CW for sexual violence, slavery, starvation and state violence
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Emailed my mom to ask for some more details about my grandparents’ early life. Here are the results:
“On grandpa, yes, he told us about the Soviet Union causing a manmade famine. The Russians came into his village and confiscated all their food, took their chickens, and then they closed all the borders so that the Ukrainians couldn't cross over to try to get food from there. His mother would boil roots she dug from the ground and make "soup" from that. She couldn't even make bread because there was no flour because the Russians also took that. They really wanted the Ukrainians to die because they didn't want them to rebel against them. So they caused them to starve to death. Grandpa said that the winter was the worst because the ground was frozen so his mother couldn't even dig up roots. They were starving. Only rarely did they catch some kind of rodent which they could eat.
“The Russians would not allow any food products and even any fuel, to be brought in. People were all dying around them. They shot grandma's one brother in the road in front of her. Grandpa married grandma to protect her from the soldiers. They were so young. Grandpa was just 17 years old.
“During the war [WW2], grandma and grandpa and grandma's other brother and sister and her cousin, and grandpa's mother, two brothers and his sister, were all put into work camps [abducted by the Nazis]. He said that they were fed a dirty water as "soup" and only enough so that they could be strong enough to work. After the war, they were offered a choice from the allies, to either be sent to the U.S. or to Austria. So, they came here by ship and sent to Ellis Island. Grandpa was 23 when he arrived here. His one brother stayed living in New Jersey, his other brother moved to Minnesota, his sister moved to Florida, and the rest settled in Chicago. Grandpa's mother lived into her 90's.”
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