PM: I was the oldest sibling in the family. I had younger brothers – Ivan, Wasyl, Anatoliy, and a younger sister, Maria. All of them, and my grandmother, died in front of my eyes from starvation. I would run around and collect any food I could get – porcupines, meat from dead horses – and bring it home to them. When there wasn’t anything left, and everyone had died of starvation, I saw that I would die as well. So I left and started wandering around the khutory (farmsteads). There were black flags hung on the farmsteads, because everyone had died of starvation. Two children were eaten in our village, but the raion (district) authorities closed the case. I know that a mother ate her two children but the Soviet authorities closed the case, and stopped any talk or rumors about starvation and cannibalism. There was a harvest, and if the authorities had not wanted a famine, there would not have been one. The authorities wanted to destroy the people who didn’t want to join the collective farms. People like my father, and others, rich or poor, didn’t want to join the collective farms, so they were murdered through starvation.

Pavlo Makohon

Date of birth: 1918

Place of birth: Troitska village, Dnipropetrovsk oblast

Witnessed Famine in: Troitska village, Dnipropetrovsk oblast

Arrived in Canada: 1950

Current residence: Toronto, Ontario

Date and place of interview:  24 July 2008, Toronto

Excerpt From Full Interview