Bottle of Grain: A Holodomor Story

Maria Soroka is a survivor of the Holodomor in Ukraine. During the winter of 1932-1933 Maria was a young girl who experienced great hardships after soldiers seized all the food from her family and the entire village. The complex political background of the Holodomor is personalized in this story of the Soroka family's struggle to survive with nothing to eat. In December 2012, a large bottle full of grain was accidentally found under a tree near the Village of Velyki Krushlyntsi, near the City of Vinnytsia, Vinnytsia Province, Ukraine. Elderly villagers remembered the Soroka family had been hiding bottles of grain before the winter of the Holodomor. The bottle of grain is the tangible artifact around which this story is built.