Already on the way home, we could not resist the temptation to eat some of the bread and salt pork. It tasted heavenly. Mother suggested that we not eat too much for fear we would become sick. Now it was getting dark, and we were afraid to walk home the same way we had come. Consequently, we decided to go to a railroad station in the hope of catching a train to a station just three miles away from our village. This would shorten our walking distance and it would keep us in a safer populated area.
As we approached the station, a freight train slowly passed to our right. We noticed people gathered around something on the tracks. We joined them, and saw a pile of mangled human bodies in a pool of blood. Somebody said that it was a suicide; a woman carrying a child had jumped under the oncoming train. The onlookers began leaving the scene one by one, and the crushed bodies of the mother and her child remained lying there without any further attention. No one shed a tear or showed any emotion for their tragic end; all were too numb.
We walked to the station building. There were great crowds of people there also, both inside and out. They had come, as did all of us, from the surrounding villages. This was their last hope to find some food. They hoped that some sympathetic traveler would throw them a piece of bread from the train window. Some had hopes of finding a job. Still others brought with them the best of their belongings with the prospect of exchanging them for food, or selling them for money. They sat patiently on the cement floor of the platform, wet from snow, exhibiting their wares: beautifully hand-embroidered Ukrainian national costumes made of homespun materials, along with homemade richly embroidered tablecloths, embroidered towels, handwoven rugs. Some of them had been kept in trunks or in the hopechests of women for decades or even centuries as family heirlooms. But these valuable articles found no buyers at this time. Very few passenger trains passed by, and local people were not interested in buying anything but food. Except for Party and government officials, and black marketeers, all were hungry or starving.
Most of those who were crowding the station’s waiting hall inside were trying to buy tickets somewhere north of Ukraine, to Russia, where there was no famine. But their efforts were futile. Train tickets to Russia were officially prohibited to Ukrainian farmers with few exceptions. Only those with special certificates permitting them to leave the collective farm for a specific place could buy a train ticket to Russia. Nevertheless, the starving people tried their luck. They had nothing more to lose and nothing else to do, especially now that the fields, rivers, and forests were covered with deep snow. As a result, they flocked to the railroad stations because each train was bringing some ray of hope, some good news. Above all, there was the possibility that in spite of all prohibitions, one would somehow be able to board the train to the north. They kept dreaming of the impossible. They had thoughts of traveling on the roof of the train, or underneath the railroad car, on the steps, on buffer platforms, and on the bumpers.
But, for the most part, these dreams were never realized. The crowds in and around the railroad stations would be rounded up periodically by the militia and GPU men, loaded onto trucks like stray animals, and dumped somewhere outside the town limits.
We had better luck in obtaining train tickets because we were going south, not north. Soon we were on our way home, but the horror pictures of starvation were not over.
There were very few people in the car we entered as there wasn’t much traffic to the south—to the interior of Ukraine. There were many vacant places, and soon after we occupied our seats, a woman entered our compartment followed by two small emaciated boys. What a pitiful sight they were! Their faces were skin and bones; their eyes were bulging, dull, and listless. They were unkempt; their clothes were ragged and dirty.
After they sat down, I noticed that the woman held a baby under her coat at her bosom, and that the baby was dead.
“It’s a girl,” she said quietly, without showing any emotion. “She died yesterday. My poor baby; she was hungry, and kept crying…and then suddenly she stopped…. We stayed overnight outside. They threw us out of the waiting hall. It was very cold. The boys huddled under my coat like chicks under their mother hen….”
We didn’t know what to say and just kept watching her silently and with sympathy.
She put her dead baby on her knees and started to unwrap the dirty rags in which it was bundled. Then, as if realizing that the baby was dead, she bundled it up again, held it tightly to herself, and pressed her cheeks affectionately against the baby’s cold and rigid face. She started crying and talking to her dead baby:
“I am sorry…” she sobbed, tears rolling down her face and dropping onto the baby, “It’s not my fault. Heavens, I tried; I did all I could…. They labeled me an enemy of the people…. They threw us out wherever we went.” Then she started kissing her baby tenderly, its eyes, its forehead, its cheeks.
“Don’t worry, my baby, you won’t be alone for long; soon we’ll follow you; soon you will be again with your Mama and your brothers….”
Mother could not listen to her lament any longer, and afraid of bursting out crying in front of her, she got up and started towards the door, motioning me to follow her. Once in the corridor, she gave vent to her emotions. Crying, she asked me to cut three pieces of bread and give it to the woman and her boys. We returned to the compartment and I handed the bread to them. Words cannot describe the sensation the sight of bread made for these starved human beings.
After eating half of her portion of bread, and saving the rest for her boys, the woman calmed down somewhat and was able to tell us her sad story more coherently. It was a typical story of other Ukrainian families of that time, but incomprehensible to those who did not live through those experiences of suffering and tragedy.
A year before, we learned, this woman’s husband was labeled a kurkul and “an enemy of the people,” and was banished somewhere to the north. She never heard from him again. He never saw his baby daughter who was born after his banishment and was now lying dead in her arms. She had worked hard on the collective farm, but received only a few pounds of grain and some vegetables which amounted to practically nothing and were gone by the time winter had set in. Hungry and cold, with no prospect of getting food and firewood, she heard somewhere that there was no famine in Russia.
She had a little money, so she decided to try to go north to Russia with her children. In spite of hardships, she finally reached the railroad station and for two days tried to buy a ticket to a city in Russia where some of her neighbors had gone. They actually had written to her that there was no famine there, proving that hearsay was true. However, she was unable to buy a ticket since she did not have the necessary certificate from the collective farm. Now, since her infant daughter had died, she decided to go to another city not far from her village. She had heard that some kind of a children’s shelter was located there; perhaps she would be able to leave her boys there. What would happen to her after that did not matter. She was only concerned about her two boys’ survival.
I went out into the train corridor and stood there a while looking out the window. The train rolled on the tracks with its rhythmic motion. Snow-covered fields, trees, and telegraph poles rushed by. But even here, the otherwise peaceful scenery was disturbed: all along the tracks, groups of starving people were standing, sitting, or lying. They had trudged a long way to the railroad tracks hoping for a miracle; maybe someone would throw them a piece of bread. I could not hear their voices, but I saw their outstretched hands. Some stood there holding their children. They would lift them up so people could see their famished little bodies as if crying: “A crumb of bread, please! It’s not for me; it’s for my child!”