Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust

CHAPTER 22

SOMETIME by the end of August, the Grain Collection Campaign reopened with even greater intensity. Day and night we were reminded that we were still lagging behind in the fulfillment of the grain delivery quota. Endlessly long meetings were again conducted daily. All this was beyond our comprehension. We had been members of the collective farm for more than two years. This meant that we had no land of our own and therefore, logically, we could not have any grain of our own. Since collectivization had been started, the state Bread Procurement Commission had crisscrossed our village several times and requisitioned all of our grain reserves. As a result, our villagers were slowly starving to death. Anybody who came to us could see that. But the Thousanders and the other Party and government representatives pretended not to. They continued searching our homes and taking every single grain they could still find.

At about the same time—the end of August—it was rumored that we villagers would no longer be permitted to shop in the village store. One day we were summoned to a Hundred meeting and informed about the new law the government had passed to combat speculation in general consumption goods. Farmers who had not fulfilled their quotas of delivering grain and other produce had no right to buy their commodities in the state-owned stores. In order to buy such commodities one had to show an official certificate from the village soviet proving that its holder had fulfilled all quotas. Since all stores at that time were state owned, and nobody in our village had been able to fulfill the quotas, no one could buy anything. As a result we were deprived of the simplest necessities of civilized life. Most of us could not afford, for instance, the luxury of a kerosene lamp for lighting the house because we could not buy kerosene. We had to eat the little food we had, mainly vegetables, unsalted. We had to bathe ourselves without soap, for we were deprived of the right to buy it. I won’t even mention other staples, such as sugar and so forth, for we had not seen them in our village for two years.

Later on, this law proved to be even harsher than we at first thought. The villagers would go to the neighboring cities where they could buy household goods from black marketeers. The law defined the customers of the black market system as speculators and established prison terms or detention in concentration camps for them of from five to ten years, without the possibility of parole or amnesty. As a consequence, for buying a needle, a spool of thread, a pair of stockings, or a pound of salt on the black market, a villager, if caught, was convicted of speculation and sentenced for up to ten years at hard labor somewhere in the Russian north.

A reprieve finally came. In September 1932 we received an advance payment in kind: a meager ration of 200 grams of grain of wheat per labor day. A month later, we received some potatoes, beets, and onions. This was all the food that was supposed to sustain our lives until the next harvest. Not a single villager who worked in the fields could have accumulated more than 200 labor days. The work norms were so high that it was rare for anyone to receive even a full labor day for twelve or more hours of work during the harvest season. Such a day’s work was credited with only three quarters of a labor day, or even half. Thus for 200 labor days, a family of five received only about eighty pounds of grain, wheat, or rye, or sixteen pounds of grain per person.

It should be noted here that the rural populace in Ukraine depended almost exclusively on bread at that time. Villagers were completely deprived of meat, fat, eggs, and milk products. Nor were there any grocery stores, bakeries, or market stores of any kind in the village. In order to stay alive until the next harvest, we had to have at least two pounds of bread per person daily. Instead we received the equivalent in grain for less than one and a half pounds of bread per person for an entire month. We were promised that we would be getting more grain at the end of the year, but these promises were never kept.

It was the same story with payment in money. At the end of December, the members of the collective farm were paid 25 kopeks (about five cents in American money at that time) per labor day. A family with 200 labor days received 50 rubles as payment for all of 1932. With this money, one could have bought only about three loaves of bread on the black market.

In normal times we lived off of our gardens. They provided us with potatoes, cabbages, beets, beans, carrots, and other vegetables. Our traditional ways of preserving and storing these vegetables gave us enough food to carry us through the entire winter with no great hardship, provided we had plenty of bread. Even in the winter of 1931–1932, with the great scarcity of grain, we somehow managed to survive because of our vegetables. But the year of 1932 had not been normal. That spring we had a massive famine during which the people consumed even the seeds for planting, so there was nothing left with which to plant the vegetable gardens. Most gardens remained overgrown with weeds. The meager allotment of food received from the collective farm as advance payment was soon consumed. With no additional help forthcoming starvation set in.

Famine or no famine, the Bread Procurement Commission continued to work. Sometime in November 1932, we were told that the grain delivery to the state had begun to lag behind schedule. The Government ordered all advance payments of wages in kind stopped; grain which had already been distributed returned and all the seed and forage reserves requisitioned.

This order gave a great impetus to the activities of the Bread Procurement Commission. Previously, grain quotas were met by taxation of villagers according to acreage under cultivation. Since the taxation was too high, the grain reserves had already been used up in previous years. Nevertheless, the government continued to levy new quotas. The village officials were only too willing to comply with the government’s demands, and a new method of collecting the grain from the villagers was introduced. This was known as “pumping the bread out,” a term used by both villagers and officials. The village quota was divided equally among the Hundreds, which divided their quotas among their component Fives, which in their turn divided their quotas among their five householders. Therefore, if a Five’s quota had been two thousand pounds of grain, for example, then its five householders would have to deliver their share of four hundred pounds each.

The village officials worked fast, and they did their job well. At the next meeting, we were told that the village as a whole; that is, all village subunits, all functionaries, all school teachers and pupils, and, of course, all the farmers as individuals, were to compete with one another in the collection of foodstuffs. Consequently, the meetings lasted longer, the functionaries became more aggressive and brutal, and the farmers sank deeper into despair.

But still the collecting of foodstuffs did not advance as quickly as the officials desired. Something drastic had to be done, so in time, the official line of reasoning acquired a new tone: the farmers were now considered too ignorant to understand such a highly patriotic deed as collecting and delivering food to the state. The Party and the government meant well for the farmers, and if they did not appreciate what the Party meant for them—well, that was the farmers’ fault. The farmers were to be treated like children, and that put the Party and the government in the position of parents. The farmers had to follow the Party and the government without asking questions. There was no alternative. And, as unruly children are punished by parents, so would the unruly farmers be punished by the Party and the government.

In accordance with this philosophy, the commission no longer tried to enlighten us in the matter of food collection. There was another way. To put it in official terms, this was “direct contact of officials with the masses of people.” In plain language, it meant that the Bread Procurement Commission was ordered to visit the farmers individually at their homes.

The commission members would go to a certain house and inform the householder about the amount and kind of food he should deliver. If he didn’t have any grain, the commission would proceed with a thorough search for “hidden bread.” Of course, anything found would be confiscated.

The Thousanders and their lieutenants could now do whatever they wanted without regard to the formalities of the law. They could use all their tricks or threats to lure or force the farmers into their traps. Going from house to house, searching, and carrying off everything they wanted satisfied their greed and criminal urges while allowing them successfully to serve the Party and the government.

At times, those officials exhibited a sort of childish behavior that flabbergasted us. Often they would entertain themselves by playing with their guns. Sometimes they fought duels in jest. That was how we learned that all of them carried guns. On their daily rounds, they sometimes shot at anything that moved. Occasionally, they even went so far as to stage mock executions of one or another of the villagers.

I witnessed the following scene: a neighbor of ours could not deliver the required quota of grain. Comrade Thousander, the head of the commission, decided to “teach” him how to obey orders. He announced that our neighbor would be shot for “opposing the Party’s policies.” The execution was to take place immediately in the garden behind the man’s house. No doubt Comrade Thousander was expecting our neighbor to plead for mercy and promise to deliver the grain quota. The commission members suspected that he had “hidden grain” somewhere. But, our neighbor could not be so easily frightened.

“As you wish,” he quietly announced to the surprised officials. “I am ready; let’s get it over with.” And he led the way into the garden. Then he was blindfolded and asked for the last time whether he was willing to deliver the grain quota. His answer was that he had nothing to deliver. Comrade Thousander raised his gun and fired—over our neighbor’s head. Then the blindfold was removed, and our neighbor was asked the same question. The answer was still the same. The blindfold was put on once more: the bullets flew over his head again; but he would not change his story. By now, the officials’ laughter had changed to rage. Not being able to accomplish anything at the time, they left, promising to return and give him a “real lesson.”

What had once been a “tax in kind,” then a “bread collection for the whole state,” and later “expropriation of bread for construction of the socialist society,” now became robbery. Free of any restraints, the commission went from house to house, day and night, searching for “hidden bread.” Each commission had its experts for this purpose. The experts responsible for searching for grain in the ground were equipped with special screw-type rods. The long rods sharpened at one end were used for probing haystacks or tacks of straw, and the thatched roofs of the farmers’ houses. The commission members searched everywhere: they drilled holes in the gardens, backyards, in the earth floors of the houses, and in the farm buildings. They looked for grain under beds, in the lattices and cellars. They never missed checking inside the stoves and ovens, on and under shelves, in trunks, and up the chimneys. They measured the thickness of the walls, and inspected them for bulges where grain could have been concealed. Sometimes they completely tore down suspicious walls or took apart or demolished cooking and heating stoves and ovens. Nothing in the houses remained intact or untouched. They upturned everything: even the cribs of babies, and the babies themselves were thoroughly frisked, not to mention the other family members. They looked for “hidden grain” in and under men’s and women’s clothing. Even the smallest amount that was found was confiscated. If so much as a small can or jar of seeds was found that had been set aside for spring planting, it was taken away, and the owner was accused of hiding food from the state.

One day, the commission came to our house leading a horse with them. Why? we wondered. The horse searched for grain in the ground. The “search expert” led it all around our backyard. At first, we couldn’t figure out the reason for this ceremony. Later we found out that a horse presumably would not step on a covered pit; it would abruptly stop before it, or jump over it. That would be a signal for the commission to grab their shovels and start digging for hidden grain. Fortunately, we had no covered pits.

As 1932 neared its end, we often heard explanations of why the officials continued searching our homes for grain. They were very simple: since we were still alive, we must have been eating something to survive. We had not fulfilled the grain delivery quota, and yet we had been complaining that we had nothing to eat. But we were still alive! That meant that we had to have food—but where? It had to be somewhere. The officials felt that they had failed in their duties to find the hidden treasure of food. This made them frustrated, angry, and all the more vicious and cruel to us.

We were being watched day and night. We were cautioned, for example, that the village windmills were being closely scrutinized. Those who wound bring some grain to the windmill for converting it into flour could be sure that they would be visited by the commission even before they returned home. But such cases were very rare because we had no grain at that time. The village windmills stood idle.

Aside from wheat and rye, other cereals such as millet and buckwheat were also staples of the Ukrainian diet. To prepare the millet or buckwheat grain for cooking every household had its own mortar, a simply-designed wooden contraption that separated the grain from the husk. One day, sometime at the end of November 1932, it was announced that all mortars had to be destroyed on the explicit order of Comrade Thousander. The following days witnessed the senseless destruction of this device. Members of the commission, armed with axes, went from house to house, hacking the mortars to pieces without giving us an explanation of why it had to be done. Those of us who still had some millet or buckwheat grain had to find some other way to remove the husks.

Smoke curling from the chimney could also cause trouble for a household, as it was a reliable sign that something might be cooking inside. The officials instructed their men to carefully observe our chimneys. In our Hundred, for example, a special smoke watcher was appointed. His duty was to watch all Hundred homes day and night and to inform the Thousander about each and every house from which smoke was emitted. Especially closely watched were the houses of those villagers who were suspected of “hoarding bread.” The houses with the telltale sign of smoke would be visited by commissions without delay. If cereal was being cooked, the houseowner would be subjected to a lengthy interrogation, and a thorough search would be made. The usage of grain before the fulfillment of the quota was considered illegal, and was severely punished. Since our village had not yet fulfilled that quota, by cooking our gruel and consuming it, we “misappropriated socialist property for our personal gain.” Even the smallest amount of cereal had to be delivered to the state.

A house with smoke coming from its chimney was also in danger of becoming a target for thieves. Robbers at that time were interested only in food, cooked or raw. We often heard that terrible crimes had been committed for a couple of potatoes or a pot of buckwheat gruel.

There was also another way used to find out whether a villager had grain or other agricultural produce: that of arrest and jail. As I had mentioned before, the prisoners in the village jail did not receive food from their jailkeepers; their families had to feed them. One of the Thousanders was struck by an ingenious idea: how about throwing those suspected of “hoarding food” into jail and then wait to see what happened?

The idea was enthusiastically accepted, and soon we started hearing of arrests without any reason; arrests made just to find out what kind of food, if any, the arrested would receive from home. The trick didn’t work. There really was no food in the village. Bringing food to jail would have meant exposing the family, including the arrested family member, to obvious danger. Thus no one wanted to do that, even for the sake of one’s own father.

In November 1932, the suffering of our villagers began to approach the magnitude of last spring’s famine. The first famine had been marked by unspeakable suffering, and yet, it had not been without a ray of hope: it was spring, and we all prayed that the new vegetables and fruits would sustain us until the summer harvest. The situation this autumn, however, was different. The harvest of 1932 was good, but the government took everything. The collective farmers were left without bread, except for that meager payment in kind that they received as advance compensation for their work. By the end of November, we were at the end of our resources. We were without food, and we had no money with which to buy any. The dried and preserved wild berries, the edible roots, the cabbages and pumpkins, the beets, the fruits had already been consumed. There was no hope of getting a new supply of them. We faced a severe winter with freezing temperatures, and great snowstorms which we knew would last until the end of March or even longer. Again, as in last spring’s famine, a multitude of beggars roamed the village, pleading to be rescued from death. They begged for morsels of bread, for scraps of food, for peelings and discards. Once again, one could see famished people, dressed in rags and tatters, roaming over the potato field searching for leftover potatoes. Once more, starving farmers, like walking skeletons, searched the forest and explored the river with the hopes of finding something edible. And again, they went to cities, railroad stations, and the railroad tracks, in hope of getting some food from the passengers.

Compared with other villagers, my family and I were in better shape to survive the winter. We had learned from the difficulties experienced during last spring’s famine to make extra preparations and to take special precautions to stay alive. Our main problem was how to hide the little food we had from the X-ray eyes of the officials. It was difficult to outwit them, but our survival instincts made us inventive.

The threat of imminent famine sharpened our minds; it freed us from the fear of being caught and made us ready to fight for our lives at any cost. While preparing for the long winter, we knew that we had to outsmart our persecutors if we wanted to stay alive.

Hiding food was not an easy task. The prospect of intolerable hunger forced us to take risks we would otherwise have never dared. After much worried thinking and discussion, our mother finally hit upon an idea: it was very simple, but extremely risky.

“Why not enlist the help of the government?” she remarked, as if it were obvious.

We did not understand what she had in mind.

“What do you mean?” I asked, completely baffled. “You mean to ask the government for help? You know that instead of helping us they have already taken everything we have!”

“No, not that,” she answered quietly, as was her way. “I mean we should hide whatever food we have in a pit on government land.”

We had to agree with her. It was an excellent idea. Its logic was clear: no official would even think of someone daring to hide food from the government on the government’s own land. Any personal use of government property was severely punished by law, but we dared to defy that law, and by doing it we saved our lives.

As we anticipated, the Bread Procurement Commission searched all over our backyard and garden, but did not bother to cross the boundary to the government property—the adjacent sand dunes.

During harvest time, my brother and I had not been idle. No matter how carefully the crop was guarded, we were able to collect enough wheat grain to sustain our lives until at least the next spring. We were agile young boys with nimble feet; we knew each path, each bush, and we knew how to avoid being caught. The only problem that remained was how to hide the grain. However, that problem had now been solved by our mother.

We buried some potatoes and grain in several places in a strip of land adjoining the woods. That land was a useless sandy dune overgrown by bushy willows and sallows so it was very easy for us to disguise our hiding places. In the winter, these hiding places were covered by snow, and we left them undisturbed. But when spring came and the snow melted, this hoard was our only means of existence. We would open our hiding places during the night, take out some potatoes and grain, enough for a few days, and then close and cover them up again. Our nightly visits to those hiding places are among my unforgettable experiences. Those potatoes and that grain were the greatest treasure that was ever hidden in the ground.

During the wintertime, we ate the food that was hidden elsewhere—in the tree hollows, for example, or in the roof thatching. We hid the grain in small bags in many places so as to be able to remove one bag at a time. Upon removing it, we immediately cooked and ate it. Both the cooking and the eating were done at night. We still had some potatoes, sauerkraut, and pickles which we received as advance payment in kind for our work in the kolhosp. This was our only solid food, but as days passed, these resources began to diminish rapidly, and we trembled at the thought that the commission might some day catch us eating our cooked wheat.