•
…[with] a bearded peasant who
was walking
along . His feet were covered with sacking. We started talking. He spoke in Ukrainian Russian. I
gave him
a lump of bread and of cheese.
“You could not buy that anywhere for 20 rubles. There just is
no food.”
We walked along and talked; “Before the war this was all gold. We had horses and cows and pigs
and chickens.
Now we are ruined. We are (the living dead) ПОГИБЛИ. You see that field. It was all gold, but now look at the weeds. The weeds were peeping up over the
snow.”
“Before the war we could have boots and meat and butter. We
were the
richest…