FOR THE RECORD: Recollections of a survivor of the Famine-Genocide

The Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences (known by its Ukrainian acronym as UVAN) recently held a conference dedicated to the 70th anniversary of the Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 in Ukraine. The conference took place on June 15 at the UVAN headquarters in New York.

The event featured presentations by Dr. Eugene Fedorenko, scholarly secretary of UVAN; and Ukraine's Consul General in New York Serhiy Pohoreltzev, who spoke about the Famine; Iryna Kurowyckyj, president of the Ukrainian National Women's League of America, who spoke about the UNWLA's archive on the Famine, as well as recollections of Famine survivors and an exhibit of materials related to that genocide perpetrated by Joseph Stalin and his henchmen.

Following are the recollections delivered by George Kurylko, a native of the Kurylivka farmstead, located just south of Poltava, Ukraine, who today resides in East Hanover, N.J. The text was translated from the original Ukrainian by Mr. Kurylko's daughter, Katya Wowk.

I, the son of a so-called kulak [wealthy landowner], was born in the Kurylivka farmstead, located around 12 kilometers south of Poltava. My grandfather, Ivan Maksymovych Kurylko, was a landowner. He had a good education for the time and endeavored that his children, his daughter and especially his son, Kornij, would be well-educated. After his death in 1922, my father took over the estate.

We were a small family: my father, mother, father's mother, my brother and I. I was 6 years old, my brother, five years older than I. Sensing the uncertainty of the time and heeding friends' advice, my father gave up most of the land and the estate. But this didn't save us from impending woes.

During the early summer of 1929 we would be dispossessed of everything that was part of my grandfather's and great-grandfather's farmstead, permitted to keep only enough to fit into a small wagon. We were relocated to the end of the farmstead to the activist's small house, while she was moved into our house. That summer I would go to the orchard that was once ours to steal apples.

In the autumn of 1930, I was enrolled in the school that was opened in our former home. By October we were moved to Didova Dolyna, not far from the Abazivka train station. Many dispossessed families were brought here to be settled in large barns that once belonged to recently deported landowners. My brother and I started attending school in Abazivka. My father sought refuge from the authorities so that he could later move us as well. He once arrived unexpectedly and was arrested and sentenced to five years of exile.

In the mean time we, along with 15 or so other families, were relocated to the village of Solomakhivka and settled into two houses. Our half of the house was filled with five families. Winter was approaching and, though there wasn't room enough to move about in the house, it was nonetheless warm.

My brother and I went to school, but probably more frequently we'd go begging in different villages. This was the first I'd learned what hunger means: hunger forced me to put out my hand for a stale piece of bread. Hunger is a frightful thing, an utter horror.

During the winter we received a letter from my father from Arkhangelsk. He wrote that he was cutting trees which had frozen in the ice on the Northern Dvina [River]. My mother would sell our last belongings, that were somehow retained, at the bazaar in Poltava to purchase some food.

Frequently, local activists would enter the house and take away whatever they could find. There was no one to whom you could complain. All dispossessed lost their right of a voice, and anyone who pleased could treat them cruelly.

Seven kilometers from Solomakhivka, in the direction of Poltava, also in a house with dispossessed, lived my Aunt Yalosoveta with her three children. They, too, were dispossessed, and her husband and his father were exiled to the north. My grandmother lived with her. In the spring of 1933 they all starved to death.

In many of the villages surrounding the Abazivka station, in various houses and barns, there were hundreds of dispossessed families, mainly women and children. The men were either exiled or were wandering about looking for work, evading exile. There were rumors that in a short while we were all supposed to be herded into train cars to be taken away to Siberia or the far north.

The foretellers of the Great Famine were the silent newborns. In the house where we lived a woman gave birth. The baby died after several days - the mother had no breast milk to feed it. The infant was buried behind the house unbaptized. These were the victims of the genocide, forgotten by God and people.

In the summer of 1932 we set off north to where my father was. He had been exiled with other prisoners to Voloshka, 18 kilometers from the station Konosha, which is on the railway line between Vologda and Arkhangelsk.

We arrived at Konosha station without any misfortune, if one discounts what occurred in Moscow at the north terminal. Serhij saw a Red Cross sign and, entering the building, asked if we could receive some food aid - "we're going to meet our father who is working in the north." When they learned from my mother that my father had been exiled for five years they said, "we don't help enemies of the people."

From the Konosha terminal there were two rail lines - one to the east, Velskaya Vietka, which was being constructed at the time and was supposed to go all the way to Velska, some 100 kilometers from Konosha. The other went west, Vetka Voloshka, 18 kilometers long. Along these rail lines, camps were scattered in which prisoners worked as lumbermen, mainly former landowners from Ukraine.

At first my father worked loading lumber, but because of a lack of literate northerners, that is, people from the local population, the timber outpost was forced to make use of exiles: office workers, foremen, supervisors, etc. My father was made a warehouse supervisor.

Voloshka had several prisoner camps. The first, second and eighth camps were the largest. Each had over 10 log barracks for prisoners, as well as stables, storage houses, and housing for clerical workers. All this was built by special deportees from Ukraine and the Kuban who were brought here at the end of the '20s, during wintertime. They were thrown right into the snow, given a tool and ordered to build the barracks. Many, especially the children, died before spring. Again and again families from Ukraine were brought here until the construction of the camps was completed.

During the summer of 1932, at the Voloshka camps, there were nearly 3,500 prisoners. Some 90 percent from Ukraine and Kuban, some Tatars from Crimea, Azerbaijanis and other Muslims from the Caucasus. There were no guards. There was only one GPU komendant, but no one fled. Where would one go? All around, for hundreds of kilometers, lay the taiga. No one had documents of any kind. The northerners were turned against Ukrainians - they were rewarded for capturing escapees. If someone was caught, they were severely punished and shot. But there were also instances of lucky escape.

Work on the timber detail was extremely difficult for the inhabitants, especially during winter when the cold could reach minus 50 degrees, and the snowdrifts rose to two meters. There was no medical assistance of any kind. Sanitary conditions were worse than one could ever imagine. Bed bugs and lice devoured the people. Meager food supplies depended on fulfilling quotas, and the work quotas were high, especially for former farmers. People died like flies from hunger, cold and difficult work, especially in the winter. Up until 1932 some still received aid from Ukraine and managed to get by somehow.

The winter of 1932-1933 was extremely harsh and entire barracks died from hunger, cold and exhausting work. At the end of the winter, out of some 3,500 prisoners, perhaps a quarter of them survived. The dead were thrown into pits dug the previous autumn, and not covered with dirt until spring. Since there weren't enough pits, corpses were piled into empty barracks because it was impossible to dig large holes in the frozen ground. And by whom? Those who managed to stay alive had to prepare the timber.

In the spring, new groups of deported exiles were brought in. In one such group was my father's cousin, Konstantyn Maksymenko.

Though the camps were filled up with new prisoners, there still weren't enough people. Apparently, even in Ukraine, there were no kulaks or their helpers left.

Many prisoners died the following winter as well. Those who survived were transported to Velskaya Vietka where there were several similar prisoner camps in which innocent Ukrainians also died.

From Vologda to Arkhangelsk there were numerous such camps, but how many innocent lives were lost in them will never be known. From St. Petersburg and Solovky to Kolyma and Sakhalin, all of Russia was covered with Ukrainian bones.

My father and two other exiles, Yuri Slonitsky and Nestor Stoyanets, were left to work in the prisoner camp office for the criminal colony which was brought to Voloshka. This is where they worked until the end of their exile sentences in 1935.

After their release, Slonitsky went to his native Chernihiv, where after a while he was arrested and exiled who knows where. Stoyanets also went home, but sensing another arrest threatening, he returned to work in the north.

My father was able to fool the NKVD and avoid being arrested and exiled again. In his passport, issued for one year, there was an addendum "Passport issued on the basis of documentation verifying completion of sentence." When he arrived in Ukraine, in the Donbas, he didn't register with the NKVD as was required by everyone who had served in exile. After a year, when it came time to renew his passport, he wore it out in such a way, especially where the addendum was, that it was impossible to read. The young woman who issued passports, when she came to this section, asked, "on the basis of what documents was this passport issued to you?" "My birth certificate," answered my father. And so she entered it into his new passport, good for five years.

In 1942 we returned to our native Poltava, but my brother Serhij wasn't with us. In 1941 he was completing the pedagogical institute in Luhansk; just before his final exams he was arrested. Later we found out that he was sent to Siberia for eight years.

Our farm was transferred to the village of Sudiyevka.

Another man and his family, with whom we lived in the same house in Solomakhivka, also moved to Sudiyevka. I remembered his family: a young wife, his 41-year-old son and his elderly parents. I asked what happened to them. "They all died in 1933, starved to death. I was saved by exile to Kazakstan. Everyone who lived in those two houses starved to death. There were over 40 people."

Not many of the dispossessed returned to their native lands. And even among those who had not been dispossessed, many died in 1933. By my father's account, among our close and distant relatives, nearly 150 died in 1932-1933.

In 1991, I, my son and daughter visited the place where we had a farmstead and a several-hectare orchard - everything was overgrown with thick brush.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, August 17, 2003, No. 33, Vol. LXXI

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