Kuzmenko, Oleksii

Description

Creators

Oleksii Kuzmenko (b. 1924), Author

Volodymyr Maniak

, Recipient

Media Type

Text

Item Types

Correspondence

Envelopes

Transcriptions

Description

Letter sent from: Village of Kukobivka, Reshetylivka raion, Poltava oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Village of Kukobivka, Reshetylivka raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Kukobivka, Reshetylivka raion, Poltava oblast

Oleksii Kuzmenko’s account focuses on experiencing the famine as a child. He remembers total grain requisitioning in the village, when only garden vegetables were left. His mom cooked watery borsch but it was not filling, and he constantly felt hungry. He remembers the kindness of the school master, Andrii Chumak, who made sure children had a warm breakfast of soup with one dumpling and made sure teachers received 4 kilos of flour monthly.

Spring 1933 was especially hard. People ate weeds, mock foods, fish, and dead animals. Many of those who ate the first ears of unripened rye died. His cousins went missing: they had been going to the railway station to beg for food, but one day they did not come back. The windows of empty houses in which everyone had died were covered over with plywood.

Ukrainian transcription available.

Notes