Hryhoriy Bakalo’s memories about the Holodomor in Dnipropetrovsk Oblast

When you have been working on the Holodomor topic for a long time, and it seems that you have already heard and know everything about that terrible past, however, you will find a story that will strike your heart. Here is this story, which Mariia Bakalo brought to the Holodomor Museum. She is the granddaughter of Holodomor witness Hryhoriy Omelkovych Bakalo from the village of Olefirivka, Petropavlovsk District, Dnipropetrovsk Oblast. Maria and her father, Hryhoriy Hryhorovych, recorded her grandfather’s testimony in the early 2000s. In December 2009, Holodomor witness Hryhoriy Bakalo passed away. But thanks to his family, his bitter and painful memories of what he had experienced in the 1930s, of his lost childhood and exterminated family remained.

Holodomor

So, let’s give a word to Hryhoriy Omelkovych:

“I am Bakalo Hryhoriy Omelkovych. I was born at the end of 1923 in the village of Bohuslav (in the passport, the date of birth was recorded as January 1, 1924. – Ed.). As my mother later recalled: “the ground was frozen, but there was no snow yet”, and “she gave birth while collecting sunflower stalks for fire in the garden.”

At the beginning of the autumn of 1932, there were seven children in the family of Omelko(born in 1893) and Nastia (born in 1895) Bakalo: Hanna (born in 1913), Arkhyp (born in 1914), Stephan (born in 1917), Ivan (born in 1919), Hryhoriy (born in 1923), Mykola (born in 1927), Vasyl (born in 1929). We lived together with our grandfather and grandmother, Yavdokha.

When collectivization began (1929), my father was in no hurry to join the collective farm. Having horses, oxen, land, and livestock, his old but still strong father, Havrylo Ivanovych (born around 1860), by that time had already earned money, built a mill, and, together with a neighbour, bought a modern mower at the time… Omelko also had sisters and brothers (Ivan, Trokhym, Petro), who farmed in the village. The older children, Hanna, Arkhyp, and Stephan, already helped their father successfully farm.

We were not wealthy, but, for those times, we were not poor either. We were considered well-to-do. We did not have beds in the house – we slept on straw, covered with bed sheets. Canvas for clothes was woven by ourselves…

In addition to taxation, the authorities had other ways of influencing the farmers. One of them was the system of assigning work orders in Kryvyi Rih. The farmer had to go to the mines of Kryvyi Rih for up to three months at his own expense on his horses and a carriage to transport ore. Until 1929, such appointments had been no more than once a year. Then already, during 1930-1931, my father travelled at least three to four times. He came back all red as a brick; both the horses and the carriage were red…

They demanded our father join the collective farm: they often came to our house and threatened him. Little Vasyl was afraid of strangers and cried, so our mother took him out of the house. So he caught a cold and died.

When joining the collective farm, my father gave away the horses and all the livestock, so only a cow remained in our own household. As a successful owner, my father was appointed either foreman or head of the collective farm stable.

The farmers from the collective farm reluctantly accepted the collective farm (it could be called silent sabotage), and treated the collective farm poorly. A rider could leave a horse warmed up by running in the cold, etc.

In the end, poor care, lack of fodder, and unsuitable premises with the onset of autumn cold led to the death of horses. My father was accused of this. He had an opportunity to “make amends”: they offered him to organise the seizure of horses from those people who had not yet joined the collective farm. He did not agree, so he was arrested.

Shortly before the arrest, our neighbour came to our house and offered to sell her a cow. But my father refused, saying: “If they take me away, then let the children have a cow so that they have milk at least”…

They took my father away. He was held in Pavlohrad. My mother would take the last food from the children and bring him a package. Only later, through someone, did he inform my mother that the packages were not reaching him, so “don’t bring.”

My father’s arrest was a signal that a brigade would come to confiscate property. They came to us to seize our property on a horse-drawn sleigh (late November – early December 1932). This entire confiscation brigade included local peasants, but as they said, someone else led them.

It was very difficult to hide something from the brigade of collectors. They took everything with them, even clothes and canvas. They burned the icons right in the middle of the yard. With sticks, they found two sacks of wheat, one of flour, pine cones and seeds buried by my father in the yard. The utensils from the oven, including the dish in it, were also taken. In total, they took eight carriages of goods (food, clothing, household goods, utensils, cloth, potatoes). They also took the cow, chickens, ducks – meat; before that, my father had slaughtered a heifer, so they took it too (it was hanging in the attic). They did not find only the bag of flour, hidden in the barn under the barrel. The barrel was upside down: one of the collectors pushed the barrel, and it swung slightly – it was empty… But there was also some junk my mother had put under the roof and into the wall.

I think that the older ones could have gone somewhere and there, maybe even survived, but they were “blacklisting” immediately after the arrest of our father. They were not allowed to leave the village. Our mother cooked soup from the bag of flour left, and what she managed to exchange for clothes and jewellery (a necklace): water and a little flour…

By the spring, in February, when it got a little warmer, everyone was so exhausted that they could only lie down. Only I walked. I remember my sister calling: “Hrysha, go catch a frog and bring it to me.” I walked around the garden, went down to the river and then came back. “No,” I said. And she asked: “Give me the scissors, I’ll cut my hair and eat it.” I handed over them and stood at a distance. She suddenly threw them at me, almost hitting me.

Later, my sister bit the skin on her fingers. Our mother beat her and wrapped her fingers with rags, but she took off the rags and again bit and sucked her fingers.

Our mother poured the soup, and I carried it to my brothers. When I ate my share, I was sitting waiting, maybe, something else left for me. Mother: “Take it to Arkhyp.” I brought it, and he said: “Put my bowl down, I don’t need it.” Then he died. And Ivan did not ask for anything, he died quietly.

In March and April, everyone died except for Kolia, our mother and me. Our mother periodically, twice or even three times a week, went away to exchange that junk. And my brother and I wandered around the village. My brother did not want to walk because he was thin, his legs and arms were like sticks, and his stomach was huge and transparent: the liver and intestines were visible. And I was dragging him along. Corpses were lying in some yards, while some people, who were still alive, were asking: “Bring something to eat, give it.” Some of them sometimes gave something to eat: kalachyky (green flowers of malva ), corn cob, or a piece of bread.

I was searching for the acorns in the grass to eat. The snow melted, and onions began to sprout in the garden. I hollowed it out and ate. There was no salt or bread. In addition, the onion was bitter, so I washed it down with water. I got swollen in a few days. My eyelids didn’t open so much that I couldn’t see where to go…

A neighbour came, brought a hedgehog, and said: “Smoke it with weed and suck it little by little. Maybe at least one of the Omelko’s family will survive. Just don’t eat too much or you’ll die.” Then I collected weeds, burned the spines, and we sucked the hedgehog. During the night, almost a bucket of liquid came out of me. It cleared up a little. On the third day, I couldn’t feel the ground beneath me, but I wanted to run. I felt like I would run and fall. I went to look for hedgehogs and frogs on my own. I think I found one or two more. Then he ate some more shoots – I felt sick. Probably, I got poisoned and hardly recovered.

The carriage, taking away the corpses, did not go every day. Sometimes, they took away people who were still alive so as not to come by the next day. My father returned seven months later after he had been taken away, in May, unshaven for seven months, scary, barely able to move his swollen legs wrapped in rags. My mother wasn’t at home. And I said: “Dad, now we will survive – there are only four of us: you, mom, Kolia, and me,” and Father only replied: “They took all my strength there.” The next morning, he went to the collective farm to sharpen scythes.

In the evening, he brought a quarter of a beet and some soup – he earned for the day. He gave it to us, told us to eat little by little, and lay down and wheezed. Foam came out of the mouth and nose. I ran to our neighbour, saying: “Something is wrong with dad.” She came, looked – “your father died.” She covered him with a black blanket. He had been lying like that for two days until our mother came. Everything she earned was spent on the coffin and digging the grave.

The carriage came to take him to the cemetery, and our neighbour came, asking: “Take my Pylyp to the cemetery too (the neighbour’s son was my age). How would I take him away?…” They took Pylyp away. On the way, someone else was taken away. They put two more in the father’s grave. A storm broke out there. Thunder, lightning, rain, wind. The diggers quickly left. My mother covered the hole with her own hands.

She came home all soaked and in mud and said: “I buried the grain (gold), only chaff remained. I will not die near garbage” (my brother and me). And, without saying anything else, she left. We were left alone… I was 10, and my brother was 8. A neighbour, our older sister Hanna’s friend, worked as a nanny in a kindergarten. She felt sorry for us. She took Kolia to the kindergarten. In the evening, on his way back home, he would bring me two or three spoonfuls of soup from there. Once, I wanted to eat, so I went to the gate of this kindergarten to wait for my brother to come out. A caretaker saw me there (they didn’t know Kolia. But I’m older, so they knew who I was): “What are you doing here? – I’m waiting for Kolia! – And where is Kolia? – Here he is, he will come out soon. – Ah, you so-and-so are spreading the infection…” He kicked out Kolia. And I don’t know what happened to the neighbour. They must have kicked her out.

Searching for food, we went through garbage cans, ate potato peels, and generally everything edible. I found a bunch of apricot kernels, so I broke them and ate the seeds. After that, I felt sick and barely recovered. There was also a time when I picked up and ate shoots.

My father’s sister’s husband worked at a confectionery factory in Pavlohrad. I would go to their yard and play with their children. There, I could get a little biscuit. But once her husband came, saw me and kicked me out of the yard: “Get out! You came here to spread scabies.” And he beat my skin, and there was no blood from under the skin, but some a kind of white liquid flowing…

There was a boy in our village; he was walking the street all day. They asked him: “Why don’t you go home?” And he replied: “Well, my mother said that if I didn’t bring two boys home with me, she would slaughter me as well.” People went to his house. There was a woman cooking something in a cauldron. They looked into the cauldron and saw four little hands, four little legs, and two little heads…

When the time to mow rye came (it was growing in the garden – my father planted it in the autumn), our mother also came. Someone told her that we, her sons, were alive. Then, it got easier…”

…Thus, only three of Omelko Bakalo’s large family survived: his wife and two sons. His five children, his parents and Omelko Havrylovych at the age of 39, were killed by a famine perpetrated by the Soviet regime.

After the Holodomor

The further life of the narrator of this story was no less dramatic. The witness’s son, Hryhoriy Hryhorovych Bakalo, told us its details.

Hryhoriy Omelkovych completed only four years of school before starting work at a collective farm, where he carried water in the fields. In 1941, he began working at a chemical plant in Pavlohrad. However, after the war began in August, he was mobilized into the army and served in the navy in Crimea, in Kerch, as a signalman. In November 1941, the German aircraft bombed his ship in the Kerch Strait. Hryhoriy Bakalo miraculously survived: he had stayed in the cold water for eight hours before being rescued. After hospitalization, he participated as a marine in the battles on the Taman Peninsula. After being surrounded, the Germans captured him. He escaped twice and eventually made it back to the Soviet forces.

Near the Russian city of Nalchik, Hryhoriy underwent filtration by the Soviet SMERSH. During an interrogation, there was an air raid, and a bomb fell in the courtyard of the place where he was being held. The guards and the SMERSH officer were killed. Hryhoriy Bakalo was crushed by a wall, but he survived. He was then sent to the front, where he was captured again. For a while, he worked as an assistant to a German cook. The cook, seeing Hryhoriy’s diligent work, took pity on the young man and let him go.

He walked home and, in the summer of 1942, reached the village of Bohuslav. There, he was immediately forced to join the local police (this part of his biography would hang over him like a “hanging axe” throughout the existence of the Soviet Union). Before the arrival of Soviet forces in September 1943, he left for Germany with his brother and wife. At one point, his wife decided not to go any further and returned to the zone occupied by Soviet troops. In Germany, he and his brother worked at a factory in Brandenburg. In 1945, the allies of the anti-Hitler coalition entered the city entered the city. Despite offers to move to Britain, Canada, or the United States for a new life, he chose to return to the USSR. He was immediately enlisted in the military and sent to the Far East to fight Japan. However, since the war ended in early September, he was sent to “atone for his guilt through labour” for being in captivity in the Kaliningrad region, where he worked as a truck driver, transporting people from the Ivanovo region to settle in place of the displaced German population.

He worked very hard at a steel plant. He said, “At first, I thought I wouldn’t survive, it was so hard to push those carts.” After completing the mandatory labour, he worked at a state farm as the head stableman. After the gruelling work at the factory, and given his love for horses, he was content with his work on the farm. It was not until 1964 that he dared to return to his homeland. Although he had “redeemed his guilt,” returning to the village, where many remembered his service in the police, was quite risky. Even though he had not committed any crimes while in the police, the mere fact of his service could have led to further persecution.

He settled in the village of Olefirivka, near his native Bohuslav, bought an old house, and worked at a factory in Pavlohrad, taking on different jobs. He tidied up his yard, built a new house and planted a garden. In 1984, he retired but continued working for many years at a recreation centre near the village on the banks of the Samara River. In the 1990s, he finally fulfilled a lifelong dream of owning horses. He sold his last horse in 2009, shortly before his death.

We thank Hryhoriy Bakalo’s family for recording these memories and donating them to the museum. We urge all Ukrainians: Should you have such kind of records, please send them to us at the Holodomor Museum (01015, Kyiv, 3 Lavrska Street, email: [email protected]). If you have relatives or neighbours who witnessed the Holodomor, please let us know or record their memories on video or audio. This information is priceless and must be preserved…

Prepared by Lina Teslenko

In the photo: Hryhoriy Bakalo (1953)

Published (in abbreviated form) in the newspaper “Ridnyi Krai”, issue dated April 2, 2024.