Letter sent from: Nadvirna raion, Ivano-Frankivsk oblast
Letter describes events in 1932-1933 in: Village of Olenivka, Vinnytsia raion, Vinnytsia oblast
Current location name: Village of Olenivka, Vinnytsia raion, Vinnytsia oblast
Ivan Haievyk's letter is addressed to Larysa Shakhova of Silski Visti. Haievyk had previously sent a piece of writing to the newspaper’s “Nezabutnie” (Unforgettable) column, a memoir about the famine years called “Holod ne nash brat” (Famine is not our brother), but it was never published. He asks Shakhova to find out what happened to his piece and to make sure it is published. He also encloses a one-page ending to the testimony he previously sent and mentions that this last page had fallen out of the envelope.
In this one-pager, Haievyk mentions that his brother-in-law, Vasyl Stasiuk, was arrested by the NKVD in 1938 and sentenced to death. Stasiuk was rehabilitated posthumously.
Then Haievyk provides a detailed description of the kinds of mock foods that his family consumed during the famine, how, for instance, he and other pupils in school would climb the acacia tree and eat its blossoms. Families would also dry and grind these blossoms to add the resulting “flour” to pancake batter. Parents also boiled some root that the children would eat, which was poisonous raw. As a decorated war veteran, Haievyk writes that there is no scarier thing in this world than starvation.
Ukrainian transcription available.
