My mother working in WWII artillery shell production. The plant she worked in at one time before the war made pipe and was adapted to war production. She was a foreman, and factory grievance rep, floor supervisor and was asked to pose for this picture in the weekly town trade magazine in Pennsylvania
Perhaps I am just out of touch with where the world is now. My mother some years ago was in the hospital with an enlarged heart. She was a little delirious as she retold a story I had herd her tell when I was a child. My Grandfather had left the Ukraine during the time of Stalin --My Grandfather was in a bar one day in his town. A bars was a place where people gathered not with the stigma of a bar here today. A Jewish man was in their company and the Russian police entered and accused the Jewish man of a crime. This was a fairly common practice, of accusing a Jew of about anything in Russia. My Grandfather asked when the crime had occurred and when he was told the time he told the police the man could not have committed the crime as he was with them at that time. When my Grandfather got home and told his parents they were horrified and told him he was a dead man and they made plans to get him out of the country. This was before the purge of the Ukraine.
Under Lenin, and then Stalin the people lost all control and ownership of their land and the Ukrainian people decided not to grow crops, but only enough for their needs. Stalin decided he would have those crops and ordered town meetings of the farmers in each town. A wooden vat was brought into the town and a pump was placed in the well in the town square. A farmer was then chosen and chained to the bottom of the wooden vat and given a tea cup to bale water with for his life. Not being able to keep up, his cry's for mercy were eventually silenced and soon the vat ran over and a plug was pulled and the corps was thrown out on the ground. Other farmers were chosen to have the same experiences that day. The Ukrainians began again to farm the land --I do not know which of the two stories happened first. But this much I know my Grandfather got out before the borders were closed. The first thing he did getting off the boat was to get on his hands and knees and kiss the ground. He could not express his gratitude for freedom any other way! I've tried to live a good life and do not have any real regrets except I wish he would have lived in tell I would have been old enough to have herd the stories directly from him.
It is a matter of history when the crops came in that year before the harvest Stalin ordered guards over the fields and any farmer found in his field was shot. In reading the same account as recorded by Khrushchev in his book Khrushchev Speaks Out (but he left out the wooden vat story)-- Stalin knowing that there was enough time for one more crop and ordered sugar beets planted. At this point nothing would keep the farmers out of the field and children were eating out of the guards garbage cans and if they were caught they were killed. Khrushchev said the guards were then ordered to weed the fields. (In actuality they destroyed the crop purposely) By years end 14,000,000 would be dead from starvation. Women were boiling the leaves off of trees and feeding it to their families. Families were expelled from their homes in the middle of the winter.
As the years passed the survivors of the Ukraine according to Khrushchev planted crops with a promise of food and were denied food and the starvation continued which would turn into cannibalism. Stalin saw another opportunity to dispose of more of them so another million men were sent off to fight in the Winter War against Finland Nov 30, 1939. Yes there were a million more Ukrainian casualties! With the advent of the invasion of Hitler he took all the remaining food the Ukrainians had and sent it to Germany and the Ukrainians had to fight a two front war one against Hitler and the other against Stalin. American historians neglect telling about the German death camps in the Ukraine but accounts estimate 7,000,000--- 1,000,000 more than the German Jewish extermination. A Ukrainian was forbidden any type of work in WWII Russia and cannibalism would continue even years after the war.
I began this story with my mother in the hospital retelling the story of my Grandfather and thinking she would die and made me promise never to forget. She lived a good long life even with her enlarged heart and lasted in tell she was 93 years old.
She left Pennsylvania for health reasons when she was younger and needed a dryer climate and got a job at the soda stand on Fort Bliss military reservation where she met a wounded GI who was at Beaumont medical hospital in El Paso Texas. On the base she married my father and though they wanted children found it took 7 years before I was born.
She left Pennsylvania for health reasons when she was younger and needed a dryer climate and got a job at the soda stand on Fort Bliss military reservation where she met a wounded GI who was at Beaumont medical hospital in El Paso Texas. On the base she married my father and though they wanted children found it took 7 years before I was born.
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