Miron Dolot - Execution by Hunger

Their demand to deliver our nonexistent gold seemed ridiculous to us, and the idea that my mother was to become an “enemy of the people” was absurd. Mother had gone through many such difficult situations far too often to lose her composure now. She categorically denied that we had ever had gold coins to deliver to the state. She, for one, couldn’t even tell what a gold coin looked like. Our purchase of food at the Torgsin was made with a gold medallion, not a gold coin. Such an exchange of a medallion for food at the store owned by the state could not possibly be an illegal act, she insisted.

Just the same, the village chairman ordered a thorough search of our house. Every corner and nook was examined; each piece of clothing was pulled out; each lid from each pot was removed. They looked everywhere and into everything but found nothing. There was nothing to be found with the exception of the one remaining medallion which was carefully hidden in what was once our pigpen.

Finally, they departed with nothing, and afterwards, much to our surprise, they left us alone.

IN THE latter part of February, the cold became very intense. Temperatures sank below zero; violent storms raged. The roaring and whistling winds tore frozen limbs off trees and ripped roofs off some houses. But even such a severe winter could have been borne were it not for the hunger. To be cold and hungry, without food or fuel, and without hope of getting any, is a horror defying imagination.

Our village became completely isolated. High snowdrifts made roads and paths impassable. The snow deposits were so heavy that sometimes it was difficult to open the front doors of the houses. People had no intention of leaving their homes anyway; there was no place to go. Our village was snowed in, and its inhabitants were slowly dying of hunger in their houses.

We kept our house locked. We tried unsuccessfully to suppress our feelings of hunger by reading and telling stories. We prayed often. Mother would fall on her knees in front of the icons, and we would join her, repeating the words of the prayer after her. We felt more secure then believing that our prayers would be heard by God who would soon send us some relief. I often heard my Mother addressing the icons: “Oh, Almighty God: You sent upon us Your wrath and punishment at a time when Satan is also torturing us. Why do you treat us this way, Great God? Be merciful to us and help us to withstand Satan’s treatment.”

Then, as if feeling remorse for reproaching God, she would recite a long suppliant prayer. My brother Mykola had his own prayer. He also wanted to know the reason God sent such torture upon the people who so fervently believed in Him. He always ended with the plea to God to send us some bread. And so we spent our time in prayers, dreams, hopes, and expectations of a miracle.

There was an endless succession of days and nights with mostly raging snowstorms. But one morning, the storm broke and it was calm outside. Feeble rays of sunshine penetrated the frosty windowpanes. Mykola and I decided to go outside, but we had a hard time opening the door. We finally succeeded after repeatedly shoving and pushing it against the drifts, and stepped out to a beautiful morning of gleaming snow, azure sky, and clear fresh air.

There was silence and the monotony of snow everywhere throughout the village. The only signs of life came from the chimneys here and there, with tiny streams of smoke rising in the sky. Many houses in our neighborhood did not have any smoke coming out of their chimneys. Hadn’t the people inside made any fires? How could they possibly stay alive, we wondered, in subzero temperatures, without their houses being heated?

To find out for ourselves, we ran first to Dmytro’s house which showed no signs of life. Dmytro had never returned home after he had been taken to the county center. His young wife Solomia was left alone with their daughter. She had gone to work in the collective farm, taking her little child with her. As the wife of a banished man, she too was considered an “enemy of the people,” and her child was refused admission to the nursery. Later, Solomia was expelled from the collective farm, and thus forced to seek a job in the city. That was impossible, however, because she could not show a certificate of release from the collective farm. She found herself trapped in the circle of the Communist death ring. She had to return to her village.

When winter came, Solomia went from house to house, willing to work for just a piece of bread. She was too proud to beg. People were sympathetic and helped her as much as they could. However, as the famine worsened, and the villagers were no longer able to help her, she was not seen on her rounds any more.

We found the front door of Solomia’s house open, but the entrance was blocked with snowdrifts, and it was hard to get inside. When we finally reached the living room, we saw a pitiful sight: Solomia was hanging from the ceiling in the middle of the room. She was dressed in her Ukrainian national costume, and at her breast hung a large cross. It was obvious that she had made preparations before committing suicide. Her hair was combed neatly in two braids hanging over her shoulders.

Frightened, we ran to fetch Mother. We helped her take down Solomia’s frozen body, and laid it on a bench, and covered it with a handmade blanket. It was only after we finished doing this that we noticed the dead body of her little daughter. The child was lying in a wooden tub in the corner under the icons, clean and dressed in her best clothes. Her little hands were folded across her chest.

On the table was a note:

Dear Neighbors:

Please bury our bodies properly. I have to leave you, dear neighbors. I can bear this life no longer. There is no food in the house, and there is no sense in living without my little daughter who starved to death, or my husband. If you ever see Dmytro, tell him about us. He will understand our plight, and he will forgive me. Please tell him that I died peacefully, thinking about him and our dear daughter.

I love you, my dear neighbors, and I wish with all my heart that you somehow recover from this disaster. Forgive me for troubling you. Thank you for everything you have done for me.

After reading the note, we stood there for a while, motionless and forlorn. Our mother tried to suppress the sound of her weeping, pressing the corner of her head scarf to her lips. Mykola gazed at the corpses in disbelief.

In my imagination I was recreating the agony of their dying: the child’s hunger cries, and then the death convulsions of its exhausted little body.

How great must have been the sufferings of the mother. She had to listen helplessly to the pleas of her child for food, while she herself was near starvation. She must have felt great relief, I thought, when she saw her little daughter breathing for the last time. Then, in my imagination, I saw the mother attending to her lifeless child: dressing her in the best and cleanest clothing she had, praying on her knees near the body, and finally kissing her for the last time before her own suicide.

Mother interrupted my thoughts. We had to fulfill the last wishes of our dead neighbor and bury the two corpses properly. My mother always wanted to do everything correctly. But, how could we do it this time? We were too weak to dig a grave in the snow-covered frozen ground, or even to take the bodies to the cemetery.

After realizing these facts, we decided to leave them in the house. For the time being, the cold prevented their decay, so we just laid the body of the child beside her mother on the sleeping bench, covered them both with the blanket, and left.

After this sad discovery, we could not sit idly at home. There were many other houses around us that had no smoke coming out of their chimneys. We realized that similar tragedies had taken place there too. My mother was especially concerned about Boris’s family and also about a widow who lived with her crippled daughter in our neighborhood. She thought they might still be alive and in need of help.