Most of the people they found frozen right where they had died, their once happy homes now their final resting place. Some, who had collapsed with exhaustion, lay on the floor. Others, perceptive enough to know the end loomed near, had put on their best clothes before taking their final breath. Children lay dead in their mothers’ arms. Old couples embraced each other in their beds. Whole families lay in ruins, defeated by Stalin’s forced hunger, just as he had planned. “How did we survive this?” Katya asked. “So many didn’t. Why us?” “Sometimes, I think they are the lucky ones,” Kolya said,
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