Tag #154269 - Interview #90535 (Leonid Kotliar)

In spring 1934 we went to Kozelets again. I saw a woman with a child, swollen from hunger begging for food... My father said the situation in villages was bad, but villagers from the nearest village of Beleyki dressed up and walked to a church past our house, so I don’t think the situation in Kozelets district was so desperate. In summer 1934, when potatoes and millet got ripe, our neighbors and we cooked the first kander and this was the first time I ate to my heart’s content. We kept a pig in Kozelets. We slaughtered it by the end of 1934 and Tania made thin sausage. I didn’t know that religious Jews were not allowed to eat pork and my parents didn’t observe rules at the time.

I remember that it was then that comrade Stalin said: ‘We’ve got a better life, comrades, a merrier life!