„BESSARABIA“,
oil on canvas, 90x120cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
The painting is owned by The National Gallery, Sofia
„Two great Bulgarian diasporas existed on the territory of Ukraine: Bessarabia and Tauri. During the two Holodomors from 1921-1923 and from 1932-1933, about 30 000 Bulgarians have died in Tauri. By the beginning of the Second World War the Bulgarians in Bessarabia were within the boundaries of Romania. In the winter of 1946-1947 the Stalinist government organized Holodomor in Bessarabia, when more than 70,000 ethnic Bulgarians have died. As a result of the three Stalinist Holodomors about 100,000 Bulgarians have died in Bessarabia and Tauri.“
„She ate one leg of her child“
Yona, 2023
size 135 x 267 cm, oil on canvas
She ate her little hand and one leg, it was a tiny child. She died by the evening and we buried her.
My mother used to tell me that during the famine, our neighbor had four children. My mother thought she hadn't seen these kids outside for a long time and decided to go see what was going on. Entering the house, she sees that one girl is sitting by the stove and sucking her hair out of hunger. And the youngest child was lying in the cradle with a leg and a hand eaten by his mother.
April 30, 2018, Glavan, Ukraine
Mutafchi Melania Georgievna (1954)
„We ate leather shoes and soles“
Yona, 2023
size 136 x 278 cm, oil on canvas
„I gave her a shoe to bake“
Yona, 2022
size 135 x 250 cm, oil on canvas
A neighbor came, brought me clothes that she stripped off from the dead people, and said: "Give me a moccasin and take some clothes." “Get out of here!” I said. "Go away! We ourselves are dying of hunger, what could I give you?". My father felt sorry: "Zina, go inside the room, there are moccasins in the cupboard." "Give her a moccasin, let them roast it." I gave her a moccasin to bake. After roasting them, we'd scrape them well with a knife and crunch them, we'd eat and drink water.
„She ate her husband“
Yona, 2022
size 135 x 250 cm, oil on canvas
„She ate her husband“. We heard that Simontsa ate Simon. A woman slaughtered her husband, boiled him so they could eat.
"A BOY WITH A DEAD HORSE"
Yona, 2022,
size 120 x 400 cm, oil on canvas.
"One boy's parents starved to death (1947); and the boy went hungry to the dump; and people have seen him hauling up with a hook the stinking, decaying body of a dead animal. And a man took this child to himself and did not allow him to eat from the dead animal. This child was raised by this person and survived".
Story told by V.I.Tutova (born 1925), Glavan, Ukraine.
April 29, 2018.
Exhibition «Anthropophage» in «The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate» 2011. Sofia, Bulgaria
