LS – You had to go to the city to sell things. You couldn’t buy anything in the villages, because nobody had anything.
Interviewer – Where did [your mother] go?
LS – She mostly went to Mariupol [southern Donbas].
Interviewer – How far was it?
LS – I’m not sure, 150 km, maybe more. Sometimes they traveled by cart, sometimes on foot. She walked for five or six days.
Interviewer – And she left you alone?
LS – No, with the neighbors. Our neighbor stayed with us. From time to time my father came home, but we didn’t know where he was. Sometimes he’d be gone a week or two, and then come home. But he had to go to work. They drove everyone out to work. My father’s entire family died.
Interviewer – Where were they? In the same village?
LS – In the same village, but they all died. I remember, when I was older, that he had one sister who survived. But his two brothers died of starvation. There were three of us, and I remember my two year old brother died.
Interviewer – From starvation?
LS – From starvation. I remember it as if it were a bad dream. When I think about it, I remember. My sister and I were left. I remember in the winter, I’m not sure if I should say this, my mother sent me to the neighbors, with some corn soup for them. I went to their house, but nobody answered. So I opened the door, and went home, and told my mother, “They’re all sleeping.” My mother said that was impossible, that there was no fire in their house, so she went to the house, and found three children and their mother, lying there, no longer alive. I remember this. They didn’t have a house, it was a zemlianka [earthen dugout], and they were lying there. My mother went with the neighbors to take a look, and they were all dead. But I don’t remember where they were taken, or how they were buried.
Interviewer – Did your mother tell you that they had died?
LS – Yes. My mother said, “They’re not sleeping. They’re in the next world.”
Interviewer – Did a lot of people die in your village?
LS – Very many. The most died in the spring, because people went to collect leaves. My neighbors all died, because they ate that shrubbery, and swelled. Mostly they ate acacia. There were people who sat down, leaning on a fence, and that would be that. There was a lot of this. It was frightening to look around the village.