They took all the seeds, beans, wheat and corn from the house. My grandmother had hid it in little boxes to sow the garden next year. They took everything from the house. When they couldn’t find anything, they would break the pots and jugs with rods. In Poltava oblast the pots and jugs were made of clay and they broke them because they were angry they couldn’t find any grain. They said that we buried our grain. So they would go out into the garden and searched the ground. These were all Komsomol ¹ members and they had to prove that they had found something hidden by each family.
My grandfather began to swell first because he was a very big man, about 6 ft 5 inches tall. We were all hungry, but him especially. He couldn’t walk, because his legs had swollen. They had already started to go from house to house with a cart to collect corpses, but sometimes they took living people who couldn’t speak anymore. My mother, sister and I laid our grandfather on a bed and covered him with a blanket and a duvet. My sister and I sat on top of him, because he would shake. We would sit there sewing clothes for our dolls. They came into the house without knocking and asked if anyone was swollen or dying. My mother said no. They looked through the house and came into the room where we were sitting on top of grandfather and sewing. They didn’t see our grandfather and left. And later he recovered.
I asked my grandparents if they would take me to see where my uncle was buried. They took me to the mass grave. The graves they dug were bigger than this room. My grandmother was shaking when we went. There were still some living people in the grave, and the grave was covered in lye to hide the odor. I told my grandmother, “There’s some people still alive in there.” My grandmother said, “No, they’re not going to survive. They won’t make it out of there.” And that’s what happened.
My legs had started to swell. In the spring, the grass had not yet grown and there weren’t any leaves on the trees yet. Usually we would collect leaves from sour cherry trees because they were sweeter than leaves from other trees. We had two small trees and my grandmother put up a ladder so I could collect leaves. When I got on the ladder I could feel that the bottom of my feet were soft. I told my grandmother that my feet hurt, and she took a look and said, “That’s a bad sign, like your grandfather.” I said that I would eat any leaves, grass, anything so that I wouldn’t swell, because they would have taken me away and thrown me in that pit.