The year and its horror still haunt my nights.

The year thirty three, I was six, saw the fright.

On the land, in our hearts, still some promise we knew.

Gardens thrived on the hills where the orache leaves grew.

Under Lenin they say, czars were shot. Terror reigned.

Smash the patrons, the magnates and bourgeois. Take aim.

With a shrill insane voice Joseph Stalin proclaimed

Cut them down. Starve the kulaks who grow all the grain.

Arise all down-trodden and hungry, you must

Free land we will give you. This is our holy trust

Hand all of your stores to the commune “kolhosp”

Or we’ll drive you – we’ll grind you to Siberian dust.

The first raid came and the sheds were all emptied

Into sacks wheat was emptied for the commune farm.

In the second requisition our hopes lay there emptied.

Then a third, like our urns we lay broken, not a sound.

In our gloom we did eat what we could, dogs and cats

For the glory of their Five Year Plan and the rats

In our village, they hid all the children. Don’t cry.

Mothers prayed for their children. Please children don’t die.

How could this happen in Ukraine? Let us ask it.

As you know our Ukraine was the world’s great bread basket

Who sought truth? Who would tell? Where were you in that hell?

In the silence death raged as the hunger did swell.

All our future, our promise, our flowers had died

In the streets, bring your dead where you too will now lie.

On the land, in our hearts, no more freedom we knew.

On the hilltops lay death where the orache once grew.

Michael Fediw

Date of birth: 31 August 1927

Place of birth: Makhnivka village, Vinnytsia oblast

Witnessed Famine in: Dombalivka village, Vinnytsia oblast

Arrived in Canada: 1975

Current residence: London, Ontario

Date and place of interview: 16 December 2008, London, Ontario

Wholodomor By Michael Fediw