[My mother] took me to the market, to buy me something to eat. I was very glad. She bought me a crepe – I don’t know what it was made of, some kind of black flour. But I was very happy. I’ll never forget, I took the crepe into my hand, and was about to bite it, when a vurka [street child], a little bum, grabbed the crepe, and didn’t even run away, just ate it on the spot. I just looked at him, the crepe was gone, I started to cry, and my mother tried to comfort me. But that vurka didn’t even run away. He wasn’t scared that he would get hit – he was hungry, the same as others and I.
I remember, at five years old, that a child, as well as an adult, thinks of nothing but food, food, food. In those years, I was close to death. If a person starves for a long time, they lose weight, become thin, and three days before death, they swell. I was already swollen for two days, and destined to die. My mother was very “go and get it.” She was able to trade her gold earrings, rings, and a huge gold cross, for millet, and nettle, to save me from death. One more day and I would not be alive. Thanks to my mother, who looked after herself, I was saved. My father was in Siberia at the time, in Trans-Baikal, by Lake Baikal. There were a lot of prisoners there, in the so-called “labor army.” The Soviet term was delove opalchennya. It wasn’t a regular army, but simply slaves, dressed in old Soviet army uniforms. He served five years there, and didn’t have the right to correspondence. Correspondence between people at that time was prohibited.
There was a saying, “Donbas saved the kulaks.” All the kulaks who were exiled to Siberia [tried] to get away from there. But they weren’t allowed to return to Dnipropetrovsk, Poltava or Kyiv regions, only to the Donbas. That’s why there was the saying, “Donbas saved the kulaks.” Many of those that persecuted by the Soviet authorities and survived, survived in the Donbas. Heavy industry was being built there, and labor was needed. Kulaks (kurkuls in Ukrainian, kulaks in Russian) were given work there. They were good workers, because they were servile; they didn’t have the right to speak out, or have a passport, only to work, work, work. How did the Soviet Union build such [massive] industry in the Donbas? They robbed their own people, took everything from them, and traded with the West.
Three of my cousins died. Their father went to Kharkiv to buy food, and while he was there, he was arrested. This was done often. He was locked up for a month. In the meantime, his children starved to death. By the time he came he came back it was too late. He was also half-swollen. There was nothing to eat. Absolutely nothing.