The artificial famine in Kiev was real. It happened because the Nazis for some period of time rigorously enforced their totally inadequate food allowances. The Nazis were hoarding foodstuffs, because the next harvest was expected to be poor.
Similar blockade was enacted around Warsaw but was unsuccessful.
Ukrainian memoirs published in the West basically agree that beginning in October "the Gestapo," that is, members of Einsatzgruppe C, barred people at the city outskirts who did not live in Kiev from entering and confiscated food imports.
Iaroslav Haivas arrived early on in Kiev illegally as a leader of the OUN-M. He writes that he and his fellow-activists appointed people who should avert a famine in the city. These people then approached "economic circles, first of all former cooperators," and as a result products started to trickle into the city. "Many collective farms gave up products without any payment," he writes, "and only with a note that payment would follow. When it seemed that things would start to work, the German military command closed the city and blocked the entrance not only of cars, but also of individuals."
Nina Mykhalevych, a member of the OUN-M, writes that in late 1941 transport of food to Kiev was blocked by patrols on the bridges: "Milk for Lesia [her little daughter] was brought by a woman from Darnytsia across the frozen Dnieper. She had to sneak it in, masterfully hidden under a large plaid on her shoulders so that the German would not see it.
On the bridges the Germans had placed guards who intercepted any people bringing the Kievans food from the countryside and they confiscated everything!" Halyna Lashchenko, a woman who returned to her native Kiev at her own initiative and was close to the OUN-M, writes more vaguely that the Germans "somewhat obstructed'' the food supply of Kievans. She noted that the city administration sent cars into the countryside and tried to get food there, but "did not always succeed.*'
Both Lashchenko and Haivas describe a large convoy of food which arrived in Kiev on 9 October 1941. Peasants from the Tarashcha region 120 kilometers away brought a "present" to the city, apparently after an appeal by the Ukrainian Red Cross (discussed below), which consisted of 128 carts with forty-five tons of meat, ten thousand eggs, poultry, lard, butter. and apples. The vice-head of the administration and his secretary met the delegation and expressed their gratitude. According to Lashchenko, the leader of the transport said, "We know that these [foodstuffs] won't be consumed by the commissars, as under the Soviets, but by the Ukrainian population." Haivas writes that "the German command let it in on the condition that the food would be used for ill people and hospitals, and so for a short time the Germans had been forced to lift the 'blockade."'
Karel Berkhoff, Everyday Life in the Reichskommissariat Ukraine
michael mills wrote:While the Romanians reopened Odessa University, the Germans did not do the same.
Rosenberg had wanted to create a university for Ukrainians, but he was opposed in that endeavour by Koch, the Reichskommissar Ukraine and Rosenberg's nominal subordinate. Hitler eventually supported Koch's view, and the project for a Ukrainian university was shelved.
Although universities for the Poles/Ukrainians were created in Lwów in 1942, so called
Staatliche Fachkurse Lemberg. Initially they were called:
Staatliche Medizinische Institute,
Staatliche Forstliche Institute,
Staatliche Tieraerztliche Institute,
Staatliche Pharmazeutische Institute,
Staatliehe Medizinische Institute.
Later the names were changed, for example Staatliche Medizinische Institute became Staatliche Medizinische Fachkurse. But still more or less they were universities.
