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Kyivans' Oral Evidences on the Genocide of 1932-1933: Children Were Dying Above All…

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The authors of the publication:
Borysenko Valentyna
p.:
17-27
UDC:
801.81:[94(477-25):314.14-053.5]“1932/1933”
Bibliographic description:
Borysenko, V. (2018) Kyivans’ Oral Evidences on the Genocide of 1932–1933: Children Were Dying Above All… Folk Art and Etnology, 5 (375), 17–27.

Author

Borysenko Valentyna

a Doctor of History, a professor, an Honoured Science and Technology Worker of Ukraine, a head of the Archival Scientific Funds of Manuscripts and Audio-Recordings Department at the NASU M. Rylskyi IASFE

 

Kyivans’ Oral Evidences on the Genocide of 1932–1933: Children Were Dying Above All…

 

Abstract

The poorly known aspects of the crime of the totalitarian Soviet regime during the Ukrainian nation Genocide in 1932–1933 are explained after the archival materials and people oral evidences. The purposely planned crime of the Kremlin to destroy Ukrainian people have struck small children and older people the most. They have died of terrible hunger in masses. The consciousness has become darkened, people have tried to escape, but run against the obstacles of the armed Red Army soldiers. The mothers have attempted to take their children out to the city with hope that somebody will save the wretches. But the authority hasn’t allowed them even a chance to survive. The archival documents assure, that from the end of 1932 a number of little fugitives from the village have been on the increase monthly. Special quarantines have been created for them in Kyiv. Children have been kept in terrible conditions, in cold, hunger, they have died in masses. One document affirms a peculiar cynicism of the authority representatives, when during the quarantine revision at the place of the present National Children’s Specialized Hospital Okhmatdyt the dead children have been put together into the large heaps and carried out with the lorries for several times a week. Hardly alive children have been here with the departed. The sanitary departments have ordered the administration to bury children every day, because such confluence of the deceased damages the Soviet authority prestige. It has been said about the new quarantines building at the city suburbs. The Kyivans have seen that the peasants die in masses. They have been picked up in the streets, entrucked on the lorries and carried out to the city localities, where they have been buried in common holes. The crime eyewitnesses tell, how people have tried to help hungry children and shared with their small ration of bread. But it is not enough as the Kyivans have also famished. It is narrated, that people, who have worked in the canteens at the plants, got out the porridge from the saucepan and carried out a bit to wretched peasants, waiting at the fences. They have eaten the crumbs and died with pain quite here. Attention is paid to children as the most suffered age category. The Ukrainian nation future have been destroyed consciously. This fact should be kept in mind. Such crime should never be reiterated.

 

Keywords

Holodomor, Kyivans, children, quarantine, the dead burial, peasants-fugitives, sympathy.

 

References

  1. State Archives of Kyiv, fund P-1, inventory 1, file 4147; file 4145; file 4467; file 4329; fund P-323, inventory 1, file 548; file 551.
  2. Borysenko V. (2008) The 1932–1933 Holodomor in Kyiv after Oral History Sources. The 1932–1933 Holodomor Victims’National Commemorative Book in Ukraine. Kyiv.
  3. Borysenko V. (2007) The Memorial Candle. An Oral History on the 1932–1933 Genocide of Ukrainians. Kyiv.
  4. Zaytsev Yu. (composite author’s supervisor) (1998) The History of Ukraine. Lviv.
  5. Krychevska-Rosandich K. (2006) My Reminiscences. Kyiv.
  6. TheDeclassified Memory. The Ukrainian 1932–1933Holodomor in the SPA-PCIA Documents. Kyiv, 2007.
  7. Sokil V. (2007) Folk Prose on the Holodomor: Issues of Tradition Folk Art and Ethnography, № 6.
  8. Mytsyk Yu., Ivannikova L. (compilers) (2007) The Ukrainian 1932–1933 Holocaust. Evidences of Survivors. Kyiv, Vol. 4.

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