Olena Shevchuk (nee Yaroshenko)
The Donetsk [Donbass] basin was completely undeveloped. But later coalmines were established, and many of the people who were persecuted or arrested escaped to Donetsk and lived in zemlianky [earthen dugouts]. Families often stayed in the villages, and [the people who escaped to Donetsk], you could say, hid there. They slept and worked wherever they could, and the Donetsk [Donbass] basin became a kind of “second Siberia.” The people who developed Donetsk were fugitives from dekulakization, the Famine, and various repressions. There was no real local family populace; it was an amalgamation of various people who had escaped repressions.
These people slept in cemeteries, in the grass, or in zemlianky [earthen dugouts]. When the snow melted, often these zemlianky collapsed and people were killed. I saw, in Donetsk oblast, a cart going around picking up the dead and transporting them somewhere. I don’t know where. They collected them from all around, and dumped them. Where there were offices, or other buildings, sometimes there would be potato peels, and other refuse, and people would take this refuse to eat. This was very bad, because they swelled from this, [their skin] cracked, and they died. Children begged, and died. On the streets, and in the market you could see dead people. My brother, at his work, got 100 grams of bread a day for the entire family. I sometimes went to collect this bread, and on my way home I sometimes ate it. Obviously I had to answer for this. At that time there were many sayings, for example “Lenin’s playing the guitar, Stalin’s banging the drum. Our country has been revived – 100 grams per eater.”
File size: 30.5 Mb
Duration: 4:01
Date of birth: 26 May 1923
Place of birth:: Barvinkivka village, Kharkiv oblast
Witnessed Famine in:: Barvinkivka village, Kharkiv oblast, and Donetsk city
Arrived in Canada:1949
Current residence: Edmonton
Date and place of interview: 19 March 2009, Edmonton