Interview with Stepan Horlatsch

By Fran Ponomarenko

Early Monday morning, May 26^th I had the opportunity to travel by car to Ottawa in the company of   Stepan Horlatsch, who is an active member of the Canadian Friends of Ukraine library project and who has been the torch bearer of the Holodomor International Remembrance Flame throughout its Canadian sojourn.  The Flame will visit over 30 countries before ending its journey in Kyiv in November [in remembrance of the victims of the Holodomor Famine Terror in Ukraine 1932-33].

 FP: Where and when were you born and how did the whole Famine catastrophe begin in your family and in your village?

SH: I was born in the Melitopil area in 1921.  In 1930, my father was dekurkulized and deported.  My mother was left with 5 children.  Then, we were thrown out of our house and sent to another [district] raion.  There, someone helped us.  Our family home was boarded up.  Eventually, in 1932, we did return to our house but they did not accept my mother to work in the kolhosp. 

(FP--Note:  There were three categories of kulaks: 1) worst enemies: these were shot or sent to the Gulag along with their families; 2) less evil enemies:  these were usually sent out of Ukraine but could also be sent to another region in Ukraine; 3) least dangerous enemies:  these were usually given poorer lands outside of the kolhosp [or state collective farm].

In principle, all kulaks were barred from joining a kolhosp, but the Soviet system was inefficient and so they were periodically having clean-outs of kulaks who were working in a kolhosp.)

FP: What were you eating during this period of collectivization and famine?

SH: Initially, they brought in combines into the kolhosp, but these were not efficient machines.  When the combines and the seeders went into the fields, lots of seeds went by the wayside and were not seeded.  At night, when no one saw, my mother went to gather these grains of wheat.  Mother made bread and biscuits from this.  My mother was very religious and she read The Bible all the time.  She seemed to have had the foresight that something bad was going to happen.

FP  What was the fate of other people around you, who were not in the kolhosp?

SH: In 1932, [the State] imposed taxes on those who were not in the kolhosp.  This consisted of turning over to the State a certain amount of milk and meat.  As people couldn’t meet the quota, they were forced to sell personal possessions in order to pay up these taxes.  With the sale of personal items, gold if they had it, they bought chickens and pigs to hand over to the state so that they could meet the tax impositions.  This was the pressure that was put on people to go work in the kolhosps.  When someone didn’t pay the tax, his house was taken as payment and that person and his family were exiled to Siberia.

FP: Who carried out the imposition of the taxes? Locals?

SH:  At first, locals did this.  But the locals soon saw that these tax impositions were too stringent and they didn’t want to continue with this.  So, the State sent in people from other places.

FP: How did the search for food take place after the imposition of the ‘fines-in-kind’?

SH: They had what resembled a farm implement, called a kliuchka.  It has a sharp point like a bayonet and then it had this other sort of cup section and they shoved this into walls to see if grain was hidden.  They tore up walls, and floors.  They were brutal.  They frightened adults and children with a Nagant revolver. 

FP: How was your mother able to hide something for the children to have something to eat?

SH: We had a chest.  It was 2 metres long and 1 metre wide.  Clothes were kept in it.  One night, mother woke me and asked me to help her move it.  In its place, she started to dig out the clay floor because that is the kind of floor we had.  She dug and there beneath that were boards, dug in the earth, under them she had hidden biscuits, sunflower seeds and flour.  When [the authorities] searched, they did not think to look at the floor under the chest.  When she made this hiding place, I do not know.  She was a saintly woman.  At that time, many people did all manner of things to save children.  When we recall the 10 million [who perished], we must also pray to these kinds of people because they were saintly.

FP: How bad did things become?  Did you and your siblings become emaciated?

SH: We were very thin.  My sister constantly asked for “water, tea - water, tea.”  I remember well how she sat.  She was old looking and very skeletal.  I also remember that I went to the house of a distant relative.  I entered and 3 corpses lay there in the house.  No one in the family had the strength to bring them out.  They were also close to death.

FP: How did you become involved in this action to carry the Remembrance Flame torch from one city to another across Canada?

SH: Even last year, I wanted to travel across Canada to inform Canadians about the Famine-Genocide.  A friend and I bought a mobile home to go across the country.  I wrote to the Ukrainian Canadian Congress (UCC-KYK) to ask if they would support such an action and this spring, Irka Mycak from KYK central [headquarters] told me there was a Remembrance Flame project in the works.  She asked if I would like to do it.  I agreed.  Then, on the 18^th of April, the Remembrance Flame came to Toronto and I took it from the Ambassador of Ukraine and on the next day I left for Winnipeg, and then on to all the other cities across Canada.

FP: One final question.  What happened to your father?

SH: The last we knew, he was in Karelia and he had disappeared.  We didn’t know when or where.

Fran Ponomarenko teaches in the English Department at Vanier College in Montreal.