Letter sent from: Village of Kriachkivka, Pyriatyn raion, Poltava oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Village of Kriachkivka, Pyriatyn raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Kriachkivka, Pyriatyn raion, Poltava oblast
Oleksii Homulko was about 12 at the time of the famine. His family lived next to a cemetery and he witnessed how the gravediggers dug a grave every day and dumped the bodies they collected daily, including some who were still breathing but not moving. The village experienced mass deaths: 560 died among 700 households, not including those who went missing and died elsewhere.
All grain was taken from the locals to Pyriatyn. Too little was left to sow in spring of 1933. All the cows
were taken. Two men who resisted the taking of sacks of grain from the village were arrested the next day and never came back. Signs of devastation included the weeds growing so high in the fields, you could not see a horse because the fields were not sown.
People secretly ate weeds, leaves, frozen potatoes found in potato clumps in the field from the year before, and ears of rye from the new harvest.
Homylko responded to a call for letters published in Silski Visti December 9, 1988.
Ukrainian transcription available.
