they sat down, I noticed that the woman held a baby under her coat at her bosom, and that the baby was dead.

“It's a girl,” she said quietly, without showing any emotion. “She died yesterday. My poor baby; she was hungry, and kept crying…and then suddenly she stopped…. We stayed overnight outside. They threw us out of the waiting hall. It was very cold. The boys huddled under my coat like chicks under their mother hen….”

We didn't know what to say and just kept watching her silently and with sympathy.

She put her dead baby on her knees and started to unwrap the dirty rags in which it was bundled. Then, as if realizing that the baby was dead, she bundled it up again, held it tightly to herself, and pressed her cheeks affectionately against the baby's cold and rigid face. She started crying and talking to her dead baby:

“I am sorry…” she sobbed, tears rolling down her face and dropping onto the baby, “It's not my fault. Heavens, I tried; I did all I could…. They labeled me an enemy of the people…. They threw us out wherever we went.” Then she started kissing her baby tenderly, its eyes, its forehead, its cheeks.

“Don't worry, my baby, you won't be alone for long; soon we'll follow you; soon you will be again with your Mama and your brothers….”

Mother could not listen to her lament any longer, and afraid of bursting out crying in front of her, she got up and started towards the door, motioning me to follow her. Once in the corridor, she gave vent to her emotions. Crying, she asked me to cut three pieces of bread and give it to the woman and her boys. We returned to the compartment and I handed the bread to them. Words cannot describe the sensation the sight of bread made for these starved human beings.

After eating half of her portion of bread, and saving the rest for her boys, the woman calmed down somewhat and was able to tell us her sad story more coherently. It was a typical story of other Ukrainian families of that time, but incomprehensible to those who did not live through those experiences of suffering and tragedy.

A year before, we learned, this woman's husband was labeled a kurkul and “an enemy of the people,” and was banished somewhere to the north. She never heard from him again. He never saw his baby daughter who was born after his banishment and was now lying dead in her arms. She had worked hard on the collective farm, but received only a few pounds of grain and some vegetables which amounted to practically nothing and were gone by the time winter had set in. Hungry and cold, with no prospect of getting food and firewood, she heard somewhere that there was no famine in Russia.

She had a little money, so she decided to try to go north to Russia with her children. In spite of hardships, she finally reached the railroad station and for two days tried to buy a ticket to a city in Russia where some of her neighbors had gone. They actually had written to her that there was no famine there, proving that hearsay was true. However, she was unable to buy a ticket since she did not have the necessary certificate from the collective farm. Now, since her infant daughter had died, she decided to go to another city not far from her village. She had heard that some kind of a children's shelter was located there; perhaps she would be able to leave her boys there. What would happen to her after that did not matter. She was only concerned about her two boys' survival.

I went out into the train corridor and stood there a while looking out the window. The train rolled on the tracks with its rhythmic motion. Snow-covered fields, trees, and telegraph poles rushed by. But even here, the otherwise peaceful scenery was disturbed: all along the tracks, groups of starving people were standing, sitting, or lying. They had trudged a long way to the railroad tracks hoping for a miracle; maybe someone would throw them a piece of bread. I could not hear their voices, but I saw their outstretched hands. Some stood there holding their children. They would lift them up so people could see their famished little bodies as if crying: “A crumb of bread, please! It's not for me; it's for my child!”

I suddenly reached for my sack and grabbed the rest of our loaf of bread. Ahead, I noticed a woman with two small children. They needed a miracle, I thought. I opened the window, and as the train approached them, I threw the bread in their direction. I could not see what happened to it as tears were blurring my vision.

Soon we arrived at our station. Before taking the road home, I wanted to find some kind of a stick for Mother as she thought it would be easier for her to walk with it. While looking for something suitable, I strayed behind some auxiliary buildings adjacent to the railroad station. The scene I saw there has been haunting me ever since. Now, after fifty years have passed by since that moment, I can still feel the terror that seized me when I came face to face with that ghastly view. In front of me, in open view, was a heap of frozen human corpses like some discarded woodpile. Some of the bodies were completely naked; others were half-clothed; still others were fully clothed but barefoot. Their frozen arms and legs were sticking out from under the snow like tree limbs in an intricate configuration. I stood there aghast, unable to move from fright and horror. For quite a while I stared at those human bodies, with outstretched frozen arms, as if they still were begging for food and mercy. Then I ran back to my mother, with her walking stick, trembling all over, but consoled by her company.

By the time we finally reached our house, it was dark; however, our shopping adventure had not yet ended.

On the way home, Mother seemed troubled and uneasy. When I asked her what was bothering her, she confided in me. Her anxieties centered about the form we had had to fill out when we traded the medallion at the Torgsin and I understood the danger we were in.

The decree to turn in any coins and foreign currency was ignored by the villagers, resulting in many arrests and tortures by the GPU. We had not violated the decree with the medallion as it did not fall into the category of valuables. But we had made the mistake of entering the medallion as “a coin” on the official appraisal form. This “minor” mistake could now turn out to be a “major crime” against the state.

Our apprehensions soon became a reality. One afternoon shortly after our shopping adventure, a large group of government officials made a visit to our home. It was composed of familiar members of the Hundred's Bread Procurement Commission, accompanied this time by an armed militiaman, and the chairman of the village soviet. The militiaman was a stranger, apparently especially sent to our village by the county government. This man, and the presence of so many officials, indicated to us the seriousness of our situation.

After the group entered our home, the chairman of the village soviet stepped out in front. He looked at a document in his hand, and read aloud the name of my mother for identification, even though he knew my mother very well. Then he declared that, according to “reliable sources,” we possessed gold which was supposed to have been delivered to the state treasury long ago. He informed us that the militiaman was sent to us with the order to take our gold to the county center. He also added that if we handed the gold to him voluntarily, the whole case would be closed and forgotten. Our failure to cooperate would result in the arrest of the head of the household as “an enemy of the people.”

Their demand to deliver our nonexistent gold seemed ridiculous to us, and the idea that my mother was to become an “enemy of the people” was absurd. Mother had gone through many such difficult situations far too often to lose her composure now. She categorically denied that we had ever had gold coins to deliver to the state. She, for one, couldn't even tell what a gold coin looked like. Our purchase of food at the Torgsin was made with a gold medallion, not a gold coin. Such an exchange of a medallion for food at the store owned by the state could not possibly be an illegal act, she insisted.

Just the same, the village chairman ordered a thorough search of our house. Every corner and nook was examined; each piece of clothing was pulled out; each lid from each pot was removed. They looked everywhere and into everything but found nothing. There was nothing to be found with the exception of the one remaining medallion which was carefully hidden in what was once our pigpen.

Finally, they departed with nothing, and afterwards, much to our surprise, they left us alone.

I
N THE latter part of February, the cold became very intense. Temperatures sank below zero; violent storms raged. The roaring and whistling winds tore frozen limbs off trees and ripped roofs off some houses. But even such a severe winter could have been borne were it not for the hunger. To be cold and hungry, without food or fuel, and without hope of getting any, is a horror defying imagination.

Our village became completely isolated. High snowdrifts made roads and paths impassable. The snow deposits were so heavy that sometimes it was difficult to open the front doors of the houses. People had no intention of leaving their homes anyway; there was no place to go. Our village was snowed in, and its inhabitants were slowly dying of hunger in their houses.

We kept our house locked. We tried unsuccessfully to suppress our feelings of hunger by reading and telling stories. We prayed often. Mother would fall on her knees in front of the icons, and we would join her, repeating the words of the prayer after her. We felt more secure then believing that our prayers would be heard by God who would soon send us some relief. I often heard my Mother addressing the icons: “Oh, Almighty God: You sent upon us Your wrath and punishment at a time when Satan is also torturing us. Why do you treat us this way, Great God? Be merciful to us and help us to withstand Satan's treatment.”

Then, as if feeling remorse for reproaching God, she would recite a long suppliant prayer. My brother Mykola had his own prayer. He also wanted to know the reason God sent such torture upon the people who so fervently believed in Him. He always ended with the plea to God to send us some bread. And so we spent our time in prayers, dreams, hopes, and expectations of a miracle.

There was an endless succession of days and nights with mostly raging snowstorms. But one morning, the storm broke and it was calm outside. Feeble rays of sunshine penetrated the frosty windowpanes. Mykola and I decided to go outside, but we had a hard time opening the door. We finally succeeded after repeatedly shoving and pushing it against the drifts, and stepped out to a beautiful morning of gleaming snow, azure sky, and clear fresh air.

There was silence and the monotony of snow everywhere throughout the village. The only signs of life came from the chimneys here and there, with tiny streams of smoke rising in the sky. Many houses in our neighborhood did not have any smoke coming out of their chimneys. Hadn't the people inside made any fires? How could they possibly stay alive, we wondered, in subzero temperatures, without their houses being heated?

To find out for ourselves, we ran first to Dmytro's house which showed no signs of life. Dmytro had never returned home after he had been taken to the county center. His young wife Solomia was left alone with their daughter. She had gone to work in the collective farm, taking her little child with her. As the wife of a banished man, she too was considered an “enemy of the people,” and her child was refused admission to the nursery. Later, Solomia was expelled from the collective farm, and thus forced to seek a job in the city. That was impossible, however, because she could not show a certificate of release from the collective farm. She found herself trapped in the circle of the Communist death ring. She had to return to her village.

When winter came, Solomia went from house to house, willing to work for just a piece of bread. She was too proud to beg. People were sympathetic and helped her as much as they could. However, as the famine worsened, and the villagers were no longer able to help her, she was not seen on her rounds any more.

We found the front door of Solomia's house open, but the entrance was blocked with snowdrifts, and it was hard to get inside. When we finally reached the living room, we saw a pitiful sight: Solomia was hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. She was dressed in her Ukrainian national costume, and at her breast hung a large cross. It was obvious that she had made preparations before committing suicide. Her hair was combed neatly in two braids hanging over her shoulders.

Frightened, we ran to fetch Mother. We helped her take down Solomia's frozen body, and laid it on a bench, and covered it with a handmade blanket. It was only after we finished doing this that we noticed the dead body of her little daughter. The child was lying in a wooden tub in the corner under the icons, clean and dressed in her best clothes. Her little hands were folded across her chest.

On the table was a note:

After reading the note, we stood there for a while, motionless and forlorn. Our mother tried to suppress the sound of her weeping, pressing the corner of her head scarf to her lips. Mykola gazed at the corpses in disbelief.

In my imagination I was recreating the agony of their dying: the child's hunger cries, and then the death convulsions of its exhausted little body.

How great must have been the sufferings of the mother. She had to listen helplessly to the pleas of her child for food, while she herself was near starvation. She must have felt great relief, I thought, when she saw her little daughter breathing for the last time. Then, in my imagination, I saw the mother attending to her lifeless child: dressing her in the best and cleanest clothing she had, praying on her knees near the body, and finally kissing her for the last time before her own suicide.

Mother interrupted my thoughts. We had to fulfill the last wishes of our dead neighbor and bury the two corpses properly. My mother always wanted to do everything correctly. But, how could we do it this time? We were too weak to dig a grave in the snow-covered frozen ground, or even to take the bodies to the cemetery.

After realizing these facts, we decided to leave them in the house. For the time being, the cold prevented their decay, so we just laid the body of the child beside her mother on the sleeping bench, covered them both with the blanket, and left.

After this sad discovery, we could not sit idly at home. There were many other houses around us that had no smoke coming out of their chimneys. We realized that similar tragedies had taken place there too. My mother was especially concerned about Boris's family and also about a widow who lived with her crippled daughter in our neighborhood. She thought they might still be alive and in need of help.

Without losing much time, we went to Boris's house. He also had not returned from the village jail, but had been transferred to the county center, and no one had seen him since. His wife, Khymka, was living alone with their two children. We frequently visited her, helping the family as much as we could. Lately, during the heavy snowstorms, we had lost all contact with them.

When we reached the front of Khymka's house, we noticed a dark object protruding from underneath the snow. It was Khymka. Her body was completely frozen and covered with snow. We rushed into the house, anticipating the worst about her children: we were right. On the sleeping bench lay the corpse of Khymka's eldest son, Trokhym. His hands were folded across his chest, his eyes were closed, and his frozen body was covered with an overcoat. At his head was a saucer with the remnants of a candle. Trokhym must have died before his mother. Then, in order to try and save the life of her other child, Khymka apparently left the house in search of help. But, too weakened by hunger, she collapsed a few steps in front of her house, and died in the snow.

We also found her youngest child, a boy of about eight years of age, in a bed. He was well-covered with several pieces of old clothing and miraculously still alive! He lay there totally exhausted by hunger and too weak to move. His body had stiffened and he was apparently half-frozen.

We had to act immediately to try to save the glimmer of life still in this young boy. There was no time for contemplation and emotions. We brought Khymka's body back into the house and laid it alongside the body of her starved eldest son. It became clear to us that we had to take the youngest boy home with us, if we wanted to keep him alive, for his own house was freezing with not a trace of fuel for heating or food for survival. We carefully laid him on a sled and brought him home with us to revive him and care for him. Mother put him in bed, and told us that with God's help, he might recover.

She then sent us with a sled to the widow's house to bring her and her crippled daughter back with us if they were still alive. They lived close by, and it didn't take us long to reach her house.

The widow Shevchenko and her crippled daughter Lida were also victims of government policy. A few years earlier, her husband had clashed with a Party representative when the collectivization scheme was being instituted. The representative had come to our village to organize the collective farm, and during a heated argument, Shevchenko had dared to call him “a stupid parrot!” That was his end. He was accused of assailing the dignity of the Communist Party, and he was sent to the north for five years of “corrective labor.” After a year or so, his wife received an anonymous letter telling her that her husband had died while digging the Baltic Sea-White Sea Canal. His widow now lived all alone with their daughter, who had been crippled from birth and needed constant attention. Widow Shevchenko had twice as difficult a task as the other villagers in providing food and other necessities for the two of them. Being tied down at home by the daily care of her handicapped daughter, she could not go to work. She could not get any official help either, since she was the wife of an arrested “enemy of the people.” She became a beggar, completely dependent upon the goodwill of her fellow villagers. When the whole village was struck by the famine, her fate was sealed.

We found her house on a hill not far from ours, completely snowbound, with the front door blocked by the snow.

We had a hard time clearing it away, and when we finally opened the door, we found the poor widow dead, just as we had feared, lying on the threshold halfway in the entrance hall. We carried her body into the living room and laid it on a bench. We found her daughter Lida, lying on a sleeping bench wrapped in many layers of rags but still alive. We carefully laid her on our sledge and rushed her back to our house.

At home, Mother was still occupied with Khymka's young son. She was rubbing his body with snow, and there was also something cooking for him on the stove.

When we brought Lida indoors, Mother began ministering to her needs, and we took over the care of the young boy. After making them as warm and comfortable as we could, we tried to feed them porridge and some homemade herb tea prepared by Mother, but our efforts to force some food and warm drink into them were all in vain. Except for their slow and spasmodic breathing, they didn't show any other signs of life, lying there completely motionless. When night fell, we witnessed their horrible death throes. At midnight, Lida died and the young boy followed shortly after.

Now we found ourselves in a peculiar situation. We had two corpses of people not related to us in our house. We could not keep them like that in our house too long, and burying them in the cemetery involved certain risks.

It was dangerous to show sympathy to starving villagers, particularly to people who, like this boy and girl, were looked upon by government officials as “enemies of the people.” Trying to save the lives of these two young people came as natural to us as trying to save our own lives, but the Communist Party looked upon such an act as high treason. Nevertheless, come what may, we decided to bury their bodies properly in the cemetery.

The next morning, Mykola and I loaded the bodies on our sledge, covered them over, and started toward the village center where the cemetery was located. It was very hard for us to pull the sledge with such a heavy load; we had very little strength for such a task, especially in the deep snow and freezing cold. Moving along the main road, we saw a few more corpses; some of whom we recognized as the remains of neighbors. There were also strangers among them who had probably come from other villages in search of food. The fact that all the corpses were covered with heavy snow suggested to us that they had been lying on the road for quite some time.

As we came closer to the village center, we saw a pair of horses pulling a sleigh and galloping toward us. We knew that such a luxury was only afforded Party and government officials. The road was narrowed by the high snowdrifts, so we could not give way. The rearing horses stopped almost in front of us. At first we heard only swearing coming from the sleigh; then we were commanded to move aside. While we were trying to do this, our heavily-loaded sledge became firmly stuck in the snow. As we vainly attempted to push and pull our sledge out, we inadvertently uncovered our cargo. The attention of the officials was instantly riveted to our sledge. They dismounted and came over to us for a closer look.

There were two of them and both were strangers to us. They were warmly dressed and looked well fed and prosperous, as in olden days. One of them with a fur coat, stepped forward and demanded to know what we were pulling in our sledge.

“You see what we're pulling!” I replied, pointing to the corpses. The other stranger was eyeing us with curiosity.

“Who were they, and how did they die?” the man in the fur coat continued his interrogation.

What a superfluous and ridiculous question! I casually answered that the corpses were those of our neighbors. Then, instead of explaining to him the cause of their deaths, I pointed out that one could see many corpses on the road, and that there were many more dead and dying in their homes. He apparently must have been very displeased with my answer because he asked me angrily who we were and stepped closer to us.