Skip to content
Call Us Today! 212-533-4646 | MON-FRI 12PM - 4PM (EST)
DONATE
SUBSCRIBE
Search for:
About Us
UNWLA 100
Publications
FAQ
Annual Report 2024
Annual Report 2023
Annual Report 2022
Annual Report 2021
Initiatives
Advocate
Educate
Cultivate
Care
News
Newsletters
Sign Up For Our Newsletter
Join UNWLA
Become a Member
Volunteer With Us
Donate to UNWLA
Members Portal
Shop to Support Ukraine
Search for:
Print
Print Page
Download
Download Page
Download Right Page
Open
1
2-3
4-5
6-7
8-9
10-11
12-13
14-15
16-17
18-19
20-21
22-23
24-25
26-27
28-29
30-31
32-33
34-35
36-37
38-39
40
OUR LIFE Monthly, published by Ukrainian National Women’s League of America VOL. XL JUNE 1983 EDITED BY A. H. Sawyckyj 50TH ANNIVERSARY OF THE DEATH BY OF 7 MILLION UKRAINIANS SOVIET NIGHTMARE STARVATION Continuation from previous issue We visited one wretched village after another, and finally we came to the village of the dead. There were a few score houses, but the doors were boarded up, and there was not a living creature in the gardens and fields. Then, out of one of the dismal shacks, a soldier appeared. Our escort questioned him, and he said that more than half the inhabitants of the vil lage had died from hunger and that the others had fled. It was the same, he said, in many of the surrounding villages. What was he doing in the village? He shrugged his shoulders; he had been ordered to guard it, and he would stay until he was ordered elsewhere. He took us to a place where there was a depression in the ground. “Here is where most of them are,” he said. Some dozens, he told us, had been buried in this common grave, which was not marked in any way. He named a girl who had seen her mother bury her father and who then had to bury her mother. Later she buried her little brother beside his parents. Then she fled to Kiev, but before she left, she set fire to a stable full of horses belonging to the government. This soldier told of two comrades in the Red Army, brothers who came from a neighboring village. One of them heard reports of famine at home, and obtained leave to visit his parents. He found that they were both dead, and he brought his brother to see the deserted homestead. The two men be came bandits, roving the countryside at night, getting their re venge. A kolkhoz had been forced upon the village, and the soldier showed our escort the house that had belonged to its chairman. Nominally he had been a Communist, but he had icons in his home, and the peasants had come there to pray. Betrayed to the authorities, he had been expelled from the Communist party, and was awaiting trial for sabotage. As we left the village, we noticed a photograph of Stalin over the gate. It seemed symbolic: Stalin enthroned over a dead world. We went on to Kiev, my native city. F. and L. had learned of my arrival from Kharkov relatives, but each had kept the secret from the other, for there was a barrier between them although they were sisters. I had greatly admired these two cousins of mine in my childhood, and I was eager to know what had hap pened to them. F., I discovered, had achieved a responsible position as a buyer of raw material for Ukraine industries. L. had influenced her husband to join the Communist party, but Віра Д раж ко she remained unaffiliated herself. It was L.’s husband who had caused the rift between the sisters, for F. felt that he was constantly spying upon her. She maintained that his standing in the party was insecure and that he was trying to bolster it by denouncing nonparty specialists such as she was. The atmos phere of suspicion was such that I refused to visit L.'s house lest I expose them both to attack. I reacquainted myself with the city. I walked along Basin Street, the Bowery of Kiev. In the United States I had heard many stories of the attention that the Soviet government paid to its homeless children. Now I was to see for myself that the orphans of the civil war period had grown into ferocious and merciless bandits. Hundreds of them lived on Basin Street, from which they set forth to terrorize the city. I saw one of them swoop down upon a woman who was leaving the market place. He bit her arm, and as she dropped her package with a shriek, he snatched up his loot and fled. While visiting the grave of my grandfather, Reb Chaim, we saw hundreds of new graves. There were no headstones, only wooden sticks with numbers. Sometimes corpses lay on the НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЧЕРВЕНЬ, 1983 21
Page load link
Go to Top
1 
2-3 
4-5 
6-7 
8-9 
10-11 
12-13 
14-15 
16-17 
18-19 
20-21 
22-23 
24-25 
26-27 
28-29 
30-31 
32-33 
34-35 
36-37 
38-39 
40 
