2024 © eng: genocide-copyright
Pylyp, the son of Holodomor witness Vitalii Naumiak, has recently applied to our museum. The Holodomor eyewitness was born and survived terrible famine years in Sobolivka village in Vinnytsia region. The son recorded the memories of his father, whose childhood and youth were difficult. In 1942, Vitalii Naumiak was taken to forced labor in Germany, where, after having tried to escape, he was imprisoned in a concentration camp. After the arrival of Americans, Vitalii Naumiak found himself in a camp for displaced persons. Later was the soldier of American Army.
We publish Vitalii Naumiak’s memories about Holodomor:
"I was born in 1926 in Soviet Ukraine in Podillya, an area which suffered from an organized famine. During this campaign, I was seven years old. Sobolivka, a town in Teplytskyi district, where I lived, was built around a sugar factory, where the beets were processed. My father Dmytro worked there. He was arrested and executed in August 1937 during the Great Terror, as well as 30,000 Ukrainian citizens who were born in the Austro-Hungarian Empire until 1914 and who, unfortunately, remained in Ukraine after a short period of independence in 1918-1920 years. Since my father was an accountant, our family was not robbed or dekulakized during the collectivization of 1929 and was not hit to the deadlock during the famine that hit the surrounding villages. The workers received some food products at their factory for themselves and for their families, just as big as not to let people die from hunger.
When the famine started, I was seven years old. Most of all I remember non-ripe potatoes that we were eating. Sometimes we ate soup from the nettle, which was called "green borsch". Once we ate sprouts, which I managed to catch. At this time my stomach was swollen, it looked like a ball between my legs and my thin hands. The peasants came to us for molasses from the sugar plant. The neighbors cut the leather off the boots and cooked it in the boiling water. On the way from school I had to go through the street and not to come close to the huts because I knew that the children were disappearing. At school, we stole chalk and ate it. The farther away, the fewer students remained in the classroom. And the walls were decorated with portraits of Lenin and Stalin among happy children and slogans such as: "Thank Stalin, our father, for our happy childhood!" or "The life is better, better than ever!” What a wonderful life! I was digging a wall of one house and eating something like a nitrate. I could have died too whenever and wherever.
Together with the boys we climbed the trees to steal the apples, we ate them as locusts, and we needed to do it as quickly as possible. Once I tried to steal the watermelon. This was very dangerous; the watchmen were vigilant and could have smacked us. I also saw endless queues of people near the shops, daily and nightly - one member of the family passed the turn to another and so on. I remember how my mom was disturbed when she realized that I had rickets. At night, we heard how hungry peasants were coming to rummage in the waste produced by the factory. These were the leftovers of sugar beet, pulp, which the workers were giving to the pigs. The peasants would take them out of the pits with garbage and would eat them just there, at night.
Daily I would see unhappy villagers next to the walls of the plant, many of them died there. The bodies were thrown into a long grave near the factory. They would beg for food or would sell some of their stuff. The police would arrive and drive them to their village. Sometimes I used to go to the neighboring village with my mom. She was giving food to the peasants. She was hiding the food under the coat, because he was afraid that she would be attacked on the road. Mum did not want me to come to the houses and see people dying of starvation. She told me about this and I knew what was happening. I was waiting outside and trembling. And once I came into the house. People were laying and moaning in an empty house ... I knew that there was cannibalism. Therefore, my mother forbade me and my little sister to play in the courtyard.
I remember the sinister atmosphere created by gossips, painful news, steps near the houses at nights and death, invisibly present everywhere. At that time, there were many wild dogs, the gangs of them wandered in villages. My mom asked me to be careful and I not to come close to them. Later I discovered that they ate the corpses of our peasants and that they were looking for dead in the huts and even in the common graves. I often thought of all this as a of the night horror.
I recall Torgsins, the state shops, where the starving peasants would bring their valuable things to exchange them for a piece of bread. Mum often spoke about this. People, hoping to live for a little bit longer, carried their rings, war and religious awards, dentures, icons... Later, the tombs were plundered and the wedding rings and golden teeth were taken out from the dead. My parents talked about this and worried about the graves of our relatives. So one evening, I walked through the cemetery, but stopped in front of the grave, which was obviously broken. The grave stone was pushed, the wooden coffin was broken and the dead corpse was visible. I was scared and ran away.
One day at a school a teacher asked who our parents are: rich, poor or middle-class ones. I did not realize our poverty, and because I saw people more unhappy, and on the other hand – much poorer, I wrote in the registration sheet that we are middle peasants. In the evening, a worried teacher came to us and asked to fill out another form. She recorded all her students as poor. Maybe we owe her our lives... Let the Lord bless her.
At this time my little sister died, it was said that it was typhoid, but then It was the official cause of all the cases of infant mortality. And since even later it was forbidden to speak about this, I never knew exactly the cause of her death. When we, the children, heard the train, which was going to Russia, we imitated a knock of its wheels, saying: "rye-wheat-rye-wheat!", and when it was the whistle of the locomotive returning from Russia – we screamed "obligations...!" - a synonym for requisites We also sang a song: "Mom’s in SOZ, Dad’s in SOZ, Kids are bare on the roads, holey stitched pants, we complete Five Year Plan!".
On the photo there is the family of Podolska-Naumiak (1929).