Letter sent from: Village of Horodyshche, Pishchanka raion, Vinnytsia oblast
Letter describes events in (1932-1933): Village of Horodyshche, Pishchanka raion, Vinnytsia oblast
Current location name: Village of Horodyshche, Pishchanka raion, Vinnytsia oblast
Author (Denys Hruby) is a pensioner, CPSU member, and veteran of World War II, with some education.
Almost half of the village population died; 10-15 people were buried in the same grave.
Kurkuls/kulaks were arrested and disappeared (“never returned”).
Search brigades first took all food and later also their cow and his mother’s sheepskin coat and other clothing. Five chickens remained, laying some two eggs a day; the family of 4 was living on half an egg each every day. When he was unable to help bring in food, he was deprived of his half. Author’s maternal grandparents were left homeless and later starved to death. His family moved into a makeshift shelter. He would make ink and trade it for food. Denys and his friend Pavlo, his bench-mate at school, decided to take off to Odesa, hearing that there was food there and one could get by. They snuck onto a train with the help of an uncle and spent the first part of their sojourn there with some of Pavlo’s relatives (“the girls”). They were there 2-2.5 months, begging for bread near bread stores and doing menial labor for a cafeteria worker to survive; then they heard that conditions had improved at home. They left at a time when strays were being rounded up into orphanages. They were respectively 9 and 10 years of age.
Denys returned to his village, where widespread death had ceased. Two kolhosps were created in the village. People had an uprising when their agricultural implements were taken away from them.
Village authorities were a bunch of loutish drunks guilty of mismanagement and selling confiscated valuables cheaply.
Author gives some details about life after the Holodomor (army service, kolhosp leadership, etc.).
