Letter sent from: Village of Butenky, Kobeliaky raion, Poltava oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Village of Kondry, Kobeliaky raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Butenky, Kobeliaky raion, Poltava oblast
Kateryna Isai describes her experience of surviving the famine as a nine year-old. 156 people died in their
village, originally Kondry, now assimilated into Butenky. Big families were affected the most. She names people who died in those families.
She went to the field to collect some beets and could not make it home, she was so exhausted, and the boy who was with her died there during the night. When a horse died, people crawled to get some meat off the dead horse. It was dangerous to walk to the station.
The burial brigade collected the dead, and often people who were still alive, and threw them into an old well. Stalin was “walking all over people.” “The sun, the harvest and the people were all Stalin’s.”
Ukrainian transcription available.
