When the second quota was imposed on Lazarenko’s family, his father took the rest of the grain to the delivery point. But it was not enough to save him from being arrested by the NKVD. After that, the search brigade searched the Lazarenko family’s house again and took away even some nightshade (Lazarenko uses the word paslion but he probably means tomato) seeds hidden inside the stove. The search brigade had collected and burned all books, including a Shevchenko volume and a Brockhaus and Efron Encyclopedic Dictionary and icons that they found in the house. They also took away handmade embroidered ritual towels (rushnyky) and clothes made of homespun textiles. Left without any food, Lazarenko’s mother made some soup out of weeds and the meat of the last cat that she killed, and divided into several servings. Lazarenko’s sister Olena, born in 1921, became swollen and died from hunger.

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Ivan Lazarenko was born in Paliivka, Shostka raion, Chernihiv oblast (currently Paliivka, Shostka raion, Sumy oblast) in 1922. He describes events of the Holodomor in the hamlet of Chernihivka, Novotroitske raion, Dnipropetrovsk oblast (сurrently Chernihivka, Novotroitske raion, Kherson oblast) where Lazarenko’s parents with their four children moved in 1926. In 1932, Lazarenko’s father successfully delivered his first assigned grain procurement quota. After that, the family was left with a sack of grain for cooking soups and gruel.

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