756 names of the Holodomor victims are engraved on the monument.
PETRO MYNOVYCH DUDKA, born in 1930, inhabitant of the village,
“I don’t remember the famine because I was young. And the mother told when she was still alive that it was very difficult then. There was nothing to eat, they collected heads of grain and rotten potatoes. My sister died at the age of 32, and my grandmother at the age of 33. Many people died in our region, then a gravedigger went around the corner and gathered people. They were buried in a pit somewhere in the cemetery, and where, I do not know, because a long time has passed.”
IVAN MAKSYMOVYCH RYBAK, born in 1922, lives in Velykyi Khutir village,
“We lived in the village, there were four children, a father and a mother in the family. They lived very poor. There was nothing to eat. Activists went around the village and took everything to the last crumb. Activists in the village were Hanna Lopatka, Ivan Hlushko, Oksana Pizniakhivska, and Tytarenko Svyryd. One day they came to us. They had such long stickss in their hands. They began to look for bread in the oven, under the chimney, on the fkoor, in the yard. But they didn’t find anything, then they took a jug of beans, and in the attic there were washed clothes: linen shirts, trousers, they didn’t leave anything, they took everything.
It was very difficult, especially in the spring. We survived, although we were swallen from hunger, only thanks to my father, who went to Kherson and changed his clothes for a bunch of millet and a bag of seeds. We pounded millet in a mortar, and then ground on a millstone, my mother baked. I went to the field to cut the ears. One day I was attacked by a foreman, who beat me so badly that almost killed me. When we managed to steal the grain, we dried the heads and then ground them in a millstone. In the attic we had ears of corn, then we chopped them with an ax, pounded, and chopped hawthorn, acacia flowers, and baked such bread. In the attic we had a calf skin, then our mother scraped off the wool, and then chopped this skin and cooked.
People were sent to Solovki. I remember a grandfather living near us. He had six children, a cow, a horse, a cart, oxen, some land, then they were dekulakized, sent first to Pamir and then to the Urals.
I don’t know anyone from my family to die, but once I saw an old woman sitting down to die in a pit, and green flies were already flying around her. So she died there, and people found her later.
And when we went into the field, I saw a man torn to pieces by animals. My neighbor Maria swelled up and died of starvation, then she was thrown into the cellar at home.”
KATERYNA IVANIVNA KOPYL, born in 1916,
“We lived on Fourth Street during the famine. The family was big. To survive, we took ears of corn, pounded them in a mortar and baked some loaves from them. We ate goosefoot. Everyone survived as best they could. Our grandmother went to the West. When there was something to change, she changed it for food, and when there was nothing to change, she begged. One day a man came to them asking for bread, and the grandmother had just brought potatoes, flour, bread, and they gave it to that grandfather. He ate it and died under the mud. People were lying in heaps along the way. They were collected with rakes and thrown naked into the pits. Eight children died in our family. We had a cow, then it was slaughtered and buried. It was a little something to eat, but not for long. Some people had rabbits, which they buried in houses in the pit, so there was help. In the neighboring village of Pavlivshchyna they ate children, then our parents were afraid to let us out, and we couldn’t walk because we were swallen form hunger. Whoever had a cow they fed them with the roofs of the houses, because there was nothing to feed the cattle. We sat naked on the stove, we had nothing to wear, and the stove was not warm either. The whole family of Petro Klymovych Zhuk died: parents, brothers, children. There was no one to bury. They threw everyone into the cellar.”
