The Holodomor Oral History Department documented the memories of Leonid Patsek, a resident of Kyiv
“We had a normal, well-off family. We owned a hectare of land — we worked from dawn to dusk. In the evenings, we would knit and embroider by the fire…,” Leonid Boleslavovych Patsek, a Kyiv native born in 1935, says in an interview recently recorded by Yuliia Kotsur and Sofiia Diachenko, employees of the Holodomor Oral History Department of the Holodomor Museum.
Mr Leonid’s parents, Boleslav and Halyna Patsek, resided in the Sviatoshynskyi district during the Holodomor. Halyna, who came from a dekulakized family, moved to Kyiv from the village of Denysy in the Pereiaslav-Khmelnytskyi district after activists had forcibly displaced her family, plunging them into poverty. “My grandfather’s family was torn apart! Everyone went their separate ways…”
The Soviet authorities deprived the family of everything. “My mother’s father, Spodin Ivan Mytrofanovich, was considered wealthy – a kulak. His house had an iron roof, while in the village, there were huts with straw ones – and my grandfather’s house had an iron roof. And he said: don’t touch the family – I will give you everything from the pantry. All the bread – I will give you everything that I have! They took away the dishes, beautiful clothes, carpets – everything. My mother said that the cow was crying when they were taking it away. We were crying – and the cow was crying…”
The family of grandfather Ivan Mitrofanovich Spodin. Leonid Patsek’s mother is in the top row on the right. The photo was taken before the dekulakization.
Mr Leonid’s two-year-old sister Olha died of starvation. The girl was buried in a cemetery that used to exist in Kyiv until 1941: “… at the Nyvky metro station, where the fire station is located now.”
Little sister Olia, who died during the Holodomor.
In 1933, the famine in Kyiv killed my grandfather. “Back then, there was a shortage of bread. And he stood in the queue at night… They pulled him out. He was wearing a karakul hat. The black one, you know? They pull him out of line: you’re a kulak and that’s it. Then he ended up in the Oktiabrskyi hospital, which is in Bessarabka. And that’s where he died. We don’t know where he is, where the hospital buried him…”
Grandfather Ivan Spodin. Died in 1933 in Kyiv, burial place is unknown.
Leonid Boleslavovych witnessed the mass man-made famine of 1946-1947. He recalls how, at the market, it was possible to buy “commercial bread and American humanitarian parcels. According to the ration cards, there were 250 grams for pensioners, 300 grams for children, and 500 grams for workers. We would travel to Western Ukraine—that’s what saved us. My father would bring flour and oil in cans. We would go by freight cars, trains, and in any kind of way…”
The full conversation with Leonid Patsek will soon be published on our website in the “Testimonies” section.