Vera Shumylo (nee Fominichenko)

VS - In 1933, I went with my mother to the bazaar.

Interviewer – In Kharkiv?

VS – In Kharkiv. My mother wanted to buy something. I saw a young girl, the same age as me, lying there. She was in my class. Her name was Valya Nikitivna. I bent over to her and my earring fell off. I wanted to pick it up and I touched her body. She looked at me, and her body shook. That was all; she died. She was skin and bones. A bit further on, I saw another child, about eight years old, lying there with her hand stretched out. I was a child, I couldn’t give her anything because I didn’t have anything myself. My mother took me by the hand and we walked on. We had to climb some stairs and go over a bridge. People were lying on the bridge, with legs like glass logs, begging for help. Whoever could gave them some seeds or something. We walked on and I asked my mother about these people. My mother said they were starving. My mother took me by the hand and we left. The next day my mother left to go [to the villages] near Moscow, with a rope tied around her waist. I don’t know how she traveled there, but she walked from village to village begging for help. Some people gave her wheat, millet, or barley. She hid it all around her waist. She had rubber boots; her feet were wet. She said she went to a woman’s house, who said to her, “What do want, khakhlushka¹ ?” [My mother] said she wanted to spend the night, so she put her up in the [barn], with the goat and pigs. It was cold outside. The next day, [my mother] went to the railway station. At the time the [secret police] was the GPU². They took everything [that she had collected] from her. She didn’t bring anything home. She said, “Children, I couldn’t bring you anything. The GPU confiscated everything.” We had some potatoes left, so my mother cooked them and mashed them all together, with the peels. She mixed in sawdust, made patties and baked them. That’s what we ate. That’s how we lived. My sister Luba, who was born in 1915, was very swollen. Her legs were like logs.

There were people who kidnapped young children and made sausages from them. My mother brought some sausage home and gave us a piece. There was a child’s nail in it. I told my mother there was a child’s nail; she said “daughter, be quiet.” I was only ten years old, but I remember this to this day.