Did Stalin plan a second holocaust?

[Mark V]

Yep.

The only good thing in Stalins rule compared to Hitler was that he did kill people far more democraticly (evenly) among ethnical/political groups...

.... not that it was really an great improvement.

[Kaan Caglar]

I dont think it makes any difference...
When you're dead,you're dead...
The way you die or kill doesnt make any different..
It counts 1..

[wildboar]

Oleg, what about the campaign of Stalin against the ethnic German population of Eastern Europe? If I remember correctly, the "volksdeutsche" bore the brunt of Soviet reprisal activities outside of Germany. The death toll (according to my own knowledge) was approximately 1.5 million, although the operation itself extended to some 30 million in total.

Regards,
Germanica

yes the Germanica you are right the expulsion of germans from eastern europe would not been possible without active participation of soviet army
Germenica just refer to my previous posting in this forum-

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... highlight=

Also refer to article on internet by europe by Erik Edelstam who is son of a Swedish attaché in Berlin, in war period. -

Some years ago, I stood in the pouring rain at the Bregenzstrasse in Berlin in an attempt to look for the shadows of my parents in 1941. - My father Harald, then a young, good looking, enthusiastic attaché at the Swedish legation in Berlin, with high ambitions and my mother Louise, innocent and sweet, with dimples in her cheeks and my new-born brother Carl in her arms, lived in one end of the street.
Bregenzstrasse is a little street in the vicinity of Kurfürstendam. Easy to seal off from both sides. There were nearly only Jews living in the quarters. Harald woke up many times during the night by trucks; the rush of spike clad boots, commando shouts and screams of anguish.
He used to run down to the entrance door, dressed only in pyjama and waved in so many he could of the despairing people who looked for cover. They hid in the little apartment, crouching and trembling. Next day he was forced to let them go. There was no lifeline - the Swedish government had even forced a J in the passport of the Jews to differ them from the other German citizens.
Harald, who felt completely powerless regarding to this, proposed to his boss, the envoy Arvid Richert, that one perhaps could give these people a kind of passport of protection, like what his college later gave the Jews of Budapest. - Richert got white in his face and raged: - Do you want to throw us in war with Germany?
And that was it.
The Jews were driven from their homes, deprived from all possibilities of support and were put in a kind of quarantine of deprivation and starvation, till it was time for eradication.

In January 1945 the time came to the Germans themselves. In a way their own Holocaust. In any case, for some of them. A result of Hitler’s merciless politics.
It is called the Expulsion (der Vertreibung) - the ethnic cleansing of 15 million Germans from central and Eastern Europe. Hitler had cleaned out many groups of people, but this expulsion was something quite different.
Today the world has been shocked by what happened in former Yugoslavia, where Muslims, Croats and Serbs were driven away from their homes. Like cattle, with a scant hope of returning home again. The concept of ethnic cleansing has become very familiar, which one hears in all sorts of different contexts. One often hears:” The worst ethnic cleansing since World War II...” - But what happened then?

Very few people today have a slightest idea what happened all these Germans the years after the war and the tremendous suffering they had to endure. Nobody has, anyhow, been interested. The common idea is that the Germans got what they deserved. An idea that, 55 years afterwards, it is, perhaps, time to revise. The subject is very touchy. A former German ambassador warned me that to bring this topic up today in Germany, might classify you as a neo-nazi. Anyhow, the Expulsion represents a big white area on the historical map.

My own introduction to the Expulsion was the book of Marion Dönhoff, the founder of ”Die Zeit”: ”Namen die keiner mehr nennt”, in a dusty antiquarian shop in Berlin. She had big estates in East Prussia and had to flee as the Red Army approached. She left on her riding horse in - 25º cold and snow storm and joined the fleeing population on the full packed roads. After two weeks she halted her horse at two a clock in the night, at the big train bridge, crossing the river Nogat, by Marienburg, near Danzig.
The bridge was deserted, but she heard a strange, clattering sound, as from a three legged being: ”...soon I saw three figures in uniform, slowly dragging themselves over the bridge in silence: One of them was walking with crutches, one with a stick and the third had a big bandage round the head, and the left arm hanging down limb... For me this was the end of East Prussia: three dead sick soldiers, dragging themselves over the Nogat Bridge to West Prussia. And a woman on horse, whose ancestors 700 years before, had pushed, from west to east, right in to the great wilderness on the other side of the river, who now was riding back to the west. - 700 years of history was now wiped out...”

The story of Marion Dönhoff is typical and tells much about the historical background. The laborious and industrious German burghers and farmers colonised Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages, often invited by local lords. From the Baltic States, through Prussia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia (Czech Rep and Slovakia today), down to Hungary and the Balkan, they cultivated the land and founded thousands of cities and villages. The First World War changed all and a big part of the German population in these areas became minorities under national governments. The second word war made things worse with the Nazis as a ruthless occupation force, terrorising all these countries. The ethnic Germans became the scapegoats as the Reich fell apart in ruins. - The situation was a bit different in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, since they were purely German areas since the 13th century.

During the Second World War, several politicians on the allied side demanded that the Germans in these areas should be driven away. The first one to air such thoughts was the Czech, exiled premier, Eduard Benes. The British government agreed.
During conferences, the fate of the Germans was sealed. Stalin wanted to keep the eastern part of Poland, that he got from Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and as compensation Poland would get East Prussia, West Prussia and Silesia. And then the current population must go. Roosevelt and Churchill promised help with transports. Stalin beamed. Churchill said in a speech:”...a clean sweep will be made...”
An other question that came up, was the matter of ”reparations of war damage” in the devastated Soviet Union. Stalin wanted German labour. Request was permitted. The result was that around 875.000 people, mostly elderly people, women and children, was sent to mines and slave camps, and were the greater part perished of starvation and hardship. The responsibility of Roosevelt and Churchill in this program is undeniable.One can divide the Expulsion in three phases:
1. The Soviet phase with flight from the terror of the Red Army.
2. The flight from revenge, primary from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
3. The organized expulsion from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Balkan.

The first phase opened when Stalin launched his winter offensive, ”Uranius”, against East Prussia, the 12th of January 1945, with 2.2 million soldiers. Facing them was 400.000 Germans. The Russian soldiers were highly motivated and had been instructed to kill so many Germans they could and that included the civilians. After reconquering his own devastated fatherland for years, each man was filled with revenge.
The population knew what was in store for them. During the fighting in the autumn, the Red Army had conquered some communes and been driven away again. What they left was horrible. Murdered civilians in all houses, raped women and something that would be repeated during all the conquest - naked women crucified to barn doors. These incidents were ruthlessly used in the Nazi propaganda to strengthen the resistance.

The violence against the civilians was documented where it was possible, for example, when German forces reconquered areas, like in Metgehten, a suburb of Königsberg, in the end of January 1945. The chocked soldiers could not believe their eyes, when the entered the town.
Big piles of dead bodies littered the streets. Most of them were women and children. Few were men. Nearly all women had been beaten to death or stabbed with bayonets. A big number were mutilated, especially by the genitals, and had cut off breasts. In the biggest pile, they counted to 3.000 dead. In one place people were driven down in a big bomb crater and then blown to pieces by explosives. I all buildings civilians lay dead. Several trains that had come with fugitives stood motionless, full of dead. A witness saw the rests of two women, who had been tied to their ankles and torn apart by two cars, which had driven in opposite directions. In a big villa, 60 surviving women were found. They had been raped 60 - 70 times per day. The villa had obviously served as a brothel. Half of the women had to be taken to psychiatric institutions.
A bit outside, in the village Gross Heydekrug, stood an abandoned tank, which had been dragging four naked women in ropes. In the church a young girl was nailed to the cross of the altar, with to German soldiers strung up on each side... - A bizarre biblical metaphor of pain and suffering.
The road to the west was filled with hardships and suffering for the fugitives. - When the Russian tanks advanced north from Poland, they cut off the German territory in several places. The population was thus caught in pockets and could not flee west by land. Instead they moved to the coast and the harbours where they hoped to get on a ship. The German navy then organized an evacuation that far surpasses the one made in Dunkerque in May 1940.
1,5 million fugitives and 700.000 soldiers were evacuated by 790 boats of different sizes from January to the end of the war. The admiral Dönitz, who was the successor of Hitler, delayed the final capitulation, just in order to evacuate as many as possible from the east.

But the evacuation could not be made without sacrifices. The 30th of January the passenger ship ”Wilhelm Gustloff” sailed out from Pillau, the harbour of Königsberg, with 6.000 fugitives on board. Outside in the snowstorm, waited the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of captain A.I. Marinesko. Three, well-aimed torpedoes sank ”Wilhelm Gustloff”. Despite the storm and cold temperature, the escort ships saved 1.100 people. The same submarine sent the hospital ship ”General von Steuben” to the bottom. It was painted white with red crosses, carrying 3.500 wounded soldiers. The worst sinking was ”Goya”, with 7.000 fugitives on board. There only 183 survived.

The problem was that the Red Army chased the fugitives as much as the German soldiers. The endless columns of charts that crossed the ice if Frischer Haff from Königsberg, towards the harbour Pillau, were bombed without mercy. On the roads the Russian tanks simply mashed the fugitives with their chains, mowed them down with their machine-guns or liquidated them at the roadside.

After the Russians came the Polish army, polish militia and civilians who should take over the country. They co-operated closely with the Soviet occupation authorities and participated in the looting and the killings. Polish fugitives from the eastern parts took over the houses of the Germans. The former owners were thrown out in the street. The provision of food stopped completely. Famine and diseases like typhoid and cholera ravaged.
Later the Allies stared to organise train transports to the west. They became veritable trains of horror, that was constantly stopped and plundered by hooligans and armed gangs. The conditions soon became so unbearable that the Allies had to stop the transports.
Of course there were exceptions. Decent Soviet officers were chocked by the violence. Solsjenytsin, who participated in the fighting of East Prussia, wrote in the ”Gulag Archipelago” that rape and the following murder of the woman, almost was considered as a combat distinction. Individual Poles gave Germans food and shelter and helped them cross the border. In many farms the Polish workers hid the German owners.

The inhabitants of Silesia that fled from the Red Army, mostly tried to get to Dresden. The city had not been bombed any time during the war. Thanks to the exquisite art treasures and the unique baroque architecture of the town, it was considered as an open city, like Rome and Paris. No military installations or industries were in the vicinity. A safe place.
The 13th of February the Royal Air Force attacked with a first wave of planes during the night. The city was packed with refuges, around 200.000. The night after the next wave came. A total of 1.400 planes participated. As if it was not enough, 450 American planes made daylight bombings, which completed the destruction.
The city was engulfed in a firestorm, never seen since the destruction of Hamburg in 1943. Very little was left. The figures concerning the number of perished are very unsure, but it is estimated that between 150.000 and 200.000 people died and 400.000 were left homeless. It shall be noted that in Hiroshima, around 50.000 people died.

In the rest of Europe, revenge struck hard on the ethnic Germans. It was like in Poland. In Czechoslovakia the Germans had to wear white sleeve badges with an N (Nemec, which means German in Czech). The Germans had to take off their hat for every Czech or Soviet officer they met.
In Prague, thousands of civil Germans were massacred by the end of war. At Uti 2.000 women and children were tossed from a bridge (Vaclav Havel had a commemoration plate put up at the place in 1990) and the Czech militia detained hundreds of thousand people in concentration camps. The old German camps were handy. No food was distributed and diseases ravaged. People died like flies. The ethnic Germans got the same treatment as Czechs and Jews had before.
With all the free looting, rapes and other atrocities, it must be said that the majority of the Czechs were revolted and ashamed over the treatment of the Germans. Vaclav Havel later publicly apologised for these events.
In Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania the ethnic cleansing followed the same pattern. The German inhabitants had to leave their farms, houses and business with what they could carry in a suitcase. No valuables were permitted. It was just to hand over the keys. - Here the Germans were particularly struck by the deportations to the Soviet Union.
Most of the Germans were put in labour camps. Those who could not work, like women, children and old people, were put in special starvation camps, were most perished. A witness tells about the starvation camp in Jarek. In June 1945 there was 25.000 prisoners. In May next year there was only 2.800 left. Other starvation camps were Rudolfsgnad, Gakovo, Mitrovica or Molidorf.

Those who were driven away from their ancestral lands came to a Germany that thanks to the bombings not could provide shelter for its own population. Nothing worked and food was scarce. The fugitives got no fugitive status of the Allies, which did that they could not get help from the Red Cross or other help organisations. They were in fact busy repatriating the displaced slave workers that the Nazis had brought in to Germany during the war. The question of the expulsed Germans was regarded as an ”internal German affair”.
In this situation Germany received more than 13 million fugitives!
Around two million of the expulsed Germans are estimated to have lost their lives, due to starvation, liquidations and other hardships.

The ethnic Germans had a terrible fate. They were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were surely Nazis, but the majority were simple farmers and artisans who did not care much about politics and just wanted to live in peace. The tragedy is that the governments that drove out the Germans treated them in the same way as the Nazis had treated their own people.
Now some facts start to emerge, concerning the Expulsion. Witnesses and victims dare to testify. Governments apologise. For the victims, it is perhaps not enough. One witness said:
”...It is difficult to loose all you have, but unbearable when you loose your identity and your history...”

Source-

http://www.wordsandart.com/forums/viewt ... ?TopicID=4

The million dollar question is will russia shed from its stalinist mentality and apologise for war crimes commited against germans by stalin and beria.
it is good to see that Vaclav Havel has apologised and poland has taken steps to bring to justice persons who commited crimes against german civilians , but will russia shed its stalinist mentality

Germenica your contention of soviet responsibility of expulsion of germans from eastern europe is completely correct

[Germanica]

if there were other troops than Soviets in EE it would not have chnage anything - WA did not have much simpathy for Germans either, nor did the have it for anybody who collaborated with Nazis - turning over Vlasovsti etc - is quite an indicator.

No, the Western Allies did not hold sympathy for any German or pro-German, but I had not known of their role in the deaths of approximately 1.5 million ethnic Germans.

Regards,
Germanica

[Galicia]

What B.S.

How dare you have the balls to say that the Ukrainian Famine was not Man made. People drowned their own children in a death of mercy so they wouldn't starve. Then, most ate them. People were boiled people alive in pots.

Stalin killed people intentionally from 1930-1932 in the Ukraine. Your family wasn't there, Oleg. Mine was.

...the streets and houses were overgrown with weeds. In the streets there were no signs of any living being, human or animal, not even a cat or a dog. In some of the houses doors and windows were open, while in others they have been removed to fire,
and there were only black spaces showing. Decomposing dead bodies were lying about in the weeds around the houses and evidently in the houses themselves, and an incredibly putrid odour, intensified by warm weather, permeated the
village...

Gorbachev himself admitted it! What more proof could you want?
http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/famine19.htm

We had 40 kulak families and we sent them all away. It was not enough to send the men only, because we must pluck up all the kulak elements by the roots

This meant that they would take a long strand of piano wire and kill every woman and child regardless of age.

In the Ukraine, in one collective the ration was 20 lb. The peasants complain: “Come and see the grain, rotten grain: that is what they keep for us. All the best grain is sent to the nearest town for export, and we do not get enough to eat. Poor Mother Russia is in a sorry plight. What we want is land and our own cows.”

http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_ ... e_farm.htm

The article said they went to Siberia. I don't believe that. The Ukrainians were scum in the eyes of the mighty [Russian] Red Army.

Stalin's Famine In Ukraine: Malcolm Muggeridge
Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge by Marco Carynnyk
Special Edition Issued by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee
Edmonton Branch, October 14,1983



"The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind, without any consideration whatever of the consequences of human suffering," Malcolm Muggeridge said.

He was talking about the genocidal famine that swept Ukraine in the winter on 1932 and the spring and summer of 1933.

Muggeridge was there that terrible winter and spring. As a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Moscow, he was one of the few Western journalists who circumvented Soviet restrictions and visited the famine regions and then honestly reported what he had seen.

Marco Carynnyk talked to Muggeridge at his cottage in Sussex, England.



Why did you decide to write about the famine in Ukraine?


It was the big story in all our talks in Moscow. Everybody knew about it. There was no question about that. Anyone you were talking to knew that there was a terrible famine going on. Even in the Soviets' own pieces there were somewhat disguised acknowledgements of great difficulties there. I realized that that was the big story. I could also see that all the correspondents in Moscow were distorting it.
Without making any kind of plans or asking for permission I just went and got a ticket for Kiev and then went on to Rostov. The Soviet security is not as good as people think it is. If you once duck it, you can go quite a long way. At least you could in those days.

Going through the countryside by train one could sense the state of affairs. Ukraine was starving, and you only had to venture out to smaller places to see derelict fields and abandoned villages.

On one occasion, I was changing trains, and I went wandering around, and in one of the trains in the station, the kulaks were being loaded onto the train, and there were military men all along the platform.

I'll tell you another thing that's more difficult to convey, but it impressed me enormously. It was on a Sunday in Kiev, and I went into the church there for the Orthodox mass. I could understand very little of it, but there was some spirit in it that I have never come across before or after. Human beings at the end of their tether were saying to God, "We come to you, we're in trouble, nobody by You can help us."

What were you thinking and, more importantly perhaps, what were you feeling when you saw those scenes of starvation and privation in Ukraine? How does one respond in such a situation?

First of all, one feels a deep, deep, deep sympathy with and pity for the sufferers. Human beings look very tragic when they are starving. And remember that I wasn't unaware of what things were like because in India, for instance, I've been in a village during a cholera epidemic and seen people similarly placed. So it wasn't a complete novelty.
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.

That was what I found so terrifying. Think of a man in an office who has been ordered to collectivize agriculture and get rid of the kulaks without any clear notion or definition of what a kulak is, and who has in what was then the GPU and is now the KGB the instrument for doing this, and who then announces it in the slavish press as one of the great triumphs of the regime.

Given the deliberate nature of the famine in Ukraine, given the fact that food continued to be stockpiled and exported even as people dropped dead on the streets, is it accurate to talk about this as a famine? Is it perhaps something else? How does one describe an event of such magnitude?

Perhaps you do need another word. I don't know what it would be. The word 'famine' means people have nothing whatsoever to eat and consume things that are not normally consumed. Of course there were stories of cannibalism there. I don't know whether they were true, but they were very widely believed. Certainly the eating of cattle and the consequent complete destruction of whatever economy the farms still had was true.

I remember someone telling me how all manners and finesse disappeared. When you're in the grip of a thing like this and you know that someone's got food, you go and steal it. You'll even murder to get it. That's all part of the horror.

Oh, Mighty Oleg, show me how I, the stupid Ukrainian, have gone wrong?

[Galicia]

What about repatriation Oleg? Operation Kickback, you familiar with that? It's when the Red Army would torture every single living sole that came back from a train, usually from a DP camp, because they were running from the Red Army and the Nazis. How about the streams of blood comming out from the cattlecars that they were shipped in? We call that mass suicide in the normal world. The camps in Finland the lucky few were able to "attend?" He killed Millions. Fess up to it. Mostly non-communists. Then if you really want to nit pick, we can go on and on about the Korean War where he supplied troops with old Nagants and Kalishnikovs.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

Oleg, what about the campaign of Stalin against the ethnic German population of Eastern Europe? If I remember correctly, the "volksdeutsche" bore the brunt of Soviet reprisal activities outside of Germany. The death toll (according to my own knowledge) was approximately 1.5 million, although the operation itself extended to some 30 million in total.

Regards,
Germanica

yes the Germanica you are right the expulsion of germans from eastern europe would not been possible without active participation of soviet army
Germenica just refer to my previous posting in this forum-

http://www.thirdreichforum.com/viewtopi ... highlight=

Also refer to article on internet by europe by Erik Edelstam who is son of a Swedish attaché in Berlin, in war period. -

Some years ago, I stood in the pouring rain at the Bregenzstrasse in Berlin in an attempt to look for the shadows of my parents in 1941. - My father Harald, then a young, good looking, enthusiastic attaché at the Swedish legation in Berlin, with high ambitions and my mother Louise, innocent and sweet, with dimples in her cheeks and my new-born brother Carl in her arms, lived in one end of the street.
Bregenzstrasse is a little street in the vicinity of Kurfürstendam. Easy to seal off from both sides. There were nearly only Jews living in the quarters. Harald woke up many times during the night by trucks; the rush of spike clad boots, commando shouts and screams of anguish.
He used to run down to the entrance door, dressed only in pyjama and waved in so many he could of the despairing people who looked for cover. They hid in the little apartment, crouching and trembling. Next day he was forced to let them go. There was no lifeline - the Swedish government had even forced a J in the passport of the Jews to differ them from the other German citizens.
Harald, who felt completely powerless regarding to this, proposed to his boss, the envoy Arvid Richert, that one perhaps could give these people a kind of passport of protection, like what his college later gave the Jews of Budapest. - Richert got white in his face and raged: - Do you want to throw us in war with Germany?
And that was it.
The Jews were driven from their homes, deprived from all possibilities of support and were put in a kind of quarantine of deprivation and starvation, till it was time for eradication.

In January 1945 the time came to the Germans themselves. In a way their own Holocaust. In any case, for some of them. A result of Hitler’s merciless politics.
It is called the Expulsion (der Vertreibung) - the ethnic cleansing of 15 million Germans from central and Eastern Europe. Hitler had cleaned out many groups of people, but this expulsion was something quite different.
Today the world has been shocked by what happened in former Yugoslavia, where Muslims, Croats and Serbs were driven away from their homes. Like cattle, with a scant hope of returning home again. The concept of ethnic cleansing has become very familiar, which one hears in all sorts of different contexts. One often hears:” The worst ethnic cleansing since World War II...” - But what happened then?

Very few people today have a slightest idea what happened all these Germans the years after the war and the tremendous suffering they had to endure. Nobody has, anyhow, been interested. The common idea is that the Germans got what they deserved. An idea that, 55 years afterwards, it is, perhaps, time to revise. The subject is very touchy. A former German ambassador warned me that to bring this topic up today in Germany, might classify you as a neo-nazi. Anyhow, the Expulsion represents a big white area on the historical map.

My own introduction to the Expulsion was the book of Marion Dönhoff, the founder of ”Die Zeit”: ”Namen die keiner mehr nennt”, in a dusty antiquarian shop in Berlin. She had big estates in East Prussia and had to flee as the Red Army approached. She left on her riding horse in - 25º cold and snow storm and joined the fleeing population on the full packed roads. After two weeks she halted her horse at two a clock in the night, at the big train bridge, crossing the river Nogat, by Marienburg, near Danzig.
The bridge was deserted, but she heard a strange, clattering sound, as from a three legged being: ”...soon I saw three figures in uniform, slowly dragging themselves over the bridge in silence: One of them was walking with crutches, one with a stick and the third had a big bandage round the head, and the left arm hanging down limb... For me this was the end of East Prussia: three dead sick soldiers, dragging themselves over the Nogat Bridge to West Prussia. And a woman on horse, whose ancestors 700 years before, had pushed, from west to east, right in to the great wilderness on the other side of the river, who now was riding back to the west. - 700 years of history was now wiped out...”

The story of Marion Dönhoff is typical and tells much about the historical background. The laborious and industrious German burghers and farmers colonised Eastern Europe during the Middle Ages, often invited by local lords. From the Baltic States, through Prussia, Poland, Bohemia, Moravia (Czech Rep and Slovakia today), down to Hungary and the Balkan, they cultivated the land and founded thousands of cities and villages. The First World War changed all and a big part of the German population in these areas became minorities under national governments. The second word war made things worse with the Nazis as a ruthless occupation force, terrorising all these countries. The ethnic Germans became the scapegoats as the Reich fell apart in ruins. - The situation was a bit different in East Prussia, Pomerania and Silesia, since they were purely German areas since the 13th century.

During the Second World War, several politicians on the allied side demanded that the Germans in these areas should be driven away. The first one to air such thoughts was the Czech, exiled premier, Eduard Benes. The British government agreed.
During conferences, the fate of the Germans was sealed. Stalin wanted to keep the eastern part of Poland, that he got from Hitler in the Molotov-Ribbentrop pact, and as compensation Poland would get East Prussia, West Prussia and Silesia. And then the current population must go. Roosevelt and Churchill promised help with transports. Stalin beamed. Churchill said in a speech:”...a clean sweep will be made...”
An other question that came up, was the matter of ”reparations of war damage” in the devastated Soviet Union. Stalin wanted German labour. Request was permitted. The result was that around 875.000 people, mostly elderly people, women and children, was sent to mines and slave camps, and were the greater part perished of starvation and hardship. The responsibility of Roosevelt and Churchill in this program is undeniable.One can divide the Expulsion in three phases:
1. The Soviet phase with flight from the terror of the Red Army.
2. The flight from revenge, primary from Poland and Czechoslovakia.
3. The organized expulsion from Poland, Czechoslovakia, Hungary and the Balkan.

The first phase opened when Stalin launched his winter offensive, ”Uranius”, against East Prussia, the 12th of January 1945, with 2.2 million soldiers. Facing them was 400.000 Germans. The Russian soldiers were highly motivated and had been instructed to kill so many Germans they could and that included the civilians. After reconquering his own devastated fatherland for years, each man was filled with revenge.
The population knew what was in store for them. During the fighting in the autumn, the Red Army had conquered some communes and been driven away again. What they left was horrible. Murdered civilians in all houses, raped women and something that would be repeated during all the conquest - naked women crucified to barn doors. These incidents were ruthlessly used in the Nazi propaganda to strengthen the resistance.

The violence against the civilians was documented where it was possible, for example, when German forces reconquered areas, like in Metgehten, a suburb of Königsberg, in the end of January 1945. The chocked soldiers could not believe their eyes, when the entered the town.
Big piles of dead bodies littered the streets. Most of them were women and children. Few were men. Nearly all women had been beaten to death or stabbed with bayonets. A big number were mutilated, especially by the genitals, and had cut off breasts. In the biggest pile, they counted to 3.000 dead. In one place people were driven down in a big bomb crater and then blown to pieces by explosives. I all buildings civilians lay dead. Several trains that had come with fugitives stood motionless, full of dead. A witness saw the rests of two women, who had been tied to their ankles and torn apart by two cars, which had driven in opposite directions. In a big villa, 60 surviving women were found. They had been raped 60 - 70 times per day. The villa had obviously served as a brothel. Half of the women had to be taken to psychiatric institutions.
A bit outside, in the village Gross Heydekrug, stood an abandoned tank, which had been dragging four naked women in ropes. In the church a young girl was nailed to the cross of the altar, with to German soldiers strung up on each side... - A bizarre biblical metaphor of pain and suffering.
The road to the west was filled with hardships and suffering for the fugitives. - When the Russian tanks advanced north from Poland, they cut off the German territory in several places. The population was thus caught in pockets and could not flee west by land. Instead they moved to the coast and the harbours where they hoped to get on a ship. The German navy then organized an evacuation that far surpasses the one made in Dunkerque in May 1940.
1,5 million fugitives and 700.000 soldiers were evacuated by 790 boats of different sizes from January to the end of the war. The admiral Dönitz, who was the successor of Hitler, delayed the final capitulation, just in order to evacuate as many as possible from the east.

But the evacuation could not be made without sacrifices. The 30th of January the passenger ship ”Wilhelm Gustloff” sailed out from Pillau, the harbour of Königsberg, with 6.000 fugitives on board. Outside in the snowstorm, waited the Soviet submarine S-13, under the command of captain A.I. Marinesko. Three, well-aimed torpedoes sank ”Wilhelm Gustloff”. Despite the storm and cold temperature, the escort ships saved 1.100 people. The same submarine sent the hospital ship ”General von Steuben” to the bottom. It was painted white with red crosses, carrying 3.500 wounded soldiers. The worst sinking was ”Goya”, with 7.000 fugitives on board. There only 183 survived.

The problem was that the Red Army chased the fugitives as much as the German soldiers. The endless columns of charts that crossed the ice if Frischer Haff from Königsberg, towards the harbour Pillau, were bombed without mercy. On the roads the Russian tanks simply mashed the fugitives with their chains, mowed them down with their machine-guns or liquidated them at the roadside.

After the Russians came the Polish army, polish militia and civilians who should take over the country. They co-operated closely with the Soviet occupation authorities and participated in the looting and the killings. Polish fugitives from the eastern parts took over the houses of the Germans. The former owners were thrown out in the street. The provision of food stopped completely. Famine and diseases like typhoid and cholera ravaged.
Later the Allies stared to organise train transports to the west. They became veritable trains of horror, that was constantly stopped and plundered by hooligans and armed gangs. The conditions soon became so unbearable that the Allies had to stop the transports.
Of course there were exceptions. Decent Soviet officers were chocked by the violence. Solsjenytsin, who participated in the fighting of East Prussia, wrote in the ”Gulag Archipelago” that rape and the following murder of the woman, almost was considered as a combat distinction. Individual Poles gave Germans food and shelter and helped them cross the border. In many farms the Polish workers hid the German owners.

The inhabitants of Silesia that fled from the Red Army, mostly tried to get to Dresden. The city had not been bombed any time during the war. Thanks to the exquisite art treasures and the unique baroque architecture of the town, it was considered as an open city, like Rome and Paris. No military installations or industries were in the vicinity. A safe place.
The 13th of February the Royal Air Force attacked with a first wave of planes during the night. The city was packed with refuges, around 200.000. The night after the next wave came. A total of 1.400 planes participated. As if it was not enough, 450 American planes made daylight bombings, which completed the destruction.
The city was engulfed in a firestorm, never seen since the destruction of Hamburg in 1943. Very little was left. The figures concerning the number of perished are very unsure, but it is estimated that between 150.000 and 200.000 people died and 400.000 were left homeless. It shall be noted that in Hiroshima, around 50.000 people died.

In the rest of Europe, revenge struck hard on the ethnic Germans. It was like in Poland. In Czechoslovakia the Germans had to wear white sleeve badges with an N (Nemec, which means German in Czech). The Germans had to take off their hat for every Czech or Soviet officer they met.
In Prague, thousands of civil Germans were massacred by the end of war. At Uti 2.000 women and children were tossed from a bridge (Vaclav Havel had a commemoration plate put up at the place in 1990) and the Czech militia detained hundreds of thousand people in concentration camps. The old German camps were handy. No food was distributed and diseases ravaged. People died like flies. The ethnic Germans got the same treatment as Czechs and Jews had before.
With all the free looting, rapes and other atrocities, it must be said that the majority of the Czechs were revolted and ashamed over the treatment of the Germans. Vaclav Havel later publicly apologised for these events.
In Yugoslavia, Hungary and Romania the ethnic cleansing followed the same pattern. The German inhabitants had to leave their farms, houses and business with what they could carry in a suitcase. No valuables were permitted. It was just to hand over the keys. - Here the Germans were particularly struck by the deportations to the Soviet Union.
Most of the Germans were put in labour camps. Those who could not work, like women, children and old people, were put in special starvation camps, were most perished. A witness tells about the starvation camp in Jarek. In June 1945 there was 25.000 prisoners. In May next year there was only 2.800 left. Other starvation camps were Rudolfsgnad, Gakovo, Mitrovica or Molidorf.

Those who were driven away from their ancestral lands came to a Germany that thanks to the bombings not could provide shelter for its own population. Nothing worked and food was scarce. The fugitives got no fugitive status of the Allies, which did that they could not get help from the Red Cross or other help organisations. They were in fact busy repatriating the displaced slave workers that the Nazis had brought in to Germany during the war. The question of the expulsed Germans was regarded as an ”internal German affair”.
In this situation Germany received more than 13 million fugitives!
Around two million of the expulsed Germans are estimated to have lost their lives, due to starvation, liquidations and other hardships.

The ethnic Germans had a terrible fate. They were at the wrong place at the wrong time. Some were surely Nazis, but the majority were simple farmers and artisans who did not care much about politics and just wanted to live in peace. The tragedy is that the governments that drove out the Germans treated them in the same way as the Nazis had treated their own people.
Now some facts start to emerge, concerning the Expulsion. Witnesses and victims dare to testify. Governments apologise. For the victims, it is perhaps not enough. One witness said:
”...It is difficult to loose all you have, but unbearable when you loose your identity and your history...”

Source-

http://www.wordsandart.com/forums/viewt ... ?TopicID=4

The million dollar question is will russia shed from its stalinist mentality and apologise for war crimes commited against germans by stalin and beria.
it is good to see that Vaclav Havel has apologised and poland has taken steps to bring to justice persons who commited crimes against german civilians , but will russia shed its stalinist mentality

Germenica your contention of soviet responsibility of expulsion of germans from eastern europe is completely correct

WB first off found out what kind of learning disability you had? Secondly are not you ever get of recalling of good of “barn door” garbage.?

[Oleg Grigoryev]

if there were other troops than Soviets in EE it would not have chnage anything - WA did not have much simpathy for Germans either, nor did the have it for anybody who collaborated with Nazis - turning over Vlasovsti etc - is quite an indicator.

No, the Western Allies did not hold sympathy for any German or pro-German, but I had not known of their role in the deaths of approximately 1.5 million ethnic Germans.

Regards,
Germanica

sining the documenst that allowed for that kind of put it there.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

What B.S.

How dare you have the balls to say that the Ukrainian Famine was not Man made. People drowned their own children in a death of mercy so they wouldn't starve. Then, most ate them. People were boiled people alive in pots.

Stalin killed people intentionally from 1930-1932 in the Ukraine. Your family wasn't there, Oleg. Mine was.

...the streets and houses were overgrown with weeds. In the streets there were no signs of any living being, human or animal, not even a cat or a dog. In some of the houses doors and windows were open, while in others they have been removed to fire,
and there were only black spaces showing. Decomposing dead bodies were lying about in the weeds around the houses and evidently in the houses themselves, and an incredibly putrid odour, intensified by warm weather, permeated the
village...

Gorbachev himself admitted it! What more proof could you want?
http://www.artukraine.com/famineart/famine19.htm

We had 40 kulak families and we sent them all away. It was not enough to send the men only, because we must pluck up all the kulak elements by the roots

This meant that they would take a long strand of piano wire and kill every woman and child regardless of age.

In the Ukraine, in one collective the ration was 20 lb. The peasants complain: “Come and see the grain, rotten grain: that is what they keep for us. All the best grain is sent to the nearest town for export, and we do not get enough to eat. Poor Mother Russia is in a sorry plight. What we want is land and our own cows.”

http://colley.co.uk/garethjones/soviet_ ... e_farm.htm

The article said they went to Siberia. I don't believe that. The Ukrainians were scum in the eyes of the mighty [Russian] Red Army.

Stalin's Famine In Ukraine: Malcolm Muggeridge
Interview with Malcolm Muggeridge by Marco Carynnyk
Special Edition Issued by the Ukrainian Canadian Committee
Edmonton Branch, October 14,1983



"The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind, without any consideration whatever of the consequences of human suffering," Malcolm Muggeridge said.

He was talking about the genocidal famine that swept Ukraine in the winter on 1932 and the spring and summer of 1933.

Muggeridge was there that terrible winter and spring. As a correspondent for the Manchester Guardian in Moscow, he was one of the few Western journalists who circumvented Soviet restrictions and visited the famine regions and then honestly reported what he had seen.

Marco Carynnyk talked to Muggeridge at his cottage in Sussex, England.



Why did you decide to write about the famine in Ukraine?


It was the big story in all our talks in Moscow. Everybody knew about it. There was no question about that. Anyone you were talking to knew that there was a terrible famine going on. Even in the Soviets' own pieces there were somewhat disguised acknowledgements of great difficulties there. I realized that that was the big story. I could also see that all the correspondents in Moscow were distorting it.
Without making any kind of plans or asking for permission I just went and got a ticket for Kiev and then went on to Rostov. The Soviet security is not as good as people think it is. If you once duck it, you can go quite a long way. At least you could in those days.

Going through the countryside by train one could sense the state of affairs. Ukraine was starving, and you only had to venture out to smaller places to see derelict fields and abandoned villages.

On one occasion, I was changing trains, and I went wandering around, and in one of the trains in the station, the kulaks were being loaded onto the train, and there were military men all along the platform.

I'll tell you another thing that's more difficult to convey, but it impressed me enormously. It was on a Sunday in Kiev, and I went into the church there for the Orthodox mass. I could understand very little of it, but there was some spirit in it that I have never come across before or after. Human beings at the end of their tether were saying to God, "We come to you, we're in trouble, nobody by You can help us."

What were you thinking and, more importantly perhaps, what were you feeling when you saw those scenes of starvation and privation in Ukraine? How does one respond in such a situation?

First of all, one feels a deep, deep, deep sympathy with and pity for the sufferers. Human beings look very tragic when they are starving. And remember that I wasn't unaware of what things were like because in India, for instance, I've been in a village during a cholera epidemic and seen people similarly placed. So it wasn't a complete novelty.
The novelty of this particular famine, what made it so diabolical, is that it was not the result of some catastrophe like a drought or an epidemic. It was the deliberate creation of a bureaucratic mind which demanded the collectivization of agriculture, immediately, as a purely theoretical proposition, without any consideration whatever of the consequences in human suffering.

That was what I found so terrifying. Think of a man in an office who has been ordered to collectivize agriculture and get rid of the kulaks without any clear notion or definition of what a kulak is, and who has in what was then the GPU and is now the KGB the instrument for doing this, and who then announces it in the slavish press as one of the great triumphs of the regime.

Given the deliberate nature of the famine in Ukraine, given the fact that food continued to be stockpiled and exported even as people dropped dead on the streets, is it accurate to talk about this as a famine? Is it perhaps something else? How does one describe an event of such magnitude?

Perhaps you do need another word. I don't know what it would be. The word 'famine' means people have nothing whatsoever to eat and consume things that are not normally consumed. Of course there were stories of cannibalism there. I don't know whether they were true, but they were very widely believed. Certainly the eating of cattle and the consequent complete destruction of whatever economy the farms still had was true.

I remember someone telling me how all manners and finesse disappeared. When you're in the grip of a thing like this and you know that someone's got food, you go and steal it. You'll even murder to get it. That's all part of the horror.

Oh, Mighty Oleg, show me how I, the stupid Ukrainian, have gone wrong?

here you go

R.W.Davies, M.B.Tauger and S.G.Wheatcroft

[note by MJ: the culpability or otherwise of Stalin and his close
associates for the famine which afflicted Ukraine, the Soviet
breadbasket, in the early 1930s, has generally been seen as a key
question when it comes to judging Stalin[ism]. Did Stalin force thru
collectivisation and deliberately condemn millions of his fellow
citizens to death as part of the process of terrorising the population
and entrenching his dictatorship, as Robert Conquest and others allege?
Or was the famine the inevitable price to be paid for rapid
industrialisation in conditions of imperialist encirclement and the
threat of war, as others (including me) have argued? Was
collectivisation and the 5-Year Plans a disastrous error or an
absolutely necessary preparation for inevitable war with imperialism?

Here R.W.Davies, a respected, non-marxist academic based at Birmingham
University's Centre for Russian and East European Studies, interprets
new evidence from recently opened Soviet archives. I can provide the
footnotes separately to anyone interested; I'm afraid I do not have the
url.

Mark Jones]

Most western and all Soviet studies of the stalinist economy have
ignored the role played by the stockpiling of grain in the agricultural
crisis of the early 1930s. Thus in his major work on stalinist
agriculture published in 1949, Naum Jasny frankly admitted that data
were insufficient to reach a conclusion, merely noting that "stocks from
former years probably declined during 1932"2. Baykov, Dobb, Volin and
Nove said nothing about grain stocks.3 At the time, western commentators
did pay some attention to the possibility that the stockpiling of grain
exacerbated the famine. In autumn 1931 Japan invaded Manchuria, and in
spring 1932 British diplomats reported that Karl Radek had told them
that, owing to the threat of war in the far east, enough grain had been
stored to supply the army for one year.4 In February 1933 the notorious
but shrewd journalist Walter Duranty wrote in The New York Times of "the
unexpected additional demand for grain necessitated by the Far Eastern
war danger last winter".5 Since the food and fodder grain consumed by
the Red Army in one year amounted to about 800,000 tons,6 this would
have been enough to provide a rather modest annual bread ration for
several million people. A stockpile of this size was, of course, less
important than the 4.79 million tons exported from the 1931 harvest or
even than the 1.61 million tons exported from the 1932 harvest (see
table 4). But was such a military stock accumulated in those years?
Enlightenment had to await the opening of the Russian archives. The
impact of the first revelations about grain stocks has been dramatic. On
the basis of a preliminary, unpublished typescript by the eminent
Russian historian V.P.Danilov, Robert Conquest has announced that the
archives have revealed that in the famine year of 1932-1933 Stalin was
holding immense grain stocks, the existence of which was previously
completely unknown. He wrote in this journal:

there were 4.53 million tons of grain in
various reserves - the 'Neprikosvennyi Fond' and the
special 'Gosudarstvennyi Fond', neither (he [Danilov]
points out) justified by any danger to the country, and
readily available to prevent the real danger - mass death
by famine.7

Addressing a wider public in The Times Literary Supplement Conquest
further explained:

even apart from the fact that the 1.8 million tons
of grain exported would have been enough to have
prevented the famine, there were in addition two secret
grain reserves between them holding 4.53 million tons
more, which were not released to the starving peasantry.8

Grain stocks of 4.53 million tons would certainly have been enough to
feed millions of peasants in 1932-1933. One ton of grain provided a good
bread ration for three persons for a year, so 4.53 tons would have
provided bread for some 13-14 million persons for a year. In view of the
importance of grain stocks to understanding the famine, we have searched
Russian archives for evidence of Soviet planned and actual grain stocks
in the early 1930s. Our main sources were the Politburo protocols,
including the osobye papki ("special files" - the highest secrecy
level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag,
of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom
records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head
of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the
deputy chairs of Sovnarkom at that time. We have not obtained access to
the Politburo working papers in the Presidential Archive, to the files
of the committee on reserves, or to the relevant files in military
archives. But we have found enough information to be confident that this
very high figure for grain stocks is wrong and that Stalin did not have
under his control huge amounts of grain which could easily have been
used to eliminate the famine. The definition of "grain stocks" is a
complicated business. The literature divides them into two main
categories: "invisible stocks" (nevidimye zapasy) and "visible stocks"
(vidimye zapasy). The former are those held by peasants (and in the
1930s by collective and state farms) for food, seed, fodder and
emergencies. Peasant carry-over is very difficult to assess; the
official estimate for 1 July 1926 was 7.21 million tons, while a careful
independent estimate amounted to only 4.19 million tons.9 These
calculations were of some politico-economic importance: the central
political authorities believed and sought to demonstrate that peasants
and collective farms were concealing substantial stocks; peasants and
collective farms sought to minimize knowledge of their stocks. During
the grim winter of 1932-1933, the authorities seized the seed stocks of
collective farms on the pretext or belief that concealed grain stocks
were available to them. In the archives widely-varying estimates of
invisible stocks for the early 1930s may be found; not surprisingly,
they show a general decline in the course of 1931-1933, and an increase
in following years.10 The "visible stocks" rather than the invisible
stocks will be our main concern in this article. These were those which
had passed from producers to traders, to state and other collection
agencies and to subsequent grain-consuming organizations, plus the
stocks in transit. Soviet statistical agencies estimated the total of
all visible stocks on l July 1929 at 1.76 million tons)11, of which
there were:

held by state and cooperative collection agencies .912
held by consuming organisations (including industry).331
miscellaneous .141
in transport system .376

The figure in Table 1 for 1 July 1929, 781,000 tons, is a revised
official estimate by Komzag of the figure given above for state and
cooperative collection agencies, 912,000 tons. It thus excludes grain
held by consuming organisations and in the transport system. This was
that part of the visible stocks which the state had more or less readily
at its disposal for distribution to the population, for export and for
other uses. These stocks were generally known in the statistics as
"availability with the planning organisations" (nalichie u planovykh
organizatsii); we shall refer to them here as "planners' stocks".
Planners' stocks were further divided into "commercially available"
(kommercheskoe nalichie) and "various funds" (raznye fondy) (see table
2). The "funds" were those parts of the planners' stocks which were set
aside for special purposes, sometimes in special stores, sometimes
merely notionally. As we shall show, the funds included both the
"untouchable fund" ("Neprikosnovennyi fond" or "Nepfond") and the
"mobilization fund", also known as the "state fund" ("Mobfond",
"gosudarstvennyi fond" or "gosfond"). "Commercially available" was
something of a misnomer: it referred to stocks held by grain- collection
and related agencies which could be passed on to consumers in accordance
with an approved plan of utilization. Grain stocks naturally varied
considerably during the course of the agricultural year, reaching a peak
immediately after a harvest, and falling to their lowest levels just
before the next harvest. Harvesting and the grain collections began in
the south in early July, but in many other areas not until August.
Normally the 1 July figure was given as the minimum level of stocks; but
this was not quite accurate. During July, grain available from the new
harvest in the month as a whole is less than grain consumed, and stocks
continue to fall until the last days of the month. 1 August would be a
better date for assessing minimum stocks, but data for that date are not
always available. Thus, quite apart from the need for a permanent grain
reserve, a major problem for the central authorities was the need for
"transitional stocks" (usually known as "perekhodiashchie ostatki" to
enable continuous supply at the end of one agricultural year and the
beginning of the next. Ever larger transitional stocks were needed from
1928 onwards, with the attenuation of the grain market and the
dependence of larger numbers of people on state supplies (including many
peasants in grain-deficit areas). From 1930 onwards state allocations of
grain for internal purposes only (food rations, army, industry, etc. but
excluding exports) amounted to some 1.35-1.5 million tons a month.
Moreover, areas requiring supplies were often thousands of kilometres
from the main grain-producing areas; and, once available, the grain had
to be processed and delivered. In the course of establishing a state
grain monopoly in the mid-1920s, the Soviet authorities did not succeed
in building up a state grain reserve. In December 1927 the directives
for the five-year plan approved by the XV Party Congress stressed the
importance of the accumulation of stocks in kind and foreign currency
reserves during the course of the plan. The accumulation of stocks of
all kinds would achieve "the necessary insurance against large
vacillations in the conjuncture of the international market, and against
a potential partial or general economic and financial blockade, against
a bad harvest within the country, and against a direct armed attack."12
But a Soviet grain handbook published in 1932 noted that "all attempts
to create a large grain reserve did not have positive results", even
though "the difficulties experienced in 1927/28 and 1928/29 revealed the
categorical necessity of creating such a reserve".13 According to Soviet
data, on 1 July 1929 the total amount held in the state grain fund
(gosfond) including the remnants of the centralised milling levy from
the previous harvest, amounted to only 69,000 tons.14

The 1929 harvest and the 1929/30 agricultural year.

On 27 June 1929 the Politburo adopted a much-increased plan for grain
collection from the 1929 harvest, resolving:

In accordance with the resolution of the XV Congress on the formation
of a grain fund, it is considered necessary to create an untouchable
stock amounting to 100 million poods [1.638 million tons] of food grains... It is
considered that the untouchable stock may not be expended
by anyone in any circumstances without special permission
from the Politburo and Sovnarkom of the USSR.15

Two months later, on 29 August 1929, Stalin wrote to Molotov, praising
the success of the first stage of grain collection from the 1929 harvest
and emphasizing the importance of reserve stocks, that "we must and can
accumulate 100 mln poods [1,638 million tons] of untouchable stocks
[neprikosnovennye zapasy], if we are really Bolsheviks and not empty
chatterers."16 By the beginning of December, 13.5 million tons of grain
had been collected, well over twice as much as on that date in any
previous year; and the first drive for the collectivization of
agriculture was rapidly accelerating. Stalin, jubilant and jovial, again
wrote to Molotov: "Greetings to Molotshtein!... The grain collections
progress. Today we decided to increase the untouchable fund of food
grains to 120 million poods [1.966 million tons]. We will raise the
rations in industrial towns such as Ivanovo-Voznesensk, Kharkov, etc."17
The grain handbook of 1932 noted that the establishment of a grain
reserve "was posed as a central and top-priority task for the grain
campaign of 1929/30".18 The main statistical journal, reporting record
grain stocks accumulated by January 1, 1930, noted that "a fundamental
difference between the stocks of the current year and the stocks of the
previous year is the formation of a special fund, not used for current
needs, while in past years grain was used entirely for meeting current
requirements." The journal described this "untouchable fund" as "having
an insurance function in case of a bad harvest or any other
extraordinary needs."19 Although grain collections from the 1929 harvest
were extremely large, they had both to supply grain to many consumers
who had previously obtained it on the peasant market and to provide for
increased export. Planners' stocks increased by 1.3 million tons between
1 July 1929 and 1 July 1930, reaching 2.084 million tons. The Politburo
deemed it possible to allocate only 786,000 tons of this to the Nepfond
on 1 July 1930; but explained that this amount was to be "absolutely
untouchable."20

The 1930 Harvest and the 1930/31 Agricultural Year.

The harvest of 1930 was exceptionally good: collections were 38 percent
higher than in the previous year, and more than twice as much as in
1928/29 (see table 4). Planners' stocks on the peak date of 1 January
1931 were even higher than on 1 January 1930 (see table 1); on that
basis the Politburo concluded on 7 January that the Nepfond could amount
to 150 million poods (2.457 million tons) and that, in addition, the
"mobilisation fund" (Mobfond) could amount to 50 million poods (.819
million tons) - 3.276 million tons in all.21 The Mobfond was later
described by Kuibyshev as intended to provide adequate grain (and other
commodities), amounting to 1_-2 months' supply, to cover delays in
supplies during mobilization, and also to make some provision for the
largest industrial and political centers.22 But, although planners'
stocks had increased to 2.332 million tons on 1 July 1931 and remained
as high as 2.026 million tons on 1 August 1931 (see table 1), they were
far below the level of reserve stocks proposed by the Politburo on 7
January 1931.

The 1931 Harvest and the 1931/32 Agricultural Year.

Unlike the 1930 harvest, the 1931 harvest was poor (and much worse than the Soviet political authorities believed). Nevertheless grain
collections in the agricultural year 1931/32 slightly exceeded the 1930/31 level (see table 4), and the authorities continued their efforts
to accumulate substantial reserve stocks. Their aims were now somewhat less ambitious: in October 1931 the Politburo decided that the Nepfond
and Mobfond together should total 150 million poods (2.457 million tons), as compared with the 200 million poods specified in the Politburo
decision of 7 January 1931. But it also decided to consolidate central control over the reserves: both the "grain Nepfond and the grain-fodder
Mobfond" were to be transferred from Narkomsnab (the People's Commissariat for Supplies) to the committee on reserves 23 - a powerful
organization, whose chair was Kuibyshev and whose vice-chair, Iagoda, was head of the OGPU.24 The Politburo intended that "warehouses and
personnel" should also be transferred to the committee on reserves; but at this time they apparently remained in the grain collection and
processing network. Use of grain deemed to be part of the Nepfond or Mobfond required permission of the committee on reserves or even the
Politburo. Sovnarkom further decreed that all 2.457 million tons were to be transferred to the committee on reserves by 1 December 1931, togetherwith large stocks of other foodstuffs, consumer goods and metals.25 By 1 January 1932, the grain set aside in "various funds", nearly all ofwhich was Nepfond and Mobfond, amounted to 2.033 million tons (see table 1): the plan for the reserve funds had been largely achieved. But this apparent triumph was short-lived. The demand for grain relentlessly increased. Grain exports in the agricultural year 1931/32 were one
million tons less than in 1930/31; simultaneously, however, state grain allocations within the USSR increased (see table 4). The increase in
internal utilization in 1931/32 was part of a process which had been proceeding relentlessly since 1929, resulting from: a substantial increase in the number of industrial and building workers and their dependents; a growing necessity to supply grain for seed and food to collective farmers and others in areas where harvests had been low and grain collections too high; an increase in the use of grain to feed sections of the population, including cotton-growers and timber-cutters, who had previously obtained their grain from the market, and to feed exiled kulaks and others; an increased consumption of grain by industry. The total amount of grain allocated by the state for internal useincreased from 9.015 million tons in 1928/29 to 16.309 million tons in 1931/32; in 1931/32 alone the increase amounted to 2.477 million tons. 26 The pressure on stocks was relentless. Despite demand, the Politburo endeavored to reduce the rate of issue of grain. In March 1932 it agreed to drastic cuts in the bread ration for consumers on the lower-priority ration Lists 2 and 3 27. Many requests for additional rations, even from high-priority industries, were refused. These reductions, and the irregular delivery of bread and other food supplies, led to famine in the towns in spring 1932. Among the urban population of the lower Volga region the death rate more than doubled between January and July 1932; among the urban population of the Kiev region it increased by 70 percent; and even in Moscow the death rate rose by one-third.28 But the severe measures of March 1932 failed to reduce food allocations to which the state was committed to the level of the available grain. On 23 May 1932, an alarmed Kuibyshev prepared a emorandum concerning the grain situation for the Politburo, in which he outlined the additional measures needed if an uninterrupted grain supply to the main industrial centers was to be maintained until the new harvest; his proposals even included the reduction of the bread ration for workers on the Special List and List 1. The draft memorandum preserved in the Kuibyshev papers includes his handwritten note in blue crayon:

With a full sense of responsibility I want to
emphasize that last year we had 88.8 million poods [1.45
million tons] [of food grains] on 1 July, and that in the
current year there will be only 57.7 million poods [0.945
million tons].

What does this mean?

It means that we can cope with the supply of
bread only by an exceptional level of extremely
thorough organization.

Another handwritten sentence, crossed out, reads, "I ask you to give tothe committee on reserves dictatorial powers until the new harvest."29The Politburo did not accept Kuibyshev's proposal to reduce rations for the Special List and List 1; but on 25 May it decided that it was necessary before 1 July to collect the outstanding 14 million poods [229,000 tons] of grain from the remains of the 1931 harvest, to add more barley to the food grains and to transfer various grain stocks from one part of the country to another. It also reduced the allocation to the military by about 16 percent, and called for the acceleration of the import of grain from Persia and its immediate transfer to the far east. In spite of all these measures, it was estimated that planners' stocks of food grains (excluding fodder) would decline from 2.01 million tons on 10 May to .886 million tons on 1 July. For the difficult months of July and August 1932 when the new harvest was beginning to come in, the Politburo also resolved that all grain collected from the new harvest would be used solely to supply industrial centers and the army.30 In the outcome, planners' stocks on 1 July 1932 were as low as the Politburo had anticipated in May: food grains amounted to 915 thousand tons and all grains to 1.36 million tons - 1 million tons less than on 1 July 1931, and even less than on 1 July 1930. The Nepfond and Mobfond, intended to total 2.457 million tons, and reaching about 2 million tons on 1 January 1932, amounted to only .641 million tons on 1 July (see table 3). The demand for grain had impelled the Politburo to use up most of its "untouchable" fund. On 1 July total stocks of food grain amounted to about one month's supply: in Ukraine, the lower Volga and north Caucasus less than a month's supply was available.31 Following the Japanese invasion of Manchuria, the authorities had utterly failed to build up grain stocks in east Siberia and the far east: total stocks of food and fodder grains in these two regions amounted to at most 190,000 tons on 1 July;32 the 1 million tons of military stocks that Radek reported to the British was apparently sheer bluff.

The 1932 Harvest and the 1932/33 Agricultural Year.

In May 1932, in preparing its plans for the forthcoming harvest, the
Politburo somewhat reduced the grain collection plan below the previous
year's level, and sought to fill the gap by permitting trade in grain at
market prices once collection quotas had been met. But the sharp
decrease in grain stocks below the 1931 level had greatly alarmed the
authorities. In spite of the reduced collection planned in May, on 16
July 1932 the Politburo again sought to set aside substantial stocks in
the Nepfond and Mobfond from the new harvest. It resolved that in
1932/33 the Gosfond (state fund, another name for Mobfond) would amount
to 55 million poods (.901 million tons) and the Nepfond to 120 million
poods (1.966 million tons), 2.867 million tons in total.33 On 9 December
1932, the Politburo approved a reduced plan for grain utilization in
1932/33 by which Gosfond and Nepfond would together total 1.966 million
tons on 1 July 1933; together with transitional stocks, all planners'
stocks would amount to 3.699 million tons on 1 July, as compared with
1.36 million tons on the same date of the previous year. Thus the
authorities certainly planned to hold very substantial stocks at the end
of the 1932/33 agricultural year (if not the 4.53 million tons claimed
by Robert Conquest). And on 1 January 1933, with total stocks at their
seasonal peak, as much as 3.034 million tons were attributed to "various
funds" (the main components of which were the Gosfond and the Nepfond)
(see table 1). The grain utilization plan for 1932/33 was built on
illusion. While grain exports were again reduced, this time by 3 million
tons below the previous year's level, grain collections declined by over
4 million tons (see table 4). The net decline in grain available for
internal use amounted to more than 1 million tons (see table 4),
collections minus export in 1932/33 versus 1931/32), and this placed an
immense strain on resources, quite incompatible with the decision to
allocate 2.339 million additional tons to planners' stocks on 1 July
1933 as compared with 1 July 1932. Moreover, the grain balance of 9
December 1932 had assumed that no grain should be allocated to the
countryside for seed and food, apart from earmarked allocations to
cotton growing and other specialized areas. In the course of the first
six months of 1933, the Politburo reluctantly, little by little,
released between 1.99 million and 2.2 million tons in seed, food and
fodder, primarily as allocations or "loans" to areas which had been
stripped of grain by the state collectors earlier in the year.34 While
neither large enough nor timely enough to prevent the devastating
famine, these allocations did use up most of the Nepfond and Gosfond
which had been set aside at the beginning of the year. In spring 1933,
as in the previous year, leading grain officials addressed a series of
urgent memoranda to the Politburo warning of shortages. In March a
memorandum from Chernov to Stalin, Kaganovich, Molotov and Kuibyshev
pointed out that receipts of food grain might be .5-.6 million tons less
than in the grain utilization plan of 9 December 1932, while expenditure
might be .5 million tons more; the shortfall in oats and barley might
amount to a further half million tons.35 A memorandum from Kleiner to
Kuibyshev, prepared in February or March, concluded that on 1 July 1933
the Nepfond would be .256 million tons less than planned on December
9.36 Two or three months later, on 17 May, a telegram from Kleiner to
Stalin and Kuibyshev makes it clear that the situation had drastically
deteriorated: "surpluses in the Nepfond are almost exhausted." To
provide seed, food and fodder the Politburo had agreed to release 69
million poods (1.13 million tons) from the committee on reserves, so
that only 100 million poods (1.638 million tons) remained in all its
reserves; Kleiner asked for conditional permission to use a further 15
million poods (.246 million tons) from funds of the committee on
reserves.37 Within a few weeks the situation had apparently deteriorated
still further. On 4 June 1933, Chernov sent a memorandum to Stalin,
Kaganovich, Molotov and Kuibyshev, setting out the results of the 1 May
inventory of the remaining grain (ostatki) in the USSR. Chernov
estimated that, as a result of commitments made in May and June, all
planners' stocks would total 84.7 million poods (1.392 million tons) on
1 July 1933, including food grains amounting to 63.8 million poods
(1.045 million tons), a slightly larger amount than on 1 July 1932. In
several places the memorandum referred to this estimate as the
"transitional remainder including funds" (perekhodiashchii ostatok
vkliuchaia fondy).38 In practice, the level of grain stocks was
apparently somewhat greater than Chernov and the other officials
anticipated. When Chernov submitted the grain plans for the following
year, 1933/34, to Stalin, Kaganovich and Molotov, on 4 July 1933, he
stated, as he had a month previously, that the total transitional stock,
including fondy, on 1 July 1933 was 1.392 million tons (including 1.045
million tons of food grains).39 But the grain utilization plan for
1933/34 approved a month later by the Politburo recorded the
"availability" of all grains on 1 July, including fondy, as 1.825
million tons (including 1.386 million tons of food grains).40 The final
official figure published in the grain yearbook was 1.997 million tons
(including 1.397 million tons of food grains) (see table 1).(see table
2) We have not yet found any satisfactory explanation of the discrepancy
between these three sets of figures. The planners' stocks available on 1
July 1933 certainly included enough grain to save the lives of many
peasants. But they amounted not to 4.53 million tons but to less than 2
million tons, smaller than the stocks available on the same date three
years previously. The alternative figures for 1 July 1933, including the
published figure (1.997 million tons) certainly include both the Gosfond
and the Nepfond. Robert Conquest's confusion about the level of stocks
may be due to a somewhat ambiguous passage in Chernov's memorandum dated
4 July 1933, submitting the draft grain plans for 1933/34 to the
Politburo. He proposed that in 1933/34 the Nepfond should be "120
million poods [1.966 million tons], the same level as last year," while
Gosfond should be "significantly increased to 72 million poods [1.179
million tons] instead of the 55 million poods [.901 million tons] of
last year".41 According to this draft, then, both fondy together would
amount to 3.145 million tons. But Chernov's tables and the figures
approved by the Politburo make it clear that "the same level as last
year" did not mean the actual reserve stock in July 1933 but instead the
stock planned in July 1932.42 In 1933/34 Nepfond and Gosfond had to be
built up from existing planners' stocks. Thus the plan approved by the
Politburo on 7 August 1933 fixed total grain stocks on 1 July 1934 at
3.941 million tons, including a total Gosfond and Nepfond of 2.776
million tons; the Politburo compared this with the total stocks on 1
July 1933 of only 1.825 million tons.43 The failure to establish reserve
stocks at planned levels also meant that the efforts to build up grain
stocks in the far east had again been unsuccessful. According to the
published data, total planners' stocks in east Siberia and the far east
amounted to only .147 million tons on 1 July 1932, increasing to .269
million tons on 1 July 1933;44 some additional stocks, not included in
these figures, were held by the army itself. But the serious effort to
build up grain stocks in the far east began not after the 1931 harvest,
as Radek and Duranty claimed at the time, or even after the 1932
harvest, but only during and after the 1933 harvest. It was not until
July 1933 that Chernov received an urgent commission from Stalin to
create a "special defence fund" of 70 million poods (1.147 million tons)
in east Siberia and the far east. This grain stock would require
extensive new grain stores, since those of the Mobfond in the far east
and east Siberia had a capacity of only .143 million tons.45 How
reliable were these data on grain stocks? After the civil war, during
which local authorities underestimated the level of stocks, the Soviet
authorities were anxious to obtain accurate and timely figures. In the
early 1920s a comprehensive system was established, by which monthly
estimates of grain stocks by local statistical departments were
supplemented by quarterly on-site inventories. Statistical departments
telegraphed regular "short summaries" to the center two weeks after each
survey, followed by more detailed (and more accurate) reports sent
through the mail.46 The same system was used in 1930-1934.47 In 1928, A.
Mikhailovskii, at that time the principal authority on grain statistics,
claimed that the figures for the USSR which were assembled centrally
from these data were "quite reliable".48 The data on grain stocks for
1932-1933, were also, in our opinion, "quite reliable". This is not to
say that they should be accepted uncritically. The discrepancy between
the lowest and highest figures for all planners' stocks on 1 July 1933 -
1.397 million and 1.997 million tons - dramatically illustrates this
point. If the later and higher figure is correct, the additional .6
million tons of grain could have saved many lives. But this figure does
not appear in any of the records we have used until some weeks after the
end of the agricultural year, and it was evidently not known to the
Politburo before July 1933. There were no private inventories of grain
stocks kept for Stalin and his immediate entourage, separate from those
regularly assembled by the normal state agencies; the figures in the
top-secret files of Sovnarkom, of Kuibyshev's secretariat and in the
special files(osobye papki) of the Politburo all coincide. These figures
also agree - somewhat to our surprise - with the figures for grain
stocks published in the unclassified small-circulation Ezhegodnik
khlebooborota.49 But the relationship between public and secret
statistics in the USSR was complicated. While they were identical for
grain stocks, the exaggeration in the published figures for the grain
harvests is well known. And our research shows that those responsible
for planning and recording grain allocations did not contradict - even
in private - the distorted official harvest figures; they therefore
included in the grain balances a large residual item - entitled
neuviazka! - so that consumption could be brought in line with the
alleged harvests.50 And in the extreme case of the defense budget for
1931-1934, the large increases in these years were concealed by the
deliberate decision of the Politburo to publish falsified figures. The
true figures appeared only in documents classified as top-secret, and
were more than treble the size of the published figures.51 The
complicated relations between archival and published data can only be
established by investigating each case on its merits.

We therefore conclude:

1. All planners' stocks - the two secret grain reserves, the Nepfond and
the Mobfond or Gosfond, together with "transitional stocks" held by
grain organizations - amounted on 1 July 1933 to less than 2 million
tons (1.997 million tons, according to the highest official figure).
Persistent efforts of Stalin and the Politburo to establish firm and
inviolable grain reserves (in addition to "transitional stocks"),
amounting to 2 or 3 million tons or more were almost completely
unsuccessful. In both January-June 1932 and January-June 1933 the
Politburo had to allow "untouchable" grain stocks set aside at the
beginning of each year to be used to meet food and fodder crises. On 1
July 1933, the total amount of grain set aside in reserve grain stocks
(fondy) amounted not to 4.53 million tons as Conquest claimed, but to
only 1.141 million. It is not surprising that after several years during
which the Politburo had failed to establish inviolable grain stocks,
Kuibyshev in early 1933 recommended a "flexible approach" to the Nepfond
and the Mobfond, denied that they were separate reserves and even
claimed that the flexible use of the two fondy had enabled uninterrupted
grain supply in spring and summer 1932.52

2. We do not know the amount of grain which was held by grain- consuming
organizations, notably the Red Army, but we suspect that these
"consumers' stocks" would not change the picture substantially.

3. These findings do not, of course, free Stalin from responsibility for
the famine. It is difficult, perhaps impossible, to assess the extent to
which it would have been possible for Stalin to use part of the grain
stocks available in spring 1933 to feed starving peasants. The state was
a monopoly supplier of grain to urban areas and the army; if the
reserves of this monopoly supply system - which amounted to four-six
weeks' supply - were to have been drained, mass starvation, epidemics
and unrest in the towns could have resulted. Nevertheless, it seems
certain that, if Stalin had risked lower levels of these reserves in
spring and summer 1933, hundreds of thousands - perhaps millions - of
lives could have been saved. In the slightly longer term, if he had been
open about the famine, some international help would certainly have
alleviated the disaster. And if he had been more far-sighted, the
agricultural crisis of 1932-1933 could have been mitigated and perhaps
even avoided altogether. But Stalin was not hoarding immense grain
reserves in these years. On the contrary, he had failed to reach the
levels which he had been imperatively demanding since 1929.

[/quote]

[Oleg Grigoryev]

What about repatriation Oleg? Operation Kickback, you familiar with that? It's when the Red Army would torture every single living sole that came back from a train, usually from a DP camp, because they were running from the Red Army and the Nazis. How about the streams of blood comming out from the cattlecars that they were shipped in? We call that mass suicide in the normal world. The camps in Finland the lucky few were able to "attend?" He killed Millions. Fess up to it. Mostly non-communists. Then if you really want to nit pick, we can go on and on about the Korean War where he supplied troops with old Nagants and Kalishnikovs.

yes it wasd customary for Red Army to use English names for its operations...
And if youcall it mass suicide - that is how responsability of Stalin?
And what is wrong with selling weaponry - or you disparove than USSr does that?

[Galicia]

To answer your questions:

1. This article quotes Duranty all over the bloody place. If you haven't noticed, his pulitzer has been revoked.

2. Since we're whipping out quotes and references:

Events in Kazakhstan in 1930 seem to have given Stalin the answer to the dilemma of how to obtain more produce and simultaneously deal with troublesome peasants. The Kazakhs, primarily herdsmen, had responded to collectivization with the wholesale slaughter of their livestock. So many starved subsequently that the 1939 Soviet census shows 21.9 percent fewer Kazakhs in the Soviet Union than there had been in 1926._71_ But resistance among the Kazakhs had ceased. The lesson that famine could be used as a weapon was applied to the Ukrainians in 1933.

Still, the quotas were not met, in spite of the fact that they were lowered three times._76_ The most draconian measures imaginable were taken against the farmers. On the union level, the law on inviolability of socialist property, adopted on August 7, 1932, declared all collective farm property "sacred and inviolate." Anyone who so much as gleaned an ear of grain or bit the root off a sugar beet was to be considered an "enemy of the people," subject to execution or... a concentration camp for collective farmers who attempted to force others to leave the kolkhoz, (working camp)

Graphic portraits of the horrors of village life emerge from the files of the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, which was conducted during the early 1950s. It should be stressed that the interviewers were not particularly interested in the famine and that the responses were, therefore, made without any prompting in the course of respondents' stories of their life experiences. One rather typical account (case No. 128) is the following:

"...there was the famine in Ukraine in 1933. We saw people die in the streets; it was terrible to see a dead man, when I close my eyes I can still see him. We had in our village a small church which was closed for services and in which we played. And I remember a man who came in there; he lay down with his eyes wide open at the ceiling and he died there! He was an innocent victim of the Soviet regime; he was a simple worker and not even a kulak. This hunger was the result of Soviet policy."

Nor were such horrors confined to the countryside, as you claim Oleg.

And, something from Khruschev's memoirs:

Mikoyan told me that Comrade Demchenko, who was then first secretary of the Kiev Regional Committee, once came to see him in Moscow. Here's what Demchenko said: 'Anastas Ivanovich, does Comrade Stalin - for that matter, does anyone in the Politburo - know what's happening in Ukraine? Well, if not, I'll give you some idea. A train recently pulled into Kiev loaded with the corpses of people who had starved to death. It picked up corpses all the way from Poltava to Kiev...

Out of Churchill's memoirs, selected by Dr. James Mace, who is the head of the Deposition on the Ukrainian Famine, appointed by the US Senate:

The 10 million figure even comes out of Stalin's mouth, although the dictator did not actually say that so many had died. Winston Churchill recorded the following conversation which he had with Stalin:

"'Tell me,' I asked, 'have the stresses of this war been as bad to you personally as carrying through the policy of the collective farms?'

"This subject immediately aroused the Marshal.

"'Oh, no,' he said, 'the collective farm policy was a terrible struggle.'

"'I thought you would have found it bad,' said I, 'because you were not dealing with a few score thousands of aristocrats or big landowners, but with millions of small men.'

"'Ten millions,' he said, holding up his hands."

The above is from Dr. Mace yet again.

And all the below from Dr. Mace:

After the harvest of 1932 millions of Ukrainians starved to death in one of the world's most fertile regions. The local population had produced enough food to feed itself, but the state had seized it, thereby creating a famine by an act of policy. The areas affected were demarcated by internal administrative borders in the Soviet Union, leaving immediately adjoining areas virtually untouched. Thus, the famine appears to have been geographically focused for political reasons. Since it coincided with far-reaching changes in Soviet nationality policy, and since the areas affected were inhabited by groups, most resistant to the new policy, the famine seemed to represent a means used by Stalin to impose a "final solution" on the most pressing nationality problem in the Soviet Union. According to internationally accepted definitions, this constitutes an act of genocide.

The most obvious source for what happened is the memory of those who survived the famine.

A number of foreign journalists reported the famine, among them Malcolm Muggeridge of the Manchester Guardian, William Henry Chamberlin of the Christian Science Monitor, Eugene Lyons of United Press, and Harry Lang of the Jewish daily Der Forest. Others, most notably Walter Duranty of The New York Times and Louis Fischer of The New Republic, seemed to have been perfectly aware of it, but actively aided the Soviet state in suppressing the story. [/quote]

From Dr. Dana Dalrymple, the fmr. US Dep. of Agriculture Head, although I may be mistaken about this.

A study of previously unopened records of the U.S. Department of State for 1933 brought to light one paper which provided some idea of knowledge of the famine among the diplomatic corps in Moscow._3_ According to the memorandum, the existence of the famine "was frankly admitted on several occasions by officials of the Commissariat for Foreign Affairs to members of the Moscow diplomatic corps." It was the general opinion of the diplomats that the famine was even more severe than that of 1921-22. The number of people dying from starvation was placed at 7 to 8 million. The reasons given for the famine and for suppression of its knowledge were essentially those which I outlined in my earlier article.

And since you want references as well:

Ammende, Ewald, "Human life in Russia, (Cleveland: J.T. Zubal, 1984), Reprint, Originally published: London, England: Allen & Unwin, 1936.

"The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: a white book", S.O. Pidhainy, Editor-In-Chief, (Toronto: Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian-Communist Terror, 1953), (Vol. 1 Book of testimonies. Vol. 2. The Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-1933).

Conquest, Robert, "The Harvest of Sorrow: Soviet Collectivization and the Terror -- Famine", (Edmonton: The University of Alberta Press in Association with the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1986).

Davies, R.W., "The Socialist offensive: the collectivization of Soviet agrilculture, 1929-1930", (London: Macmillan, 1980).

"Der ukrainische Hunger-Holocaust: Stalins verschwiegener Volkermond 1932/33 an 7 Millionen ukrainischen Bauern im Spiegel geheimgehaltener Akten des deutschen Auswartigen Amtes", (Sonnebuhl: H. Wild, 1988), By Dmytro Zlepko. [eine Dokumentation, herausgegeben und eingeleitet von Dmytro Zlepko].

dan. -- (Kingston, Ontario: Limestone Press, 1988).

Dolot, Miron, "Execution by Hunger: The Hidden Holocaust, a survivor's account of the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine", (New York City: W.W. Norton & Company Inc., 1985).

Dolot, Miron, "Who killed them and why?: in remembrance of those killed in the Famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine", (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard University, Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1984).

Dushnyk, Walter, "50 years ago: the famine holocaust in Ukraine", (New York: Toronto: World Congress of Free Ukrainians, 1983).

"Famine in the Soviet Ukraine 1932-1933: a memorial exhibition", Widener Library, Harvard University, prepared by Oksana Procyk, Leonid Heretz, James E. Mace. -- (Cambridge, Mass: Harvard College Library, distributed by Harvard University Press, 1986).

"Famine in Ukraine 1932-33", edited by Roman Serbyn and Bohdan Krawchenko, -- (Edmonton: Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, 1986). [Selected papers from a conference held at the Universite du Quebec a Montreal in 1983).

"The Great Famine in Ukraine: the unknown holocaust: in solemn observance of the Ukrainian famine of 1932-1933", (Compiled and edited by the editors of the Ukrainian Weekly [Roma Hadzewycz, George B. Zarycky, Martha Kolomayets] Jersey City, N.J.: Ukrainian National Association, 1983).

Gregorovich, Andrew, "Black Famine in Ukraine 1932-33: A Struggle for Existence", FORUM: A Ukrainian Review, No. 24, (Scranton: Ukrainian Workingmen's Association, 1974).

Halii, Mykola, "Organized famine in Ukraine, 1932-1933", (Chicago: Ukrainian Research and Information Institute, 1963).

"Holod na Ukraini, 1932-1933: vybrani statti", uporiadkuvala Nadiia Karatnyts'ka, (New York: Suchasnist', 1985).

Hlushanytsia, Pavlo, "Tretia svitova viina Pavla Hlushanytsi == The third world war of Pavlo Hlushanytsia, translated by Vera Moroz, (Toronto: Anabasis Magazine, 1986). [Bilingual edition in Ukrainian and English].

"Holod 1932-33 rokiv na Ukraini: ochyma istorykiv, movoij dokumentiv", (Kyiv: Vydavnytstvo politychnoyi literatury Ukrainy, 1990).

Hryshko, Vasyl, "Ukrains'kyi 'Holokast', 1933", (New York: DOBRUS; Toronto: SUZHERO, 1978).

Hryshko, Vasyl, "The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1933", Edited and translated by Marco Carynnyk, (Toronto: Bahrianyi Foundation, SUZHERO, DOBRUS, 1983).

"International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine, Proceedings [transcript]", May 23-27, 1988, Brussels, Belgium, [Jakob W.F. Sundberg, President; Legal Counsel, World Congress of Free Ukrainians: John Sopinka, Alexandra Chyczij; Legal Council for the Commission, Ian A. Hunter, 1988.

"International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine. Proceedings [transcript]", October 21 - November 5, 1988, New York City, [Jakob W.F. Sundberg, President; Counsel for the Petitioner, William Liber; General Counsel, Ian A. Hunter], 1988.

"International Commission of Inquiry into the 1932-1933 Famine in Ukraine. Final report", [Jacob W.F. Sundberg, President], 1990. [Proceedings of the International Commission of Inquiry and its Final report are in typescript, contained in 6 vols. Copies available from the World Congress of Free Ukrainians, Toronto].

Kalynyk, Oleksa, "Communism, the enemy of mankind: documents about the methods and practise of Russian Bolshevik occupation in Ukraine", (London, England: The Ukrainian Youth Association in Great Britain, 1955).

Klady, Leonard, "Famine Film "Harvest of Despair"", FORUM: A Ukrainian Review, No. 61, Spring 1985, (Scranton: Ukrainian Fraternal Association, 1985).

"Kolektyvizatsia i Holod na Ukraini 1929-1933: Zbirnyk documentiv i materialiv", Z.M. Mychailycenko, E.P. Shatalina, , eds., (Kyiv: Naukova Dumka, 1992).

Kostiuk, Hryhory, "Stalinist rule in Ukraine: a study of the decade of mass terror, 1929-1939", (Munich: Institut zur Erforschung der UdSSSR, 1960).

Kovalenko, L.B. & Maniak, B.A., eds., "Holod 33: Narodna knyha-memorial", (Kyiv: Radians'kyj pys'mennyk, 1991).

Krawchenko, Bohdan, "Social change and national consciouness in twentieth-century Ukraine", (Basingstoke: Macmillan in association with St. Anthony's College, Oxford, 1985).

"Lettere da Kharkov: la carestia in Ucraina e nel Caucaso del Nord nei rapporti dei diplomatici italiani, 1932-33", a cura di Andrea Graziosi, (Torino: Einaudi, 1991).

Mace, James E., "Communism and the dilemma of national liberation: national communism in Soviet Ukraine, 1918-1933", (Cambridge, Mass.: Distributed by Harvard University Press for the Ukrainian Research Institute and the Ukrainian Academy of Arts and Sciences in the U.S., 1983).

Makohon, P., "Svidok: Spohady pro 33-ho", (Toronto: Anabasis Magazine, 1983).

Martchenko, Borys, "La famine-genocide en Ukraine: 1932-1933", (Paris: Publications de l'Est europeen, 1983).

Marunchak, Mykhailo H., "Natsiia v botot'bi za svoie isnuvannia: 1932 i 1933 v Ukraini i diiaspori, (Winnipeg: Nakl. Ukrains'koi vil'noi akademii nauk v Kanadi, 1985).

"Memorial", compiled by Lubomyr Y. Luciuk and Alexandra Chyczij; translated into English by Marco Carynnyk, (Toronto: Published by Kashtan Press for Canadian Friends of "Memorial", 1989). [Bilingual edition in Ukrainian and English. this is a selection of resolutions, aims and objectives, and other documents, pertaining to the activities of the "memorial" Society in Ukraine].

Mishchenko, Oleksandr, "Bezkrovna viina: knyha svidchen'", (Kyiv: Molod', 1991).

Oleksiw, Stephen, "The agony of a nation: the great man-made famine in Ukraine, 1932-1933", (London: The National Committee to Commemorate the 50th Anniversary of the Artificial Famine in Ukraine, 1932-1933, 1983).

"Pavel P. Postyshev, envoy of Moscow in Ukraine 1933-1934", [selected newspaper articles, documents, and sections in books], (Toronto: World Congress of Free Ukrainians, Secretariat, [1988]), (The 1932-33 Famine in Ukraine research documentation.

Pidnayny, Alexandra, "A bibliography of the great famine in Ukraine, 1932-1933", (Toronto: New Review Books, 1975).

Pravoberezhnyi, Fedir, "8,000,000: 1933-i rik na Ukraini", (Winnipeg: Kultura i osvita, 1951).

Senyshyn, Halyna, "Bibliohrafia holody v Ukraini 1932-1933", (Ottawa: Montreal: UMMAN, 1983).

Solovei, Dmytro, "The Golgotha of Ukraine: eye-witness accounts of the famine in Ukraine", compiled by Dmytro Soloviy, (New York: Ukrainian Congress Committee of America, 1953).

Stradnyk, Petro, "Pravda pro soviets'ku vladu v Ukraini", (New York: N. Chyhyryns'kyi, 1972).

Taylor, S.J., "Stalin's apologist: Walter Duranty, the New York Time's man in Moscow", (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

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"The man-made famine in Ukraine", -- (Washington D.C.: American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research, 1984). [Seminar. Participants: Robert Conquest, Dana Dalrymple, James Mace, Michael Nowak].

United States, "Commission on the Ukraine Famine. Investigation of the Ukrainian Famine, 1932-1933: report to Congress / Commission on the Ukraine Famine", [Daniel E. Mica, Chairman; James E. Mace, Staff Director]. -- (Washington D.C.: U.S. G.P.O.: For sale by the Supt. of Docs, U.S. G.P.O., 1988), (Dhipping list: 88-521-P).

United States, "Commision on the Ukrainian Famine. Oral history project of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine", James E. Mace and Leonid Heretz, eds. (Washington, D.C.: Supt. of Docs, U.S. G.P.O., 1990).

"Velykyi holod v Ukraini, 1932-33: zbirnyk svidchen', spohadiv, dopovidiv ta stattiv, vyholoshenykh ta drukovanykh v 1983 rotsi na vidznachennia 50-littia holodu v Ukraini -- The Great Famine in Ukraine 1932-1933: a collection of memoirs, speeches amd essays prepared in 1983 in commemoration of the 50th anniversary of the Famine in Ukraine during 1932-33", [Publication Committee members: V. Rudenko, T. Khokhitva, P. Makohon, F. Podopryhora], (Toronto: Ukrains'ke Pravoslavne Bratstvo Sv. Volodymyra, 1988), [Billingual edition in Ukrainian and English].

Verbyts'kyi, M., "Naibil'shyi zlochyn Kremlia: zaplianovanyi shtuchnyi holod v Ukraini 1932-1933 rokiv", (London, England: DOBRUS, 1952).

Voropai, Oleksa, "V deviatim kruzi", (London, England: Sum, 1953).

Voropai, Oleksa, " The Ninth Circle: In Commemoration of the Victims of the Famine of 1933", Olexa Woropay; edited with an introduction by James E. Mace, (Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University, Ukrainian Studies Fund, 1983).

It, frankly, disgusts me that you will not admit the Ukrainian Famine was man made.

I can go on and on. I can pull witnesses out magic sack and back again.

[Galicia]

Here are some eyewitnesses presenting themselves in Congress. No, they are not from one isolated area, unless you happen to call that area the Ukraine.

[quote]Julia Pastukhiv, Long Island, N.Y.:

I was an only child. Both of my parents worked. I remember that bread would be given out by ration cards. I remember waiting in long lines with my mother. That is how it was. I also remember that near our houses there were homeless people who would spend the night on benches and on the street. And then, on the following day, they would forbid us to go near them, because they were no longer alive. I heard everywhere that hordes and hordes of hungry people from the villages would come to town in an attempt to get food, for they were forbidden to do so. Time and again they would find emaciated children on the streets and the women who could would bring food to feed them. Of course, nobody at that time had a choice of what food they would give, and those children who would receive liquids would be the ones who survived while those who received dry crackers or dry food of any kind would be the first to die. Our parents would tell the children not to stray from home because terrible rumors circulated that children would be kidnapped and made into sausages.

At that time the incidents of theft increased. Even food which was hidden in barns and storage places was stolen. ...



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Zinoviy Turkalo, Orangeburg, N.Y.:

...For me, the recollection of this event is tied together with personal tragedy in my family. My father was arrested just about that time and he was a defendant in one of the show trials of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine.

We were living in Kiev at the time, and I was going to school, and my first experience was thousands of homeless children who were flooding Kiev from the countryside, looking for food, stealing everything they could get. I lost many school lunches to these children, on my way to school, but that was just the beginning. When we moved to the area of Kharkiv in 1931, I was playing in a school band, in a school orchestra, and that was the only music in the whole area. And, those party officials that were sent from Moscow, they were called five thousand, ten thousand, twenty-five thousand later on, many of them were killed by the peasants. They paid a terrible price for that, but many of them were killed. And, our school then was invited for the funeral every time. For us, it was a very happy event, because every time somebody was killed, they would take us to the village, give us some food and then we would play in the funeral. And, we were looking forward every time to the next funeral, because that meant food for us.

But, because of this, we were traveling this whole area around this village. ... It was about 17 kilometers from Kharkiv. So, I witnessed this, at approximately 30 miles around in different villages and as the time progressed, we were witnessing the deterioration of these villages - the number of people, the way they looked, the way they behaved, and it got progressively worse every time. Every time, visiting the city of Kharkiv to get some food or whatever, we would go to the market. There was a very big market in Kharkiv filled with people, hungry people from the villages coming into the city looking for food. I will never forget hundreds of women laying in the streets, some of them dead, some of them unconscious with small children crawling over bodies. You know, this was an unforgettable experience. ...



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Mr. B., Glen Spey, N.Y.:

In the spring of 1933, I was in Kiev. I was studying. I was a freshman. Of course, schools had to help with the agricultural work. ... We were told that there were problems in the harvest, and for that reason we had to go to the villages and help out. One working Saturday, one subbotnik, we were loaded in a car and driven out of the city. We arrived at a nameless village. There was not a soul to be seen. ... I asked the leader in charge why from this village, which was a very short distance from where we were, there was such a stench coming in our direction. These were some peasants gathering wild garlic to make dinner, he answered. Later on, I grew thirsty and they wouldn't give us water, so I, ignoring the advice of the leader, went towards the village. Not ignoring, but without permission. There I saw a truly horrible picture, just as [Vasily] Grossman describes. Everywhere bodies were sitting and lying and they were decomposing, and from them was emanating such a stench that I couldn't stand it. The name of the village was Katerynivske, which I discovered later. ...



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John Samilenko, Long Island, N.Y.:

It is now very difficult for me to speak about the great famine and the tragedy of Ukraine in 1922-23. Of course, there is no time to speak more widely about all the events that happened. ...

My task today is to give some information about what happened between 1929 and 1932. I lived in Pryluki in Ukraine. My parents descended from an old Kozak family. When the New Economic Policy was established, they (the Soviet government) introduced a new system of model farmers in order to stimulate private industry. My father was recognized as a model farmer. ...

And, finally, in 1927 as a Ukrainian "kulak" he was disenfranchised. He was subjected to extraordinary measures. In other words, he was given many and very heavy quotas of grain which were established during this period. And, finally, in 1929, my father was arrested. Before his arrest, my brother, Gregory, and I were expelled from school. My brother, Gregory, had two months to go until graduation from agricultural school. I was studying in a teachers' school ... but was expelled and deprived of the right to study in any school of the Soviet Union.

And, finally, I escaped to the Donbas, in order to work in industry and find some way to continue my education in the future. This time, in December 1929, my whole family, my father's two brothers, and my mother and father were arrested. At night time a hundred families were deported together to Ichniya Railroad Station, loaded into the cars and deported to the Lepsha concentration camp on the Solovetsky Islands.

Now, here was my brother who had been deported. He was 30 years of age... But in 1931, as you know, if your parents were arrested and sent to concentration camp, there were children who remained so-called "free." It was no way to live, "free." You had to live illegally. ... Now what happened in 1931. I found in the newspaper, Izvestia, a note on page 4 that direct relatives can take out of the concentration camps parents who are already disabled. So I decided to take a risk without many difficulties. I reached Lepsha on the White Sea. I was supposed to enter into this concentration camp. It was wired all around, guarded all around. I found many barracks ... finally I reached barrack No. 8. ... It was about eight o'clock, quiet. Finally, a voice: who is that? It was voice of my father. It was difficult to see, and I found he could stand and walk on his feet. He was filled up. Finally, when I picked up my stick matches and tried to find a candle to light the room, I found in this section of the barracks seven bodies on a bench, a wooden bench. Three of them were dead; four had already lost consciousness. ... The next day I was received by the commandant of this concentration camp... I explained that I would like to take out my father because he is dying, he is disabled. He said all right, I will give you a pass to Arkhangelsk. Only central headquarters ... can give you this final decision. So he gave me a permission pass to go to Arkhangelsk and in addition I received from a doctor who was also a prisoner medical confirmation that my father was disabled. ... Plesetskaya Station was five miles away. ... There was the station, you couldn't go inside. There were a thousand people; they stayed in line two, three days to get permission to go to this headquarters. ... Finally, on the third day I received permission to go to this headquarters. ...

Now, first of all, I was called to the records office. Mr. Kuzmin asked me everything about my family ... and finally he prepared all the information for the chief. Finally, I received permission to go with this to him and ask him permission to take my father. Now, he asked me one thing. He took a look at this, at the yellow record that was given by Mr. Kuzmin, and asked me, where is you mother? ...Where is your brother? [They had both escaped.] Now, he said, oh, you have a special assignment, you are illegally taking prisoners from the concentration camp. ... He arrested me and sent me to a special cell for investigation. On the 11th day I was sent to a special concentration camp, North Dvina, where I was for 11 months - 11 months. During these 11 months, one friend from my place was also sent to this camp, and he said, your father died in Plesetskaya during 1932. About 1,800 died during one spring in 1932. I managed to escape in the 11th month. ...

When I came to this village (Krasnoyarsk) I found a dead village. No dogs, no cats, nothing - except maybe a few houses populated with people. I went to the school. The school was locked. Not one pupil came to school. I decided to take - I had a list - to go to the houses and ask what happened. Why is the school closed? I opened one door - another door wide. Nobody answered. I looked inside another door. Knocked on another door. I heard this human voice. Finally, I opened this door. I found in the darkness three children dead, lying on the floor, a husband dead a woman still alive. And she told me, nobody come in here. I ask you only one thing: take my children and husband, and bury them, and kill me because I also am dying. Now, I went to three more houses. I found the same thing. ...



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Wasyl Samilenko, Long Island, N.Y.:

You have heard my brother; he has given much accurate and truthful information, but I would like to narrate a few episodes concerning myself. It was the end of 1929, the fall. I was 13. It was in the evening when the NKVD came in a wagon to my home. Inside my house was my mother and my whole family. The senior NKVD officer took out papers and read before my entire family this order. Take only what you can wear and take something to eat. You are under arrest. And, they took us all outside and placed us in the wagon. They took us to the railroad station far away called Ichniya. We rode the entire night. At the station there were cattle cars used for loading cattle and other types of domestic animals. They opened the doors and shut us all in. They didn't tell us - they shut the doors - didn't tell us where they were going. There was no air, except from tiny vents on the roof of the cars. We rode for a little over a week. Nobody was permitted to go out. Nobody could relieve themselves outdoors. Everything, all the refuse, was discharged through the windows.

On our way to Arkhangelsk, we stopped at a station called Lepsha, and this is where we were told to disembark. When the people who were in the cattle car came out, they told them to separate into two groups. The men on one side, the women and the children on the other side, and we were told that our fathers were leaving to do work - to do forest labor - and that they would return in a week or shortly. The children and mothers were led along a snowy path. They were beaten to make them hurry along, and they were taken to a place where some barracks were standing and also some were under construction. In the barracks there was only one stove for all the people who had arrived by cattle cars. It was impossible to get any more heat. There were beds. People were strewn all over the place. Some lay on top of the stove. Some were scattered all over the place. There was no food. They didn't give us any food. We were forced to subsist on the food which the women had brought with them to finish that off, and they gave us some liquid food, some soup and some sardines once in a while. A week passed and people began to fall sick. And because the barracks were not heated, children began to die. A week passed or more - our fathers did not return. When we questioned what had happened to them, we were denied answers.

After some time, some of our relatives arrived with false documents indicating that my mother was not a prisoner, but in fact had come to visit a relative who was in prison in that place. With those false documents, she was able to escape. There were no false documents for me and I was forced to travel the entire way in a large bag my mother made. All throughout the train ride, I was forced to lie under the seat where my mother was sitting. She fed me scraps until we got out of the danger zone in about three or four days. Thank you. This is one of the episodes from my life.
Anna Pylypiuk, Chicago:

In 1932, when I was not yet 12 years old, I witnessed the weary faces of people tortured not only by hunger but also by terror, many of which were buried alive. Those who survived remained emotionally crippled for life. It's very hard to endure constant humiliation, to feel constantly persecuted, particularly in one's own native land and one's own home. Let this memoir of my stolen childhood help you retain the memory of those who are no longer with us.

My apathy for school grew. Everyday men on horses would come to our house to notify us about meetings at the collective farm of the village soviet [council]. My father frequently came back very late from these meetings. A lamp was lit beneath the icons in our house, and we little ones, along with grandfather and grandmother stood on our knees and prayed. We were eventually told to take down our icons and replace them with a sickle and hammer and a portrait of Stalin. People came to our house to check to see if we had done what had been ordered.

One dark autumn night in 1929, as I was celebrating my eighth birthday, a Black Raven (vehicle used to remove prisoners) drove up to our house and took our father away. We cried so much that our lips became dry and our bodies froze. The next day we went to see him to give him some food parcels, but there was a large crowd of people all around the prison, which convinced us that grief had been visited on everyone. Soon our father was taken to a prison in Kiev called Lukianivka. There again, crowds of women and children milled in the streets for weeks on end in order to see their fathers and husbands for the last time.

At that time hooligans gathered along the docks and robbed the women who had come to visit the prisoners. The hooligans lay down completely naked on the straw, raised their legs in the air and shouted "we are fulfilling the five-year-plan."

Father was taken to Murmansk on a 10-year sentence to level forests in the name of socialism, grandfather gave his entire field to the collective farm, because there was no one left to work it. With time the orchard next to our house was cut down.

In 1930 the schoolchildren were getting ready to celebrate the first of May: the "International" could be heard over the loudspeakers, as well as could be: "Moscow, my most beloved country, vanquished by no one." On the way to school I dropped by to pick up my girl friend, Tonia, and go with her to the parade, but when I arrived at her house I was astounded to discover that they had been evicted from a brand new house. Tonia's father had built the house with his very own hands. He was tall and well-built. The neighbors all loved him. Ivan's family was thrown out because their house was going to be occupied by some sort of exemplary activist. Soon the Black Raven took Tonia's father away to Siberia. All of his farming equipment turned rusty, and his yard was covered with weeds. The mother and children were placed in a cattle shed. I was late for the parade. The sun caused the blood to rush to my nose, but I endured it. I endured it because I did not want to be an enemy of the people.

Every blessed day a brigade consisting of several sturdy men headed by a Chekist came to our house. He had medals on his chest and was called Comrade Fisher. He ordered his men to pierce all the walls, ceilings and floor with long ramrods. He frightened his helpers by saying that they would be arrested if they didn't find any grain. Comrade Fisher began to play up to my stepmother and to provoke her with various jokes. We little ones cried. My stepmother grabbed one of father's joiner instruments and threw it into the front part of the stove. The instrument rebounded and nearly struck him in the head. After this incident my stepmother was repeatedly called before the court. She was forced to sell almost all of her shawls and sheepskin coats in order to bribe the investigator, a Comrade Sedlovych or Sedlovsky (I don't recall which) who defended her. One time my stepmother was once again called to court where she was accused of propounding religion because she had a shawl embroidered in a pattern resembling crosses. They said it was a provocation of the Antichrist because she had bought the shawl at the marketplace from one Mendel. My stepmother told them they should punish him for selling such a scarf, not her.

Spring of 1932 arrived. There was no one to plant the garden at home. My stepmother and we children were able to get by on money [we earned]; we plowed gardens for our neighbors, but later our horse was stolen and they had to do the planting without a horse. The neighbors said they had seen our horse at the home of one of the activists.

In the summer of 1932 I went to the butter factory in an attempt to make some money to buy bread. At that time peasants took milk away from their own children in the name of building socialism.

Butter made at the factory was exported to Moscow and Leningrad. Cheese was made from the milk, dried to the hardness of a rock and used by the aviation industry to make some sort of buttons. In the evening only those who had met their milk quota were able to buy one liter of buttermilk for 2 kopecks. I was hungry and bought some of that cheese, but it was hot. I nearly choked because the inspector came and fired me from the job. I recall a little ditty we used to sing "the sickle and hammer hang on the wall, and nothing to eat for us all."

The memories of year 1933-34 are particularly vivid in my mind. Every morning at 3:00 I took the cow to pasture, I walked barefoot along the cold wet grass. Part of the milk I took to the butter factory and the remainder sold in order to buy bread. Later I went to a field to gather frozen potatoes to make potato pancakes and all sorts of pigweed for soup, and looked after my younger brothers because my stepmother was forced to work at the collective farm. She was also forced to help gather bodies from the streets and the houses. The bodies had to be gathered quickly. Once I found some millet chaff. Not knowing any better I greedily ate them, and immediately experienced severe stomach cramps. My stomach swelled and bloody diarrhea set in. My brother was frightened that I would die and helped me to get to the doctor. Then an old nurse yelled at me in Russian to stop my diarrhea with my hand. Calling me by the derogatory name "khokhliushka," she chased me out the door. My brother ran to get another nurse who spoke Ukrainian and immediately eased my suffering with medication. When we returned home our stepmother was already there. She noticed the blood on the floor and immediately thought that someone had attacked us and eaten us, for rumors of such things were widespread at the time. There was a mad woman who killed her children one by one and fed them to the others. And so our stepmother left my brother with grandmother and took me with her because she was afraid for me.

Bodies lay along the fences near where we lived. Women piled them into wagons and drove them to the cemeteries. Those who refused to join a collective farm were forced to dig holes for the bodies. Once an old woman approached me and quietly asked for water to quench her thirst. I ran and got her some water in a bottle. An activist took note of this and pushed me into the hole that was being dug. My stepmother had to promise him a bottle of liquor in order to get him to allow me to be pulled out of the hole. After that time my stepmother never again took me with her. I was so frightened by what had happened that I stopped talking for several days. I saw dead bodies in my dreams and screamed in terror. I ran a fever but did not tell my grandfather about what had happened.

My grandfather fell sick with malaria and I had to tend to his needs. One time I ran over to the sugar beet factory. Not far from the factory was a wide field. Piles of beets lay covered with straw and sand. I wanted to see if I could find something in the field for dinner. But a guard stood on an elevated platform and shot anyone who came near. Nearby lay the bloody bodies of people who had just been shot trying to get the beets. I returned home with empty hands. Behind the house was a huge cellar and I hid there. There I found a large bottle of cod-liver oil which my parents had once used to soften shoe leather. Drinking that cod-liver oil saved me from starving to death. I mixed the oil with salt and some weeds and ate it. On the street everyone fled from me because I smelled of fish.

One day grandfather Nikifor, the brother of my grandfather, came to visit us. He was all swollen and tired because he had walked a great distance. He told our grandfather that he didn't want anything from him. All he wanted was for us children to take him to the cemetery so that he could die there. On the way to the cemetery he fell because he couldn't stand on his swollen legs, and gave up his soul. Flies covered his entire face and legs. The side of the road was strewn with bodies. We ran home. Our stepmother buried him the following day with the help of friends. Father's cousin informed us that grandfather's cousin had also died.

The summer of 1933 I could no longer take the cow to pasture. My legs were swollen and covered with sores. I was unable to walk. My stepmother had to place me on the chamber pot because I could no longer get on by myself. She took the cow to the collective farm. She was able to bring home as much as she could, which was not much, because the milk had to be handed over to authorities. Meat, eggs - everything had to be handed over to the authorities. My stepmother cut firewood in the nearby forest and sold it to the authorities. This is how we survived till autumn.

I reached my 12th year, and continued to lie in bed. My eyes were covered with sores. Grandfather died in 1934 on Christmas Eve.

It was a severe winter. The ground was frozen. My mother turned to the collective farm and to the village soviet. She told them that insofar as they now controlled her private property, they had the means to bury him, because she certainly lacked the resources to bury him herself. When they refused, she turned to the neighbors and told them they could each cut down a tree from her property they wanted if only they would help with the burial. They agreed because they all needed the wood to burn. Now my stepmother was summoned to court because she had destroyed government property. She fought them every way she could. She said grandfather had owned his own property years before the Soviets came into property that wasn't theirs. If your house is cold I'll let you have one tree apiece to heat your homes.



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Anna Portnov, Chicago:

I was asked to write my reminiscences of the years 1932-33 in Ukraine. To make it brief, it was one long and most terrible nightmare. (All the American thrillers seem to me quite childish in comparison.) I was born in Kiev, but lived at that time with my grandparents 90 kilometers from the capital in a small town of Bila Tserkva. ... I was in high school and was often sent to surrounding villages to help with collectivization, particularly to organize children in pioneer organizations and through them to influence the elders to enter a kolkhoz (collective farm). The population of the villages was extremely hostile to all of us - old and young. Why? Several years before I remember having come to one of the villages when I was quite a little pre-school child. My mother's aunts and grandmother used to live there. It was a remote village and though the revolution had already had its toll (as it was explained to me) but the people were still composed and even cheerful. ...

...When as a schoolgirl I came there again in the early 30s I could see grey swollen faces or hollow cheeks and dimmed eyes of women, men, children. It was famine in the rich lands of Ukraine. We also saw angry glares. We wanted to speak to the children but they were not allowed to contact us. There was one boy, Petrus by name, who followed us, though. He told us his parents had died from hunger. We shared with him the meager food we had, and he told us in whispers that the party people who came from the city had taken absolutely everything from the households. They ransacked all hiding places where some corn or wheat for the children was preserved and took all that, too. He confided that those who offered resistance were shot or sent to Siberia. We, kids, were shocked and told the adults we came with all we heard, asking too many questions. The questions remained unanswered, and we were ordered to keep quiet and the adults decided to take us home. I remember a pitch black night in the forest through which we made our retreat home in a cart harnessed by a horse. Every now and then we heard shots quite close. I still don't know whether they came from the new bosses or from the peasants.

In the town I remember a woman peasant who used to sit on a porch all swollen, her face, her legs, her hands, wrapped in a big grey cheekered shawl. I always brought her something to eat (though hungry myself) and I will never forget the haunted look of her red eyes. I remember feeling a certain feeling of guilt because I had more, than she had - she, a breadmaker.

I saw many swollen people, but that woman's image is carved in my memory as if telling me: never forgive and never forget the murderers who killed thousands upon thousands of innocent people. ...



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Valentin Kochno, Chicago:

...My father was pastor in the village of Horodets. It's a large village, five kilometers from Uman, and already in 1931 the famine started in the area of Uman. I am a witness of what took place in that area, near the village of Horodets, and the region of Uman.

...Moscow sent two representatives, one a Russian and the other of a different nationality, and they started to organize the so-called Committee of non-wealthy peasants. Komnezamy were at the beginning, and when it appeared that the famine began, the number of Komnezamy was increased in the village. These Komnezamy were composed of the worst criminal elements of the local population. These were either the lazy loiterers or the criminals that did not want to do anything and only stole and were the best-known criminals of the entire village. So at first, there was a small number of them, but already from 1931 to the end, I remember that my father and mother said, that there were more than 10. One thing that I can underline, that at the beginning of the famine the leading class of the village was arrested and destroyed, for instance, the Ukrainian teachers, the church choir director, and all of the village intelligentsia. And there were big attacks on the church, the priest was arrested, and my father was arrested seven times. He was kept in cold water in the (basement), cellar so that he would denounce and leave - because he had great authority; and they wanted to get rid of him from the village of Horodets. But it is clear that my father was suffering, and I can testify that this was through covert activity.

In the evening they surrounded the entire village; first they robbed from the kurkuls, and they were removed. Then when only the "middle class" was left they starred taking away their grain and foodstuffs. And later, what I can never forget as long as I live, when through the town drove two vehicles ("pidvody") each carrying eight to 12 men. They were sitting with their legs hung over the sides, with rifles, and they started from yard to yard to kill all dogs. After this, when they destroyed all the dogs, then they started gathering all foodstuffs. They started taking all grain, livestock and everything that was left. They went from house to house, and barn to barn. They even had special gadgets to check the yards to see if people buried any grain or other food products.

After this came the winter, and in my class there were approximately 30 students. The famine started. It was winter, people started dying - and the worst tragedy occurred in the spring. I witnessed that friends from my class (when it got warm, by the end of April and beginning of May) - when we came out on the street or pasture to play - I saw with my eyes, I witnessed, that they who were skinny in winter, swelled up now so that the water went through their bodies, so that it was hard to recognize anyone. Then their skin started ripping in their lower legs, so the water pressure burst the feet, just in the same place where Jesus Christ was nailed to the cross, and flowed out with blood, and within 30 minutes to 45 minutes, he fell down dead.

I would like to return to these criminals. When my father was brought into the village of Horodets, it was hard to find living quarters. One poor family took us into their house, which consisted of two rooms with a hallway. We lived in one room. That family had a son, he was known in the village as a thief. He did not work at all. He drank, he slept during the day and went out at night. There were such occurrences: when my father was in church and my mother was directing the choir, once when I came home from school I saw him coming out of our room, carrying food and other articles. First, he ran into his room. I bring this up to show what elements the bolshevik government used to carry out its programs. Further, I witnessed when the majority of the kurkuls were thrown out and removed to Siberia. They started going after the "middle class." I saw this Levko. There was a pasture near the church. I saw a procession of Komnezamy, and this Levko, with his pistol - unholstered - leading a man who had a cow's head tied to his neck. They gathered the whole village and said that this is a kurkul, an enemy of the people, and other accusations. That he killed a cow from the collective, and thus they were serving the people.

In the spring of 1931, almost two-thirds of the villagers died from starvation. ... by the spring of 1932, we were all swollen - my brother, sister and father. My mother was in better shape through working in the garden. They decided to take their wedding rings and an ancestral 300-year-old watch; and my mother traveled to Moscow. She traded these for grain, margarine. If my mother had not returned, my brother would have died within a day or two - and thus we were saved from starvation.

Then they took my father to the Kiev, St. Sophia Sobor, by direction of Archbishop Constantine Malushkevych. So father left and we remained in the village of Horodets. We waited for the authorities to give us permission to travel. But father did not stay long. In Kharkiv, in the Cathedral of the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, the pastor died. So Metropolitan Ivan Pavlovsky, who was the metropolitan of Kharkiv and the whole of Ukraine, ordained my father. And they were great friends. He saw that my father - as pastor of St. Sophia Sobor, a young man with three children - would not last very long there. It was that at St. Sophia a pastor could last six to eight months. It was a long time because the authorities arrested the priests and sent them to Siberia. So he was sent to Kharkiv in 1932. It was the same in Kharkiv. The famine had already started, and we witnessed how many corpses were brought in front of the church every morning. My father helped - every morning there were tens of corpses by the church; there was a part, and vehicles would come to pick up those people, and drove them outside the city. ...



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Halyna B., Palatine, Ill.:

I was born in the vicinity of Chernihiv-Kulykivsky district, in the village of Muvaveika. When I was 8 years old, my father died of tuberculosis in the 28th year of his young life. My mother was left a widow with two small children. My sister was 6 years old. The farm was not large, but someone was needed to work it. My sister and I went to school, and we tried to help mother after school, because we saw her despair. It is true that at first we did not go hungry, and we had something to wear, until 1929. This year was designated by the Moscow intruders as the beginning of the death and long years of suffering for the Ukrainian nation.

In 1929 the collectivization began. It began by the arrival of trained agitators from Russia; they organized meetings in homes and threatened people into joining the collectives, "If you don't you will loose everything." The same agitator that organized the collective farm was the school principal. His name was Nikolai Gustov. He would gather seven families living on one street into someone's home for a meeting. He called such a meeting at our house, and I was present at this meeting.

I remember his first words! "You will live much better on the collective than now and particularly you, a widow, pointing a finger at my mother. You won't work so hard, you will live without worries. It won't even be necessary to bake bread, because the machines do all the work for us." And the poor people believed his lies and entered the collective. In the beginning it was the poor peasants who joined the collective.

The well-to-do and middle peasants would not join; they would not sign. Here the agitators saw a problem; they started making lists and started accusations, but without any trial or hearing they started sending these people out to Siberia or Russia. They never came back. The rest of the peasants were scared to death and signed without wavering, because they feared exile to Siberia. This lasted two years.

Then 1931 began, collective work started, brigades were formed, and chairmen, but there was no one to do the work. What was sown and planted, was harvested, everyone including small children were dragged into the fields. The schools were closed until winter. But this hard work did not provide any benefit for the peasants. Everything was taken under the quotas, people were even accused of laziness and forced to make it up. Then we remembered the words of the agitator Husov, "You will not bake bread!" Only those baked who had some reserve supplies, the rest only had memories. The Ukrainian bread was consumed by Russian invaders who ripped it out of the poor Ukrainian peasants' teeth. In this manner Moscow prepared the deadly famine for 1933. The village government and propagandists started pushing the quotas for past years and said that we have to produce more and more to make up for past deficiencies.

My mother knew that things would get bad and we wouldn't have enough food, but there was none to be had and nothing to buy it with. We practically got nothing from the collective, everything was sent out, and things got bad. The whole winter we lasted, but by spring, March, the house was empty, not one slice of bread, not one potato. I was 12 years old then, and my sister, 10. My sister and I saw and we understood these unpleasant horrors and troubles, and felt our starving mother's pain. To help our mother we decided to go and find something, anything edible. We learned that people were digging some kind of roots, and said you could eat it and it wouldn't hurt you. My sister and I also went to dig these roots. It was wet and cold, but somehow we dug up some roots, brought them home, dried them, ground them up, and baked some "bread." It was very bitter, but we ate it.

Mother saw that things were desperate and saw corpses taken to the cemetery, she took her golden earrings which my father gave her long ago; she took these earrings to the bazaar and exchanged them for flour with one Jewish trader whose name was Hershko Larin. Mother received 10 pounds of flour, she tried to stretch it as long as possible by mixing with bran, which was being kept for the pigs, she mixed this with the root flour and baked "pies" which we could eat once a day and live. It was very bitter, but there was nothing else.

Mother would take everything to town, embroidery, towels, tablecloths, and gave it away practically for nothing just to survive to harvest. By June 1933 there was a big commotion in the village, people were crying and cursing, and lying along the fences, but no one was paying any attention to them, thinking that tomorrow they would be next. People died almost every day. There was no priest, no services, no one even came to look. The family that was left alive dug the graves themselves, wrapped the body in a bedsheet, and threw it into the hole. Those who were still healthy, the Moscow henchmen drove to work, and kept screaming that we had to make up our quota, "Die yourself, but save Russia!"

My sister, mother, and I were fighting for our lives. But how? We decided to harvest (flowers) blossoms, from clover, dry it and crush it and boil or bake it. Those who created the collectives had plenty to eat. For example, our neighbor's husband was one of those who did not pay people for their work; he stole and his family had food. I remember one time the neighbor came in and saw some coral beads around my neck. She said sell them to me for some bread, I hated to part with them, but I happily answered, that I will sell them because I want to eat. I don't remember how much we got for them, but she gave us some flour. Her name was Klita, she is still living and is 92 years old.

Klita's brother was married and had two children. His wife tried to save the children and had nothing left to give her husband to eat, and he already swelled up, he went to his sister Klita begging for something to eat, because he could not last much longer, but she said, "I have nothing for you, get out of the house!" He left and died that night.

Another family that lived a bit further from us had an older mother with two sons. Their mother died one evening. The sons were swollen and lost their mind and started cutting their mother's flesh and baked it on the fire and ate this. But this did not help, and within a week both of them died.

At this time we got some milk from our cow and this milk saved us. In July mother started picking a few vegetables from the garden and we had sowed some barley and mother reaped a little at a time, ground it and cooked a porridge, and this porridge and milk saved us.



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L. Kasian, Chicago:

I was born on December 28, 1907, in the village of Hanivka Verkhnodniprovsk region. In 1929 I was sent with my whole family out of Ukraine to Volohodsk in Russia and later by train north to the wilderness to cut wood and build shelters. The family consisted of seven people. We were forcibly taken from our home in the process of completely liquidating that class of kulaks who did not accept collectivization. Everything was taken away from us. At the end of 1930, after three attempts, I succeeded in escaping and finding work in the town of Kramatorsk, where I lived during the years 1932-1933.

I personally saw people swollen from hunger and those who died from hunger. At that time those who worked at the construction received food ration stamps mainly for bread. (Workers received 800 grams, office workers 600 grams per day, children and only those of the parents who worked, meat, maybe one kilogram per month, if they were lucky.)

There was an incident where one woman came to Kramatorsk in 1933 and received work as a cleaning lady in the communal barracks. In two weeks, having received some bread, she recuperated, but went insane, shouting that she had eaten her two children. The militia came and took her away.

In 1935 in villages about 40 to 50 kilometers from Kramatorsk there were very few people, especially men. When harvest time came at the end of June and July, there were no workers available. So, many workers (builders) from Kramatorsk were given some time to cut the grain for which they were well paid with grain, wheat, rye, honey. In the years 1932-33 it was almost impossible to buy bread. For two kilograms of bread you paid 40 rubles, when a workers earned 150 to 170 rubles a month.

To go by train was impossible, except for those having special papers. To send parcels from Russia to Ukraine or from Ukraine to Russia was forbidden. From Kharkiv to Kursk across the Russian border is not far, only 150 to 200 kilometers. Three-kilogram loaves of bread were freely available at a cost of three rubles. This is proof that the 7 million Ukrainians were artificially starved to death.

My brother, Pavlo, who was only 14 years old in 1931, escaped from exile in the Solovky Islands, but he was captured and jailed in Dnipropetrovske and sentenced to another three years. He was freed in 1935 and settled in Kramatorsk. He told me that in 1933, 37 persons were serving sentences in the Solovky camp for cannibalism.



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Stephen C., Chicago:

I was born in the village of Sari, near the city of Hadiach in the Poltava region. I was born on the 13th of August in 1923, the son of a poor peasant. My father had only a single hectare of land. I recall the year 1932 as being one of the most tragic years of my life. Hunger held our entire family captive. Activists came to our village and seized all of the bread and even the kidney beans. In our family, in the immediate household, my father's father, then my mother's starved before my very eyes. They buried him in his boots because his feet were too swollen to have them removed. He had four sons and two daughters - one of them is alive to this very day. Another aunt, my mother's sister, was stabbed to death with a pitchfork for stealing scallions from a neighbor's yard.

When my grandmother died from hunger, my mother placed a cross made out of wax in her hands, because she wanted a Christian burial. But a neighbor who was walking by our house looked in the window and saw the cross lying on my dead grandmother. He poked out the window pane, crawled in and stole the waxen cross. On the way to the collective farm he ate the cross. When my mother returned and found out that our neighbor had stolen the cross, she ran out after him in order to reprimand him for the theft, but when she reached him on the road he was already dead.

My father's mother also died of hunger. She ate some false flax which causes a sleep-like state that eventually goes away as the person regains consciousness. My grandmother was already sick, so when she fell into the sleep-like state everyone thought she was dead. When they came to bury her, however, they noticed that she was still breathing, but they buried her anyway, because they said she was going to die anyway. No one was sorry that they buried her alive.

In my mother's family five people died, including her husband. In our village where were many instances of cannibalism. One woman killed her 3-year-old son. When she fed the cooked meat to her husband, he noticed the bones of little fingers in the-dish. He then turned her over to the police. People ate everything, without bothering to cook it first. They ate grass meant for pigs, weeds. They even caught birds, killed them and ate them raw. People were given long sentences for stealing grain. One woman whose five children had died got 10 years for cutting unripe grain.



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Lydia K., Oaklawn, Ill.

I was born in 1920 in the village of Khyzhentsi, Lisensky district, Kiev province, Ukraine. My family had a farm, a garden, two horses and some rabbits. Because we were considered prosperous for our area, the state levied taxes on us that we could not possibly pay. Then in December 1929, about a dozen people came to our house to throw us out. I remember my school teacher among them. Some, like my teacher, had sad faces, and I knew that they did not want to do what they were sent for, but others in the group forced them. They forced us to leave our home.

Fortunately, there was a small vacant house nearby, and a member of the owner's family allowed us to move in. My father joined the collective farm, and this one-room house became home to my parents, three brothers and me. My father's work on the collective farm never provided enough for the whole family, but we were still able to get by with the aid of what we could grow in our own garden.

In the summer of 1932, things became very difficult. Almost all the bread was taken away right after the harvest, and we knew that there would soon be nothing left to eat. My mother gave me a little bag and sent me with other young people in the village to glean the harvested fields, to pick up the ears of wheat that had been left after the harvest.

Gleaning was against the law, but we did it many times. The state sent horsemen to chase the gleaners out of the field, so the teenage boys of our group would keep watch. Sometimes the boys would play a joke and signal us when there were no horsemen, so one time I thought they were playing a joke when they were not. I ignored the warning when the others had run away and hidden in a nearby patch of woods. When I looked up, I saw two horsemen riding straight at me. It looked like they would run me down and that their horses would trample me. I was so frightened. There was no time to run. But I would not let them have the grain in my little bag and spilled it on the ground. The horsemen rode right up to me, but they pulled back hard on the reins and reared the horses up and stopped. I thought they would kill me, but they just took my empty bag and left.

I also remember in 1932 that they made the students in my school go 'round to various houses in the village and smear over whitewashed walls the following words in tar: Zlisni nezdatchyky khliba; identifying the occupants as having maliciously failed to give bread to the state. My family had been driven out of our house because we could not give the state what we did not have, and you can imagine how I felt. But we had to do it. They made us.

People would come to our little house with long pointed sticks. They would stick them in the ground, the walls and everywhere. They said they looking for concealed grain, but they took any food they could find. In December 1932, everything was taken except for what little we were still able to hide.

In January 1933 my parents sent me to stay with my uncle who worked as a doctor in a small town about 50 kilometers away. My brother took me there and we walked for nearly three days. We stopped at night, knocked on a door, and people would give us what food they could spare and let us stay the night. My uncle took me in and helped my two older brothers to get work in a nearby state farm, while my younger brother stayed with my parents.

By springtime many people were dying of hunger. I lived with my uncle in the hospital, and we saw many bodies dumped into a building which served as a morgue. I heard that sometimes bodies were stolen and especially the brains would be taken by people to eat. I remember seeing the bodies taken out and dumped into pits. There were too many to be buried individually

My uncle told me that doctors could never list starvation as a cause of death. You could list anything else as a cause of death, but never hunger.

One afternoon, I decided to visit my brothers in the state farm. They offered me some of their food, which was only tasteless dumplings in water. And then my brother told me it was time to go. Soon after I left, I found myself alone in a field as the sun was setting, and a boy called out at me and ran toward me. I was afraid that he wanted to eat me, and I ran away. By the time I reached the town it was getting dark. Soon I saw a woman lying down in the street too weak to move. She could only stretch out her hand and beg me for food, but I had nothing to give her. I knew she would soon be dead, because she was already too weak to stand.

When one of my brothers caught typhus, my uncle put him in a special room for fear that he would say something negative about the system. We all knew what kind of system we had, and we all knew the penalty for saying so, even in delirium. He survived, but another brother died of dysentery.

My father and younger brother back in the village became swollen from hunger, and my mother walked the 50 kilometers to my uncle to get some food, and that is how she save them. It was thanks to my uncle that, except for my one brother, our family survived. Had it not been for his goodness, we would all have perished.



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Leonid A., Chicago:

I am a U.S. citizen, living in Chicago. I was born on November 10, 1910, in Kiev. My father served in the Russian Imperial Army as a lieutenant colonel. He was called to active duty in 1917 and never returned home.

In 1921 my mother married for the second time and moved to the village of Blahovishchenka, Harnostiaivka raion, Kherson province, near Kakhnovky. My second father ran his own farm until 1928.

That year, 1928, at the age of 18, I was hired to work on a farm. There were already collective farms. I worked one summer. Afterwards they dekulakized this farmer.

I got a job in the reserves in Askannia Nova. I worked in a zoological park. For about a half a year I looked after the animals. Afterward I was a shepherd in Askannia Nova. There were approximately 170,000 sheep. They were grazing in the steppes. I grazed the sheep for a year and a half. Afterwards I went to work in a state farm as a truck driver. After two years I became a combine operator. In 1931 I married Ahafiya who lived on the state farm. Afterwards I became a driver of a dump truck.

In 1932, shortly before winter, they sent the people to weed the grain. The crop of 1932 was very good. The yield was 37 centners to the hectare. The grain was taken by the government. They left nothing for the people. In the villages in the winter of 1932 to 1933, the committee of unwealthy peasants walked through the houses. They were commanded by Communists sent from the district center. They had long pikes and looked for hidden grain. They searched the home, and under the rooftops. They took every last bit from the people. Cows, horses, sheep, goats - they took these from the people and gave it to the collective farms. There was no one to work on these collective farms because people were starving. The horses, cows also were dying from starvation.

The collective farms were guarded by armed men. If someone wanted to take something, they were shot. In the spring of 1933 people already were eating pigweed, tree bark and grass.

From the state farm they sent tractors to till the soil and plant the wheat. Throughout the collective farms, people who could still walk were sent to work. For the workers there was a kitchen, a so-called field kitchen. They ate in the fields. They were not permitted to take any food home.

During the 1932 harvest the Great Famine started. The grain grew, the harvest was good, but you were not permitted to take one ear of wheat. The guards rode armed through the fields. They arrested everyone who took an ear and took them to the police. No one in the village knew where they took them.

Then, in early 1933, the Great Famine really took hold in the villages. To leave was forbidden. The bravest went into town and tried to get food. Upon their return, the police took everything back from them. People started dying along the side of the roads or lay swollen in their houses and died there.

There were cases where dead children were eaten by their parents. This was in the village of Haimany. People spoke of this. Those parents were arrested. In the village of Kosovka, Serhosk raion, they also had cooked meat from their children. They, too, were arrested.

I personally saw those who died of starvation in the villages of Ochaimany (Ivanivka raion), Petrivka (Serhosk raion), Kasivka (Serhosk raion) and in the village of Zadynivka (Serhosk raion) and in the village of Verkhnie Serhoske.

I saw the bodies of those who died from hunger. They were swollen and also very emaciated. I was sent with some people from the state farm by truck to pick up the dead bodies. When we entered the houses we had to cover our faces because there was such a putrid smell. Some of us had masks.

These bodies were thrown onto the trucks, like sheaves of wheat. We drove them to the fields, dug pits, dumped the bodies, poured lime on them and covered them up. There were several layers, one on top of the other. I drove the dump truck five times from the village to the fields where the pits had already been dug and the people were buried. There were 15 to 20 bodies thrown on each load. There were also those who rode horses and picked up people throughout the villages and buried them.

In the villages, there were people that survived, because they were able to work and could eat in the field kitchens. These were like army kitchens.

In the village of Yanivka, I did not see a single person alive.

The village of Kayira suffered because it was near the Dnipro (Dnieper). People near the Dnipro did not suffer as much because people caught the fish with their feet, and therefore survived. Such villages were: Hapatykha, Somova, Kakhovka, Nova Kakhovka, Kopani and Bereslav. In these towns there were fewer deaths.

Further away from the Dnipro there were more fatalities.

People were dying from Melitopil to Dnipropetrovske and from Piatykhatky to Kiev. So it was said.

In the areas were I stayed I heard of no incidents of the starving resisting the Communist regime. Whoever spoke up was arrested. There were informers everywhere. People whispered of the millions that starved. Savchuk, the director of the state farm, spoke of this also. He was an educated person, and continuously helped people. Also, agronomist Yakiv Mykhailovych Yaromen helped the starving. The head of the political section in the Doremburg state farm, now called Chkalove, were I worked was Jew, Moisei Fylypovych Portir. He also helped the Ukrainians and the workers.

My wife's brother, Ivan Fomovych Cherkas, died of starvation in the village of Torhayivka Nyzhnia. His wife and two children died also.

In all the neighboring state farms there was no starvation because those who worked there were considered state employees and the state was obliged to pay them for their work. But the collective farms were considered the property of the collective farmers and the state owed those who worked there nothing. So there was massive death on them after the state seized everything, regardless of the terrible consequences.



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The Rev. Alexander Bykovets, Detroit:

As a boy of 8 or 9, I remember well the autumn of 1932 and the winter and spring of 1933 in the city of Poltava where my father was a parish priest of the Resurrection Cathedral of the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church.

There was a grave shortage of food. There was no food in the state owned grocery stores, except for coffee made out of acorns from an oak tree. To survive the famine, our family was forced to depend on parishioners who were employed by the railroad, for it was possible for them to bring food from beyond the borders of Ukraine and to share it with us.

We were also acquainted with a very friendly woman, the wife of a Soviet official, who helped us with the food. She often placed some potatoes, both rotten and good, as well as beets and cabbage into a trash container so that I could collect it and bring it to my parents.

My mother would mix all of these ingredients together along with the acorn coffee and bake a sort of pancake using beeswax candles to grease the sauce pan. Once I heard someone shooting, and saw a wounded crow falling to the ground from the church steeple. Before anything else could get it, I pursued it, repeatedly striking it with snowballs until I had finally killed it. That evening, I had enjoyed crow dinner.

In the winter of 1933, my grandfather came to Poltava to get some food for his hungry family in the village. Somehow we managed to collect a few loaves of bread, some buckwheat and potatoes from our parishioners to give him, and he left for home, but at the railroad station, he was robbed and brought home nothing.

On the city streets, I saw many hungry peasants, men, women and children, begging for a piece of bread. Many of them perished from hunger and cold.

Groups of hungry people stood at the entrance to the Torgsin stores which were full of every kind of food, but one had to have gold, silver and foreign currency to purchase any of these foods. The very name of these special stores meant Business or Commerce with Foreigners which was abbreviated to Torgsin, the Russian abbreviation.

Of course, the so-called foreigners were part of the Muscovite regime in Ukraine which was using this famine not only to subdue the Ukrainian people, but also to rob them of all their valuable possessions, because hungry people were bringing to these special stores their wedding rings, earrings, gold and silver crosses and foreign currency, if they had any.

Since my aunt left Ukraine after the collapse of the Ukrainian National Republic in 1920 and then lived in France, my father used to correspond with her in French, and she was kind enough to put a five or 10 franc bill in every letter for us to use in buying food from the Torgsin. This contributed a great deal to our survival during the artificial famine of 1932-33 in Ukraine.

My grandparents were not so lucky. Both of them perished from hunger in the spring of 1933.


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Dr. Valentyna Sawchuk, Hamtramck, Mich.:

I was born in Sahaidak, a railroad station in the Poltava region, in 1925. This station had a small population, about a hundred homes. We didn't have a church or school. The nearest church was five kilometers from us, and I walked three kilometers to the seven-year school in Dmytrivka.

Dmytrivka had a collective farm where the people from Sahaidak belonged. Sahaidak had a water tower, and because of its importance to the railroad, all trains stopped here. We had a village council to which all the surrounding villages belonged.

Along the railroad tracks, not far from the station, stood the grain storage bins. The grain was stored there and transported to the major cities. Sahaidak boasted of a fine marketplace which stood in front of the railroad station. Three days a week, business boomed here - Wednesday, Friday and Sunday.

My father, Mychailo Tehimivich Riznychenko, and my mother, Olena I. Riznychenko, were not natives of the village. Both my parents originated from the Kharkiv region. They came to the Poltava region in 1921 because of the famine in the Kharkiv region. My parents owned no home or land. Selling needles, threads for embroidery, ribbons, babushkas and fabrics was their trade.

Private commerce was allowed during the NEP period. The merchants were required to have a license and pay taxes.

We lived in a rented home that belonged to a well-to-do farmer from Dmytrivka, Mr. Fedoriaka. During the collectivization, he was among the first ones to join the collective farm. In fact, all his buildings and his courtyard became the seat for the collective farm.

The house in Sahaidak, he gave to his oldest son Ivan. Ivan occupied half of this home, and we lived in the other half with a teacher, her young daughter and mother. A teacher's salary was very meager, so it was difficult for her to make ends meet. My parents helped her, and in return, during the famine, she rationed her school-funded bread with us.

Early in 1932, my father's business was heavily taxed. He had to liquidate everything in order to pay the huge tax. In one month, he again received the same amount of taxes. He immediately paid a visit to the council to clarify what he thought must be an error.

He soon grimly discovered there was no mistake, and if he didn't pay the tax, then he must join the collective farm or he will be stripped of his voting privileges.

He refused to join and lost his rights to vote. Having friends in Kiev who could help him, my father learned a new trade, photography. However, he was not allowed to work as a photographer, because you were not allowed to work privately. You had to work for an organization. So the famine of 1932-33 found my parents without jobs and voting rights.

One day a group of people came to look for grain. They knew we could not have any, because we were not farmers. However, they hastily searched the room and found nothing. My mother had wisely hidden 90 kilos of flour that was luckily undiscovered in one of the many empty trunks used for commerce that were piled against the wall.

For food supplied, my mother traded everything we owned from the business - materials, fabrics, babushkas, ribbons, etc. When that ran out, she traded all her heirloom jewelry in Torgsin in Poltava. 70 silver rubles, my gift from grandma, she traded for potatoes.

She was afraid to trade openly with gold money, because of the risk of being tortured and persecuted for it. However, our landlord, Mr. Fedoriaka, took our gold money and trade a goat for us. This goat helped us to survive.

Every day, we had less and less to eat. I would ask, "Mom, how come you give Dad the largest piece of bread, for me smaller, and you take the smallest," and she would answer, "I'm not hungry."

In spite of the fact that my dad had no job and voting privileges, they appointed him a deputy carrier. Every morning, he had to report to the village council and deliver messages to assigned people.

One morning he abruptly came home, took my mom along, and they locked me in the house. I saw how upset they were, and sat anxiously on the window sill awaiting their return. I saw many people running towards the railroad station from the village of Pivni.

They ran past my window through our courtyard, most of them being women. In a few hours, some of them were running back, dragging sacks of grain behind them. They were too weak to carry them.

My father later told me that a large number of people from surrounding villages came to the grain bins and in a fury looted the bursting bins. The guards could not contain them. However, additional troops were brought in from Poltava. People were trampled by horses, beaten, and many wounded. The grain was taken from them, and the mass was pushed to the marketplace.

In self defense, the people were bundled together. They were forcibly separated, beaten, arrested and taken to Poltava prison. Some were lucky and escaped with some grain, but on the whole, most were left with nothing.

The following day, by someone's command, they passed out a few pounds of peas per person, the irony being the grain bins bursting with wheat and other grain. In fact, wheat and grain were burning from spontaneous combustion, for if grain is not rotated and aired, it will burn.

This event was recorded in Pidhaynyi's book and also in Dr. Conquest's book, and I am a living witness to this event.


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Motria S.:

My name is Motria S. I was born in 1918 in the village of Pisky Radkivski near Kharkiv. I can't tell you the precise date when collectivization, dekulakization, or the famine began in our village. My parents had six children, and you could say they were poor, although they were considered to be middle peasants. But, when they refused to join the collective farm, they were renamed kulak sympathizers. That was the beginning of everything.

They took away our oxen and horse and eventually our cow, put father in prison and threw us out permi

[Oleg Grigoryev]

1. This article quotes Duranty all over the bloody place. If you haven't noticed, his pulitzer has been revoked.

I don’t care about him – what care about is Soviet archival sources the article uses –anything to confront them?

In regards to your quote – bring the census on –lets see what shows. Who was Stalin in 1939 on 1932 for that matter?

subject to execution or... a concentration camp for collective farmers who attempted to force others to leave the kolkhoz,

there is no such a thing in Soviet penal system

Graphic portraits of the horrors of village life emerge from the files of the Harvard University Refugee Interview Project, which was conducted during the early 1950s. It should be stressed that the interviewers were not particularly interested in the famine and that the responses were, therefore, made without any prompting in the course of respondents' stories of their life experiences. One rather typical account (case No. 128) is the following:

oh 1950 – the midst of the clod war –now I ma convinced.

Nor were such horrors confined to the countryside, as you claim Oleg.

how is your quote shows that –it talks about a village.

And, something from Khruschev's memoirs:

upon his transfer to Ukraine Khrushev asked for permission to execute 100000 men – not by names –by his discretion – does he writes that in his memories.

Out of Churchill's memoirs,

yes Churchill was very much in picture of internal Soviet polices –he received briefings every day –right form the Soviet government. Quoting Churchill on USSR it is like quoting Trotsky on Great Britain.

Considering that majority of your sources pre 1990 – and consequently did not have any access to Soviet documents – I am sorry their value is virtually nil –apart form eyewitnesses testimonies. And I especially liked that quote.:

The local population had produced enough food to feed itself, but the state had seized it, thereby creating a famine by an act of policy.

so what about the rest of the population –that was not local it was ok to Strave them? Becouse these is would have happened.

[Oleg Grigoryev]

Our main sources were the Politburo protocols,
including the osobye papki ("special files" - the highest secrecy
level), and the papers of the agricultural collections committee Komzag,
of the committee on commodity funds, and of Sovnarkom. The Sovnarkom records include telegrams and correspondence of Kuibyshev, who was head of Gosplan, head of Komzag and the committee on reserves, and one of the deputy chairs of Sovnarkom at that time.

any of your sources operates with taht?

[Galicia]

Nope Oleg, they can't

My accounts rely mostly on eyewitnesses. Newspaper reporters, most of whom were blacklisted, as they wrote against Stalin. So, let me get this straight. You believe, that the famine in the Ukraine was worth it, so we could feed the Russians. Yeah, real good arguement. Try growing grain for once in your lives. If the climate wills it, you die. You don't steal and murder.

If you want to be a sick bastard, go right ahead, I'm petitioning that this thread be closed and deleted. You're worthless. I still don't see how you can't admit that after two Government hearing before and after the Cold War, that the Ukrainian MANMADE famine did not exist.

Now, you still deny my acccounts. KHRUSCHEV SAID IT WAS TRUE. GORBACHEV SAID IT WAS TRUE. YOU ARE A BUMBLING IDIOT NOT TO BELIEVE IT.