Tag #155298 - Interview #94498 (Evadiy Rubalskiy)

In 1932 horrible famine [18] began in Ukraine. It also continued the following year of 1933. This was a terrible period of time. People were starved, many villages lost all residents to the famine. The situation was not so hopeless in Kiev. Crowds of desperate hunger-swollen people rushed to Kiev. They were happy to get any job to earn for food. I remember a street artist selling his pictures in the street not far from our house. He painted on asphalt and passers-by dropped coins to him. I also remember a beggar who sang nicely. There were numbers of homeless children, dirty and shabby – they must have also come from villages. They spread typhus in the town. There was a big house in Bolshaya Zhitomirskaya Street in Kiev – its tenants were doctors and the house was called the ‘doctors’ house’. There was central heating in this house and homeless children stayed in the basement of this house. They had lice and entertained themselves pushing lice inside apartments through keyholes. This house became the source of typhus which promptly spread all over the town.

My grandfather went to work in the store where bread was distributed by cards. He supported us well. Sometimes I came to his work. My grandfather pretended he was tearing off my bread coupon [Card system] [19] giving me some bread in return. I rushed home to share it with mama and my sister. There was also a Torgsin store [20] where food products or clothes were sold for foreign currency. I remember mama taking our silver cutlery to the store. She and I brought home a bag of millet that she received in exchange for the silver. We boiled the cereal and it lasted for quite a while.