Letter sent from: Village of Svitanok, Korets raion, Rivne oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Village of Shkurupii, Reshetylivka raion, Kharkiv oblast
Current location name: Village of Shkurupii, Reshetylivka raion, Poltava oblast
Melaniia Chvora was in Grade 5 during the famine. There were very few schoolchildren in class at the time, maybe 7-8. They were exhausted and had no energy to smile or play. People were surviving on the frogs that they could catch in the river and on all kinds of weeds.
Chvora describes in detail the signs and stages of physical deterioration preceding death by starvation. She also describes the fate of a few families from her native village of Shkurupii and khelmet of Myny. Hrytsko Blokha only fed his older son, so the six younger children died, as well as his mother.
Anton Shkurupii was a middle peasant, but the search brigades took everything from him, including his house. His wife died of grief, his two children ended up in an orphanage and survived. Anton himself begged his neighbors for food and died near their shed.
Many people died before harvesting. People rushed to eat the early grain. Some were caught and sentenced to death, while others ate too much green grain and died of bowel blockage.
Chvora’s family survived because her mother was good at rationing whatever food they had, and locked it in a chest in-between meals. In a poem included in the letter, Melaniia describes how people were working in beet fields for a meager ration that included a couple of dumplings and a serving of the water they were cooked in. She blames Stalin.
Ukrainian transcription and English translation available.
