Однажды ночью, с куском хлеба в заплечном мешке и пятью карбованцами в кармане, одетый в заплатанные брюки и не по размерам большую рубаху, босой, я тайком выбрался из села и направился в районный центр. Я слышал, что там открыли подготовительные курсы для тех, кто имел аттестат и хотел поступить в институт. Удача не покинула меня, и с помощью хороших людей я был зачислен на эти курсы. По окончании курсов я поступил в педагогический институт. Четыре года спустя, я получил диплом учителя средней школы. Когда началась Вторая Мировая война, я стал солдатом. Я попал в плен к немцам и оказался в СТАЛАГЕ № 3 в Германии.
После окончания войны, зная, что Советский Союз считает всех русских военнопленных предателями родины и поэтому дома их ждёт расстрел, я решил остаться в Западной Германии как перемещённое лицо. Позже мне удалось перебраться в Америку.
Мои мама и брат, которые страдали вместе со мной и делились последним кусочком хлеба, и кому я обязан своей жизнью, остались в селе. У них не было выбора, как продолжать работать в колхозе. Вторая Мировая война развела нас, и что стало с ними после, я не знаю.
Из предисловия к англоязычному изданию
Miron Dolot (nom-de-plume), a Famine survivor who immigrated to the United States after World War II, began this book in 1953, and completed it in 1983. He describes the destruction of his village between the years 1929–1933, and states that he wrote only about what he saw and experienced personally. His Introduction provides a historical background from 1921. He notes the condition and population of farm and wild animals in the Famine areas. In 1928, there were 32 million horses in Ukraine, in 1934, that number decreased to 15.5 million. These horses died because their value as laboring animals lessened by the introduction of mechanical tractors. Since these animals no longer provided ‘good communist labor,’ they were not fed or cared for properly. Like those humans who were too old, young, or infirm to work, farm animals, likewise, were considered “useless eaters.” Horses were taken from their private owners for use at the collective farms, but this often was done before any plans or preparations for their care, feeding, or shelter had been made (91).
Pets were killed for skins and food (151–152). Nightingales and other wild birds were killed for the small amount of food their bodies provided. So many birds were killed that their sweet song was silenced for years, until stocks naturally re-populated from outside the Famine-effected areas (173).
At the beginning of 1931, 1/3rd of the human population of his village already had been exiled or killed. He describes interrogations; propaganda campaigns to solve problems of agriculture; forced separation of families by G.P.U.; the selling of goods in exchange for food. Travel restrictions sealed people in areas of the country from which all foodstuffs had been removed. He describes hungry people tormented by thoughts of food (141–143). Significantly, he notes that the 1932 harvest was confiscated, and then left to rot at railway stations (161).
Dolot cites the November 6, 1932, Council of People’s Commissars and Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union Resolution prohibiting trade, removal of merchandise, forbidding “trade of foodstuffs.” “We were imprisoned in our village without food, and sentenced to die the slow, agonizing death of starvation” (176).
The often futile begging, examples of mercy even during these worst of times, and cannibalism that resulted from the insanity of starvation are noted. The situation of children was particularly uncertain. A child, whose parents had already died, cried for help, “My mommy won’t wake up!” (207).