Full Name in Ukrainian: Фрошка Корніївна Дмитренко
Full Name in English: Froshka Dmytrenko
Data of Birth: Circa 1925-1926
Place of Birth: Oradivka
Raion: Khrystynivka raion (currently Uman raion)
Oblast: Kyiv oblast (currently Cherkasy oblast)
Country: Ukraine
Copy of original: Yes
Envelope: No
Number of pages: 3
Keywords: mortality; family; food substitution; Ostarbeiter; cannibalism; child; trauma; Stalin; childhood trauma; semiliterate
Notes: Abridged letter is published in 33: holod. Narodna Knyha-Memorial book, Kyiv: Radiansky pysmennyk, 1991, p. 249.
Froshka Dmytrenko (née Mazurenko) was seven at the time of the Holodomor.
Events took place in the village of Oradivka, Khrystynivka raion, Kyiv oblast (currently Oradivka, Uman raion, Cherkasy oblast).
Dmytrenko’s parents Kornii and Sophia, who were in their mid-thirties, her little brother Ilko and sister Ania, all died of starvation. She recalls that people ate weeds, leaves and cats to survive. Some people resorted to cannibalism. Dmytrenko’s neighbor lured Froshka into her house promising to give her something to eat. Instead, the woman strangled the little girl with a rope, tied her up and threw her in a cellar. Froshka managed to escape at night and then spent a month in a hospital recovering.
During WWII, Dmytrenko was taken to Germany as an Ostarbeiter. There she was also subjected to hunger and beating. She recalls one German man saying that [in Germany] in 1933 they were receiving “excess” [Ukrainian] flour.
Dmytrenko puts the blame for the tragic deaths in 1933 on Stalin.
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