Tag #153130 - Interview #78138 (Ida Kristina)

When the collectivization 16 began and kolkhozes started to be organized in the 1930s we often had guests from villages. Our house was across the street from the prison and our acquaintances from Oleshevka and Tarkhovka, or acquaintances of our acquaintances or just strangers, came to visit their relatives that were arrested for being kulaks 17. All those people stayed in our house. Our father came from Tarkhovka and our mother came from Oleshevka and all their acquaintances came to see their relatives in prison. Prisoners' relatives arrived on horse-drawn carts that they parked in our yard. They tried to bribe the guard to take parcels with food to the prisoners, but only occasionally they managed to do this. I remember that I went to stand in line to the window to hand over parcels early in the morning and my mother or somebody else brought boiled potatoes or soup later. Those visitors rescued us from starving to death during the famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. They brought us potatoes, vegetables, pumpkin, sunflower seeds and pork fat. Yes, that's right, my mother and father ate pork fat during that period and there was no observance of kosher laws. We didn't have bread in the house, but we didn't starve. Many people stayed in our house. Their relatives were sent to exile [during Stalin's forced deportation to Siberia] 18: they marched in columns of 400-500 people under a convoy to the railway station and from there they proceeded by train. Many of them disappeared for good. Very few survived: most of them died on the way or in Siberia from hard work, hunger and the cold.

Many people starved to death during this period and I saw dead people in the streets of the town. But I was young and forgot bad things and kept thinking about bright and nice things.