Khortiza, February 18, 1920

By the thousands the Bolshevik troops are passing through our place. Most of the time they make a stay here. They, too, have no pity, even though we tell them we have no bread. Hungry soldiers do not deal gently. They have to have food even when they eat our last bread.

More than ninety per cent of our population here went through the malady. The great plague has ceased now. We, who have been left, must form a friendly alliance with life again, although it does not seem to meet us half way.

In our neighborhood the fever is still ravaging and spreading and spreading ever farther. The contagion is enormous, due to the most pitiful hygienic conditions among the Russian peasants. There is not only the lack of medicine and preventatives but also of practically everything else, down to clean body linen and bedding.