VP: My grandmother, I don’t remember how old she was, my older sister, who lived in the village…

INTERVIEWER – How old was she?

She was, if I was three and half, she was about five years old, and my two uncles, my mother’s two brothers, they all died. One uncle disappeared, they didn’t know what happened to him, but in the spring, when the snow melted they found him in a ditch by the side of the road. People had eaten him.

INTERVIEWER – And they were buried?

VP: Nobody knows. They were put on wagons and thrown in a pit like cattle. The whole village had died out, and they put up a black flag, showing that there was nobody left alive.

Only the villagers who’s near the city, those people, they tried to come, somehow they did come, they was trying to come to the city to find something to eat, but they couldn’t find nothing. So they was dropping on the streets and they was dying. So then how do call it in English, I don’t know, vozy

INTERVIEWER – Wagons.

VP: Yeah, the wagons, they used to take them by the hands and the legs and throw them on the wagons, and then they’d take them outside of the city and they just put them and buried somewhere like…

And who lives in the city? Who has a job. Still they do have some bread at least, like my father. And that bread was so hard, like a brick. And I’ll never forget my father used to put me on his knees and feeding me with that bread, before he had a little bit, and if a little crumb just went to the table, he just wetted his finger and picked up those crumbs and give it to my mouth. That I remember like anything.

Valentyna Podash (nee Shevchenko)

Date of birth: 17 July 1930

Place of birth: Dnipropetrovsk

Witnessed Famine in: Dnipropetrovsk

Arrived in Canada: 1949

Current residence: Toronto, Ontario

Date and place of interview:  23 July 2008, Toronto

Excerpt From Full Interview