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Hanna Domanska was the only one of her family to survive the genocide in Ukraine in the 1930s. She was born in 1927 and today tells of the suffering of the great famine in the Soviet Union.
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The Ukrainian word “golodomor” means “death by starvation”. The term refers to the great famine caused by the Soviet leadership 90 years ago, in which six to seven million people died. Hanna Domanska told her son a lot about the catastrophe that claimed a particularly large number of victims in what is now Ukraine.
She was only five years old when the deaths began in what was then the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. She grew up in a large family. Her grandparents had eight children – four sons, one of whom was Hannah’s father, and four daughters. She herself had a younger brother and sister.
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They were a hardworking but not wealthy family. Her grandfather Marko Švedjuk had some land and a horse, but no cows. He gave his son, Hannah’s father, some of his land on which he built a house.
However, the new family only lived in the new house for six months. At the beginning of the 1930s, the Soviet leadership under Stalin increased grain taxes by almost half, and the main enemy of the communists became the farmers, who, as “kulaks,” could not and did not want to meet these demands.
“They took everything away”
“Some party leaders and Komsomol members broke into the house and took everything, absolutely everything,” the old woman recalls, “including food.” They even looked for ready-made food in the ovens and took it with them.
They were also looking for people, especially hard-working people who could handle the jobs, who weren’t lazy, and they took them with them, says Hanna Domanska. A third of the villagers were evicted from their homes and all their property and livestock were turned over to the collective farm.
Many people were deported to Siberia, including half of the Švedyuk family: grandfather Marko, grandmother Pestijna, then 15-year-old godmother Sekleta, father Vasil and uncle Todos. Of all her relatives, only her aunt later returned to her home village in Ukraine. She fled Siberia.
Mother, brother and sister die
After her father disappeared, her mother Olha went looking for her husband. Shortly after the birth of her youngest child, she went to a village where the Soviets had set up a “kulak” collection point. She found her husband, but did not release him. She became ill and her daughter died, then Hanna’s mother herself. And her one-year-old brother also starved to death soon afterwards.
I survived. So I stayed with my aunt, whose legs were already swollen from hunger. But she had no children and took care of me. In order to survive, little Hannah had to constantly look for food. In spring she went looking for edible plants.
“Then summer came and the acacias bloomed, everything bloomed, we lived on flowers. When we started threshing on the collective farm, there were already a lot of weeds there. We grabbed these Traces of goosebumps and we made porridge out of it – we had to eat something.
There was no food. “What can you make something from at home?” There was nothing! In 1933 we only cooked soup. Aunty brought some flour, mixed it with water and we drank it. We had to work, we had to eat, but it was 1930,” says Hanna Domanska.
Back then you could exchange the cloth for two potatoes or a piece of bread. It was impossible to buy anything in a store with money.
The worst time was 1933, when there were the most deaths, the eyewitness said: “All the people were just sleeping; some here, some there, some already dead. The bodies were stacked on top of each other like firewood. They beat two or three boards together, stuck them in, and took them to the cemetery.
Hanna Domanska remembers that back then there weren’t even dogs or cats in the village because all the animals had been eaten. She learned from her aunt that there were also cases of cannibalism.
“There is nothing worse than hunger. How can you sleep if you haven’t eaten for days? Then he chews everything he finds – tree leaves, everything, as long as there is something to eat,” says Hanna.
When Hanna Domanska tells her story of the Holodomor, she fears that she won’t be believed. “But it’s true. It’s all in my heart. I’ll tell you what I saw,” she emphasizes.
The Holodomor in Ukraine could only be discussed openly after the collapse of the Soviet Union. Until now, people have had to fear that they would end up in prison.
According to Ukrainian historians, nearly four million people died in the Great Famine in Ukraine in the 1930s. In 2006, the Ukrainian parliament classified the Holodomor as a genocide against the Ukrainian people. The German Bundestag recognized the Holodomor as a genocide in November 2022.
After the Holodomor, Hanna Domanska survived World War II. Everyone who starved in their village died in the war. Her father, who was exiled to Siberia, also later died at the front. She herself was almost deported to Germany for forced labor during the war.
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Together with other Ukrainian youths, she hid in empty houses and neighboring villages. Some were found, captured and kidnapped. Now Hanna Domanska has to survive another war – Russia’s war against Ukraine. However, she believes that the Ukrainian people will defeat the invaders.
“Ukraine will not surrender to them.” “Ukraine will defeat them,” she says confidently.
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