Yatsenko, Olha

Written by a student at a technical college (tekhnikum) in Poltava. Olha Yatsenko was 17 in 1933 and describes in great detail how the students managed during the famine, how much and what they ate, how much it cost at the time.

She lived in a student residence, had meals in a student cafeteria (for 7,000 students), and received a ration of "0.4 g" (apparently 400 g) of bread a day. She and her roommates learned to sell 200 g of bread at the bazaar for 5 rubles and then buy other food to survive.

She writes that the area near Yuzhnyi (Southern) train station in Poltava was where people who arrived from the villages were dying and where they were leaving their children to be picked up by orphanages.

She and her fellow-students were sent to the nearby kolhosp to help with harvesting. There were no people in the village, only abandoned houses with open doors. Yatsenko compares the famine to the siege of Leningrad. She mentions occurrences of people selling sausages made of human meat. Her father became a public servant. Her family of 8 was affected by famine: her grandmother died of hunger and her brother was swollen. Her friend whose husband worked in the NKVD was well provided for, and she would share with Yatsenko bread leftovers and soap.

Ukrainian transcription and English translation are available.

• Poltava
  Poltavs’ka Oblast’, Ukraine
  

  Latitude: 49.59373 Longitude: 34.54073
• Poltavs’ka Oblast’
  Poltava, Ukraine
  

  Latitude: 49.47705 Longitude: 33.81866