Wohldenfuerst, 24.4.1933
My gracious uncle...
. . .I turn to you with terrible and outrageous news: Famine!
My husband is a deaf-mute, and is 37 years old. I am 33 years old, and we have three children, who are 12, 8 and 6 years old. My youngest son has died. Right up to now, my husband, our children and I retain our belief in the Lord . . .(snip)
We no longer have a bed for each person. We now sleep four to a bed, my husband sleeps on the table. Now we want to forget everything, then it won't hurt so much. Oh Lord, hunger is so painful. We ate rotten turnips for five weeks that my husband, little children and I went begging for. But now we no longer have any more left, and the sack is empty.
We have been eating grass for the past two weeks. I even went to a little hill where a dead horse lay, and ate some of it. My husband is ill, his body is swollen, my children are swollen. The doctor claims that the people will be dropping like flies, due to the hot weather . . .Whole families lay unburied on the paths of the steppes for weeks. No one cares. Cats and dogs are eaten.
An underground trade organisation has been formed in the nearby town of Armawir, where people are slaughtered and are turned into sausages and cutlets, to be sold for food . . . full text plus other letters
Full text articles by Gareth Jones, Malcolm Muggeridge and Walter Duranty are here
(Jones' dispatches from Nazi Germany are a must read...he flew with Hitler to a Nuremberg rally)