„She ate a small hand and one leg of her tiny child.“ - Yona, 2023
size 135 x 200 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.
04.01.2023 Comment by AI:
I report to everyone else these events to protect them and just erased them. Whether it was injustice, brute drama
or symbolic, after the stories end, these are whispers you hear, not concerns, and the left say they're trying to protect you because they care much more about you than protecting themselves, it's evil and descends into madness.
„I gave her a moccasin to bake“,
Yona, 2022
size 135 x 200 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 200 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.
04.01.2023 Comment by AI:
This is an extreme and shocking event, and it is not something that is condoned or accepted. The act of cannibalism is considered taboo in most societies, and it is illegal in many countries. If this event actually happened, it would be necessary to seek legal advice and to discuss the situation with medical professionals to ensure the safety of everyone involved.
„I was so hungry that I ate my friend's toy“ -
Ilia, 6 years old. Mariupol, Ukraine, 2022“.
Yona, 2022
size 135 x 200 cm, oil on canvas
And then he remembered, he remembered even that which would be better not to remember. How he hid in the basements from the bombing. How afraid he was to ask strangers to go to the toilet. How he was so hungry that he ate another boy's toy. He even knew that his mother was no more. He said this simply: „My mother went to the bridge, the bridge was blown up, she died.
The story told by Maria about Ilia from Mariupol,
Ukraine, 2022
04.01.2023 Comment by AI:
This is a sad and alarming story. It speaks to the reality of food insecurity that many people around the world are facing. Even at such a young age, Ilia has had to make the difficult choice of sacrificing something precious to him in order to survive. It is heartbreaking to think that the basic right to food is not being met for Ilia and that he had to resort to such desperate measures. We must do whatever we can to ensure that all children, no matter where they live, have access to the nutrition they need to lead healthy and fulfilling lives.
"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.
04.01.2023 Comment by AI:
This story is both tragic and inspiring. This story is a testament to the resilience of the human spirit. Despite the tragic circumstances of the boy's upbringing, his perseverance and determination to survive allowed him to overcome his hardships and go on to live a happy and fulfilling life. Despite his terrible start in life, the boy was able to find someone who was willing to take him in and provide him with a safe, nurturing environment.
The boy's story is also a reminder of the importance of having care and compassion for those who are in desperate situations, and how it can help to shape and transform a life. This story is a testament to the power of a loving hand, and the strength of the human spirit. It is a reminder that even in the darkest of times, there is hope and a chance to find a better future.
The story of this child is a powerful reminder of the importance of helping those in need, and it serves as an example of the power of love and compassion.
„Mother - cannibal. DAOO, Aikhenwald, L.I. To the casuistry of cannibalism. Notes of doctors of psychiatry about cannibalism. F. P-702, op.1, case 102a, 58-68“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2010, Yona
The painting is owned by Dimitar Injov
„...So when we arrived, she was stuck in the corner, like a wild beast, vaguely murmuring something, and staring viciously. „Where is Petya, did he die?“ Then the woman wildly screamed, and after that she was silent. Then it suddenly flashed across their minds that the mother has actually done this evil and opened the furnace. There they found a part of the baked body of the boy, as the rest she had already eaten ... The woman – cannibal was absently staring. The thoughts had already left this woman and only traces of severe grief and infinite loneliness were left on her face. This mother was already dead for life and life has also lost its’ meaning for her.“
«SKETCH. DAOO, (Prosecutor's Office of Odesa), No. P-7716c. op. 1, case 411, l. 98», 2010, paper, acrylic / 10x15cm
„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.“
„Irina Nikolaevna (b.1933) village of Pandaklii. May 12, 2018. Conversation with Yona“,
oil on canvas, 90x120cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
„My father died in December 1946 and my mother died in June 1947. Us four orphans were left, three girls and one boy. They took the boy to a labor camp and us three orphaned sisters remained. We went to the collective farm to work. There they gave us half a kilogram of bread a day.
We would hear that people ate people. Mothers ate children.
Many people died… they would shovel them onto the wagons… and would throw them into a hole in the graveyard. As each would fall, so each would remain, even if it were upside down.“
„Maria Pencheva (b. 1932) village of Pandaklii. May 12, 2018. Conversation with Yona“,
oil on canvas, 90x120cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
„There was a very bad harvest in 1946. The state seized the grain we had. I starved very much, I was swollen and thought I was going to die. I would hear how people ate people. I heard that Simonza ate her husband Simon, threw away his bones in the grass.
At the cemetery, the dead would be stripped of their clothes so the clothes could be sold. Grandma died, we buried her in a beautiful dress, and the next day mom went to the cemetery and saw that the grave had been dug up, and grandma was lying completely naked without clothes.“
„Fund P-470. Op. 1, file 136, 8-12“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
„The district executive committee hereby makes a decision: „The harvest should be collected without loss, the harvesting of the wheat ears should be organized on the cultivated areas, avoiding the loss of even a single grain.
The Delensk village council organizes 300 schoolchildren and old men to collect wheat ears and achieves a daily collection of grain from the gathered wheat ears up to 200-300.“
„Khrushtov, N.S. Memories. Selected fragments. M., 1997, p. 202–204“,
oil on canvas, 100x130cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
„In addition to the great drought and the poor mechanization of agriculture, undermined by a lack of tractors and horses, the reasons for the famine were also the poor organization of work and insufficient qualifications, as well as the excessively high plan of state grain delivery, which was being created via an arbitrary method, although in the press and in official documents it was based on scientific data. The grain supply plan was calculated by „how much can be squeezed out of the people.“
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„RODINA, 10-1990, ISSN 0235 – 7089, p. 58 / DAOO, P-702, Op. 1/102 a, 13. Povolzhye famine – 1921“,
oil on canvas, 100x130cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
The painting is owned by Sofia City Art Gallery
„An elderly woman had brought some meat pies to the market. They were instantly sold out. From that day on, the woman was bringing meat pies every day. In large quantities. But it was not known where the flesh did come from as all horses, cats, rats were already eaten. So the police started to watch her. And they found that these pies were made with human meat. It turned out that the merchant was going to the graveyard, opening the carcasses and taking their lungs, hearts, etc. Many other cases of selling human meat were also found at that time.“
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„Tuesday 19th February 1935, NY Journal - Page 12“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
„When the bread began to ripen, people began to eat the young clams to quench the hunger and they were quickly dying from this. A young man who had eaten a lot of green grain had immediately died in the field (as his belly has simply burst out).“
«Tuesday 19th February 1935, NY Journal - Page 12»,
ttps://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/thomas_walker/thomas_walker_images.htm
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„DAOO, P-7716 Op.1, file 411, l. 8“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2010, Yona Tukuser
„A school inspector, while carrying out an examination in the Tarutinsky district by the request of one doctor Gasii, uncovered that in the village of Vinogradovo, 40 dystrophic students were found, from whom, on December 20, 1946, the 3rd grade student Nikolay Kuruch died from exhaustion on the day of the visit of the inspector“.
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„GARETH JONES“,
oil on canvas, 110x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„I walked along through villages and twelve collective farms. Everywhere was the cry, 'There is no bread. We are dying. This cry came from every part of Russia, from the Volga, Siberia, White Russia, the North Caucasus, Central Asia. I tramped through the black earth region because that was once the richest farmland in Russia and because the correspondents have been forbidden to go there to see for themselves what is happening. In the train a Communist denied to me that there was a famine. I flung a crust of bread which I had been eating from my own supply into a spittoon. A peasant fellow-passenger fished it out and ravenously ate it. I threw an orange peel into the spittoon and the peasant again grabbed it and devoured it. The Communist subsided.
„You’re hungry“ - I said to him. „Hungry“ - he replied. „We peasants are all hungry. The Communists took away our grain. They robbed us of our land. They came to our village and left only a few potatoes for us to live through the Winter. There’s bread in the big cities, but there is no bread in the villages in the homes of the people who grow the wheat.“
„PAWNS OF TRAGEDY IN UKRAINE./Fund No. 2000. op. 2, case 131, pp. 143-144“,
oil on canvas, 100x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„Distress signal.
I write from the depths of the countryside, where fate cast me by chance during the time of crop sowing. I consider it a crime to remain silent about what I see every day.
In the village of Danilova-Balka, the grain harvesting plan has been OVERDONE.
I will speak of that which everyone should turn their attention to - the material situation of the collective farmers and their families.
While carrying out a vaccination campaign against typhoid and smallpox, every day I go from house to house in the village and witness horrible imagery. Empty houses with many children inside bearing pale faces, with unchildlike serious sad eyes, with thin arms and legs. The children are hungry. They feed on rotten roasted beets that have overwintered in the field.
Most of the collective farmers themselves are exhausted, most are bloated with hunger. They move like shadows.
Bread in the collective farm, even during sowing, is not handed out. There is no public catering, but it is needed here. I will not look for the reason behind this severe plight of the collective farmers, I write only to bring attention to it and aid while there is still time. There are still 4-5 months until the harvest, and there is little hope that the children, and many adults, will survive.
In the outpatient clinic, a patient turned to me and said - "give me a piece of bread", and I myself had spent 20 days without bread, because the director of the Machine-Tractor Station refused to give the deployed doctor food, and it is not possible to buy bread in the market, as the selling of bread is prohibited.
The village is doomed to extinction.
Almost every day I receive instructions from the Regional Health Department for the storage of meat products, for special clothing, for the storage of bread. The regional health department is located 45 km from Danilova-Balka. Do they really not know that there has been no bread and meat in Danilova-Balka for a long time. Of course, I will not talk about the Machine-Tractor Station, where the employees are in a special position.
Temporary manager of outpatient clinic (seeding campaign). Doctor – Mingaleva.“
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„Monday, March 4, 1936, Chicago American“,
oil on canvas, 100x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„In order to find the currency for buying import equipment, necessary for the factories and the plants, in the early 1930s, the Stalin's decree has arrived for selling a significant portion of the harvest that had to be obtained from the country's fields. Then the terrible hunger has followed. The peasants were punished to work without any money on the fields. And if some of them were trying to talk about hunger – they were immediately convicted.“
«Monday March 4, 1936, Chicago American Front page»,
https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/thomas_walker/thomas_walker.htm
„The famine of 1946-1947 in the Bulgarian villages of the Izmail region of the Ukrainian SSR / III DANUBE SCIENTIFIC READINGS. – Izmail, 2017, p. 259“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„In 1947, when everyone was already in the collective farm, I worked in the fields all day. When I was going home in the evening, I would look and see a dead man on the road here and there, where he had died... he shrunk and died, and the ravens had pecked out his eyes.“
Dimitar Chilibiiski (born in 1928), Banovka.
„P-470. op. 2, file 2. Information, reports on cases of cannibalism in the villages of Odesa region, on the exhaustion of workers at enterprises in the city of Kherson. 02.03.1933 - 28.10.1933. №20“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„On the night of February 28, 1933, in the village of Leontovichevo, in the family of Vasilenko, expelled from the TKZS (Labor Cooperative farm) for stealing bread during the harvest and sentenced to 10 years in prison, there was a case where a 15- year-old boy strangled a 4-year-old child.
After strangling the child, he woke up the other children, aged 12, 8 and 6, and invited them to cut him up for consumption.
As the younger children were frightened by his proposal, he immediately took an axe and chopped the child to pieces, laid him in bed and salted him.
In the process, he took out the heart, liver and lungs, fried them and fed the rest of the children.“
„P-470. op. 2, file 2. Information, reports on cases of cannibalism in the villages of Odesa region, on the exhaustion of workers at enterprises in the city of Kherson. 02.03.1933 - 28.10.1933. №9“,
oil on canvas, 90x120cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„From January 1 until today (February 17), the research revealed that 18 people, mostly children, died due to exhaustion. However, there are no accurate data on mortality; For example, the study found that a 7-year-old child died at the household of collective farmer Nogaichenko, no one knows about his death.
The condition of collective farmers was checked at home:
Fomenko Prokhor - family of 7 people, children aged from 7 months to 8 years. Everyone is exhausted, lying on the stove. When I turn to Fomenko's wife and ask: „What are your children sick with?“ - she does not answer, first she starts to cry, then curses: „How long will you torture us with hunger.“
Zashlyakhovski - a family of 5 people. Four children aged 8 months to 8 years. His wife died recently on the road while walking. The children and the father are swollen with hunger. There is absolutely nothing in the apartment - everything has been sold off. Cold. The family ate their dog. Zashlyakhovski asked that they take his children away somewhere and save them, because he will die. Then he added: „I used to be in the Red Army once, I was a revolutionary, and now I'm dying of hunger.“
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„A 21st century view of a document./ „Projection of a metamodern method for the study of the famine in Bessarabia in 1946–1947, reflected in historical painting“, Yona Tukuser, „Historical Review“ magazine, 2020, pp. 123-124“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„Prodrazverstka“ (food apportionment) is a policy of securing food supplies by taxing the peasants in the form of grain and other foodstuffs in the Russian Empire, the Russian Republic and the RSFSR. It was started by the government of the Russian Empire in 1916 and continued by the Provisional Government in the form of a „bread monopoly“, with the state distributing its stocks. In 1917, a circular was issued with an order for „armed seizure of bread from large owners and all producers from the villages that are located near the railway stations“. In connection with the introduction of the food dictatorship in 1918, the Food Army of the People's Commissariat of the RSFSR was created, consisting of armed food detachments.
„Prodrazverstka“ is part of the policy of „military communism“ and is carried out by forcefully confiscating bread and other products from the peasants according to the established norm of „Prodrazverstka“. Thus, it becomes clear that the „Prodrazverstka“ applied in the Soviet Union is a product of the tsarist and the Provisional Government.
A. Graziozzi believes that the famine should be considered as an integral part of the state's war with the peasants: „In May 1921, Osinsky wrote to Lenin that the local leaders
saw the peasant as a natural saboteur in relation to the Soviet regime and they consider the tax in the form of food a temporary trick to pacify the village“.
According to Berdyaev, the dictatorship of the proletariat turns out to be a dictatorship over the peasantry, which commits cruel violence against the peasants, as in the case of forced collectivization with the creation of collective farms. And here he adds: „But the violence against the peasants was committed by their own people, who came out of the people's lowlands, not by the privileged „white bone“. The unheard of tyranny, which is the Soviet system, is subject to moral judgment.“
„P-470. op. 2, file 2. Information, reports on cases of cannibalism in the villages of Odesa region, on the exhaustion of workers at enterprises in the city of Kherson. 02.03.1933 - 28.10.1933. №1 / Sunday March 3, 1936, Chicago Herald & Examiner p.3“,
oil on canvas, 90x130cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„Confidential. To the chairman of the Regional Executive Committee. Odessa. A special report.
In the village of Arkhangelsk, on February 23, 1933, teenagers Terebilo Vasily - 12 years old and Terebilo Nikolai - 13 years old, whose parents: father - Terebilo Mark, a poor collective farmer, who is in the Kherson prison for storing gold currency, stepmother - Akulina Terebilo, who went in an unknown direction after the arrest of her husband, - invited a 12-year-old boy from the same village Teterya Vasiliy, the son of a poor man - an individual worker, to spend the night with them.
During the night, Terebilo Vasily and Terebilo Nikolai slaughtered Teterya Vasili, then cut out part of his chest and entrails, boiled them and ate them.
Teterya was slaughtered in the house owned by Terebilo, in bed, in the same place where he
slept. The instrument of the crime was a kitchen knife.
The crime was discovered by the local militiaman Drobnich, who was in the village of Arkhangelsk.
Pre-trial proceedings are being conducted on the case by the Regional Police.
Head of Militia Department, Odessa Region - Petero. Head of Special Department – Barski.“
«Sunday March 3, 1936, Chicago Herald & Examiner page 3»
https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/thomas_walker/thomas_walker_images.htm
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„P-470. op. 2, file 2. Information, reports on cases of cannibalism in the villages of Odesa region, on the exhaustion of workers at enterprises in the city of Kherson. 02.03.1933 - 28.10.1933. №47 / Friday March 1, 1936, Chicago American“,
oil on canvas, 90x120cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„Urgent. Highly confidential.
At the Znamenka railway station, 5-10 people die every day. All these people, traveling from all corners of the USSR, hundreds stop at the Znamenka station, acting as a switchboard, waiting for several days for their turn to get on the train, and without means of sustenance - they die of exhaustion.
Both we and the railway station do not have food resources to organize at least a minor food station at Znamenka station, which will greatly ease the situation for us, as such cases have an extremely negative effect on other passengers.
March 19, 1933“.
«Friday March 1, 1936, Chicago American Front page»
https://www.garethjones.org/soviet_articles/thomas_walker/thomas_walker_images.htm
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„Petar Dimitrov Petrov (b.1929) Golica village. May 18, 2018 Conversation with Yona“,
oil on canvas, 90x120cm, 2013, Yona Tukuser
„On August 26, 1946, there was a meeting of the village council to establish the Kolkhoz and start collectivization of the peasants' private farms. I was at that meeting. In the village council there was a group of 8 people (collectors) who went around to extort grain from the people and I was one of them. The authorities wanted people to enter the Kolkhoz out of need.
When they take his grain away, like it or not, a person has to enter the Kolkhoz.
When people were forced to enter the Kolkhoz, and they did not want to, the authorities confiscated all their property and sent them to Siberia to a labor camp.
Those who enter the Kolkhoz would receive some grain and would not die of hunger, but those who would not enter receive nothing.
The famine started because they took the grain from the people, they had nothing to eat and they did not receive any help.“
Exhibition «Anthropophage» in «The Red House Centre for Culture and Debate» 2011. Sofia, Bulgaria
