Holodomor Survivors tell their Stories
List of Survivors:
Describes what happened to his father because of his refusal to pay taxes. Describes the dispossession of his family by their neighbors.
Nadia Shulha (nee Symonets) Video
Explains how the authorities prevented villagers from collecting grain in collective farm fields. Describes how the police confiscated food from villagers returning from Russia.
Vera Shumylo (nee Fominichenko) Video
Describes seeing corpses in the market in Kharkiv. Describes how her mother traveled to Russia to get food, and how the authorities confiscated this food upon her mother′s return to Kharkiv.
Evdokhia Shurovska (nee Lyhuta). Video
Describes the difficulties her father had in finding work because of his classification as a kulak. Describes the death, in a single day, of her two sisters.
Kateryna Symahovska (nee Zyma). Video
Describes how she ate the seeds her mother had saved for planting and scenes of corpses in the streets of her village. Describes how after the Famine a woman came to their village searching for her children.
Natalia Talanchuk (nee Hrebinska). Video
Describes scenes of the Famine in Dnipropetrovsk city. Tells how her mother traded family heirlooms for food. Describes guard towers set up in collective farm fields.
Describes a case of cannibalism in her village.
Describes his family fleeing from arrest. Describes the death of his neighbor from starvation.
Describes the murder of a Communist activist in his village. Describes how his mother collected corpses in the village.
Aleksandra Tyshchenko (nee Senyk). Video
Describes the dispossession of her parents by fellow villagers. Describes how she went to the city to ask for food door-to-door.
Compares his experience as an inmate in Dachau, where he spent three years, with life during the Holodomor.
Antonia Witrowych (nee Prychodko). Video
Describes how her family was able to hide some food from the committee that searched villagers′ homes and confiscated food.
Yulia Woychyshyn (nee Stepanenko). Video
Describes how her father, who worked for the village council, was forced to falsify death statistics. Reads from her father′s memoirs about a case of cannibalism in their village.
Describes pressure put on farmers who refused to join collective farms. Describes villagers′ resistance to collectivization. Describes trials in his village.
Describes having food stolen by a street child. Describes how his mother saved him from starvation. Explains the role of dispossessed labor in the industrialization of the Soviet Union.