Part of the late James Mace’s library and archives. Cover of the 2nd Interim Report of the entire U.S. Congressional Commission on the Ukrainian Famine.

A list of the members of the commission, state representatives, senators, and others.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
Members of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine………………………..ii
Table of Contents iii
Hearing, San Francisco, California, February 10,1987……………………..1
Commissioners, Staff, and Witnesses Present………………………………2
Proceedings .3
Opening Statement by Senator Dennis DeConcini………………………….3
Statement Presented by Ms. Ulana Mazurkevich…………………………..4
Statement Presented by Dr. Oleh Weres……………………………………4
Testimony of Mr. Mykola Kostyrko of Sacramento, California…………….5
Testimony of Mr. Ivan Kasiianenko of Los Angeles, California…………..10
Testimony of Mr. Oleksander Merkelo………………………………………14
Testimony […]

Hearing, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, June 5, 1987………………………………………..107
Commissioners, Staff, and Witnesses Present…………………………………………….108
Proceedings……………………………………………………………………………………109
Opening Statement by the Hon. Benjamin Gilman…………………………………………109
Statement Presented by Ms. Ulana Mazurkevich………………………………………….110
Statement Presented by Ms. Anastasia Volker……………………………………………111
Testimony of Mr. Iwan Zinczenko of Cornwells Heights, Pennsylvania…………………111
Testimony of Mr. Yuri of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania………………………………………118
Statement of Mr. Danylo of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania…………………………………..121
Statement of Mr. Nicholas Chymych of Philadelphia, Pennsylvania……………………..125
Testimony of Mr. […]

Hearing in San Francisco, California: Basic Information.

COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SENATOR DENNIS DeCONCINI, Chairman MS. ULANA MAZURKEVICH, DR. OLEH WERES
OTHERS PRESENT:
DR. JAMES E. MACE, Staff Director
DR. OLGA SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV, Staff Assistant and Interpreter/Translator
WITNESSES PRESENT:
MR. MYKOLA KOSTYRKO , MR. IVAN KASHANENKO, MR. OLEKSANDER MERKELO, MR. OLEKSIY KEIS, MS. A. BUTKOVSKA, MS. ANNAS.

PROCEEDINGS
Senator DeCONCINI: Ladies and Gentlemen, the Commission on the Ukraine Famine will conduct a hearing at this time.
On my right is Commissioner Ulana Mazurkevich, who is from Philadelphia and has joined us today for testimony, and I will defer to her in just a moment for any state¬ment that she has. On my left is […]

called it genocide. It was his definition that was incorporated into the International Genocide Convention. That convention has been ratified by the Soviet Union, the United States, and many other countries. The Ukrainian Famine presents almost a textbook case of such collective victimization.
There was great lack of public awareness of exactly what took place in […]

of the Ukrainian people and the history of humanity. In doing so you will help prevent recurrences of the famine.
I would also like to thank the many people who have volunteered to help make this possible: the Ukrainian Orthodox Parish; the Ukrainian National Women’s League of America; Ukrainian-American Coordinating Committee; Americans for Human Rights in […]

police were unable to quell this revolt A detachment of the N.K.V.D, was sent out to put down the revolt How many peasants were killed on the spot, I don’t know; but every day, toward the evening, I went down to the railroad depot, and, with an aching heart, observed as groups of peasants from […]

Police were stationed around these streets and did not admit people who were poorly dressed or had shabby-looking vehicles. I walked along the main street and was amazed to see that the storefront windows were full of all sorts of merchandise. In those days all the stores were empty, and one could buy only poor […]

I witnessed yet another tragic phenomenon. Starving mothers brought their children into the city and left them on the streets, hoping that they would be saved if someone picked them up. There was a pediatric clinic not far from the place where I lived. On my way to work I passed by this clinic. During […]

After that, they waited for the arrival of a group of American farmers, who had been invited to observe the ‘attainments of the new life of the Ukrainian peasant. They were brought to that village because the experimental field of a seeding station was located nearby. The farmers were greeted by twenty or so well-dressed […]

Mr. KOSTYRKO: You didn’t have any possibility to ask somebody what was the state of the world. Some people, communist people, but very good people, told me this is very tragic story,
but we can nothing to do about it. I heard from my relative in Moseow-I told ray relative and he could do nothing. This […]

behind a wife and three children. They took absolutely everything: cows, pigs, every¬thing. There was nothing left for the wife to do. She sent her children away to fend for themselves, set fire to the house, and hanged herself.
Things were a little different in ray family. My father was always on the run during the […]

acquaintances. His name was Ivan Ostapenko. His mother put a noose around his neck and tried to strangle him, but he was stronger than she was and managed to break her hold But he kept the marks the ropes left on his throat for a long time.
I went to another neighbor’s house. They were young […]

Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much.
Mr. Kasiianenko, you indicated that your father was on the run. Was he considered an enemy of the State? What caused him to be chased all the time? Mr. KASIIANENKO: Yes. Yes.
Senator DeCONCINI: Why?
Mr. KASIIANENKO: Because they called us kulaks. He used to belong to a cor-poration-a village corporation. They […]

TESTIMONY OF MR. OLEKSANDER MERKELO
I don’t know what life was like in the Ukraine before the revolution, because in 1917 was only four years old. I remember the first years after the revolution and the period of the Civil War (1920-22) well, because I was already going to school at the
time.
Countless farms were destroyed. The […]

Until 1926-27, the Church also had been functioning normally, but from that time on, the clergy was persecuted and anti-religious propaganda flourished.
Kulaks and ‘N.E.P.-men’ were stripped of their voting rights and the doors of educa¬tional institutions were dosed to their children.
As a sixteen-year-old boy, this attitude of the government toward the hard-working peasantry was incomprehensible […]

village. He received packages regularly from Moscow, with food, salmon cakes, and
all be needed to live a comfortable life.
He set up a local activist group, comprised of semi-literate and sometimes criminal elements. If there weren’t enough of them, he mobilized other collective farmers, local teachers, and the like, and faithfully fulfilled his […]

On the seventh of August 1932, a law was passed concerning the theft of state property. This pertained to those collective farm workers who gathered up Men ears of wheat, or potatoes, on the collective fields after the reaping. There were instances when, (or a few gleanings, someone was sentenced to several years in prison […]

Still in my youth, I discerned from my own life and the lives of the collective farmers, and with my own intuition, that all these deeds were part of a planned crime against the Ukrainian people. The propaganda in the press read like a mockery of humanity.
I once had an opportunity to have a heart-to-heart […]

TESTIMONY OF MR. OLEKSIY KEIS OF SAN FRANCISCO, CALIFORNIA
I was born in 1912 on a farmstead (khutir) called Sad, located in the Donets River Basin, the Donbas. My parents were well-off peasants, and during the New Economic Policy (N.E.P.), my father had 50 hectares of land. He had a thresher, a tractor, hor-ses, cows, a […]

and-so had three poods of grain hidden away in his house. The grain search brigade would then virtually disassemble the entire house, down to the chimney, taking every¬thing apart until the grain was found.
The terrible famine began in the fall of 1932. My family was living in the town of Enakievo in the Donbas area. […]

two bags of weeds sustained my family through the famine. My mother would some¬times make a trip to Druzhkovo, where my sister lived. She would return with a bas¬ketful of potatoes and beets. But even the food obtained this way could not prevent my sisters and brother from swelling up a little. In fact, my […]

Bread lines could be seen everywhere during the famine. You had to wait in line for three days to get your particular allotment of bread. We would go to a so-called ‘gastronome’, which at that time was a commercial store where all of the provisions were sold at inflated prices. You could buy bread there, […]

Ms. MAZURKEVICH: You said that the police would check to see if the meat being sold was human or if it was dog meat Do you know of anyone that was arrested for selling human flesh?
Mr. KEIS: Every day I would go to work through a marketplace and almost every other day the police would […]

People were strictly forbidden to glean for kernels of grain left in the fields after the harvest This was considered stealing state property, and those caught doing it were subject to heavy punishment
Left without bread, the villagers at first subsisted on the remnants of garden vegetables. Then they ate the bark off the trees or […]

Usually, the trains continued on without stopping, and no one came to the aid of these starving children, who were dying in agony.
I once happened to see the police take away two large baskets containing newborn infants, which they had picked up on the streets. The starving mothers who had given them birth were unable […]

Ms. BUTKOVSKA: In the schools no one knew. The situation in schools was a very ticklish one because the children who went to the town schools were themselves half hungry and the teachers were obligated to say that everything was just fine. They would be asked by the pupils, “Why, if it is all fine, […]

such that no one knew about it My father could have been arrested for this and sent to Siberia. We were hungry almost all the time, but we shared all our food with them to help them survive the famine.
The hungry and the swollen wandered from house to house, from place to place, begging for […]

children like we were it was okay, whether the school was open or closed. I know we stayed home until the following September.
Senator DeCONCINI: For one year?
Ms. S.: No, that is from end of March to September.
Senator DeCONCINI: And then they reopened?
Ms. S: The schools reopened.
Senator DeCONCINI: When did the famine terminate, or when did […]

asked the Soviet leaders there about the history and the famine, and they said that was just an unfortunate chapter, and they blamed it on the capitalist and the Nazi regimes, their threat of invasions, and they had all the propaganda stories. So, this is going to be very helpful to us to publish this […]

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HEARING
The commission met at 2:00 p.m.
Friday, February 13,1987
Board of Supervisors
Auditorium
205 North Jefferson
Boulevard
Phoenix, Arizona

COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
SENATOR DENNIS DeCONCINI, Chairman DR. MYRON KUROPAS MS. ULANA MAZURKEVICH DR. OLEH WERES
OTHERS PRESENT:
DR. JAMES E. MACE, Staff Director
DR. OLGA SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV, Staff Assistant and Interpreter
WITNESSES PRESENT:
MR. IVAN M. MS. USTYNA PETRENKO MR. MYKOLA PETRENKO MR. LEONID PETRENKO MR. MAX HARMASH MS. NADIA HARMASH MR. WILLIAM KREWSUN MR. JACOB K. MR. IVAN PYLYPENKO MR. MICHAEL […]

PROCEEDINGS
Senator DeCONCINI: Today’s hearing of the Commission on the Ukraine Famine is one of a number of such hearings which Commission members have held in various cities around the country. In just a moment I’ll introduce my fellow Commissioners.
The Commission was created by Congress with a two-year mandate to study the Great Man-Made Famine of […]

not be sacrificed in vain. The world has to know about it, and its witnesses, the sur-vivore that have come here to testify, they will be a living testimony of what occurred SO years ago. Thank you.
Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you. The Commissioner on my immediate right is from Chicago, Mr. Kuropas.
STATEMENT PRESENTED BY DR. MYRON […]

Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you, Commissioner. Let me introduce quickly Jim Mace, the staff director here who is with us today. Jim, thank you, and Dr. Olga Samilenko who has done an excellent job in translating and helping us here, and we ap¬preciate it Is there another staff member here whose name I don’t know? He’s […]

from hunger that it would pull the plow a short distance and then stop, too weary to go further.
Our workers asked the peasants why the beets had not been weeded earlier. The peasants replied that there was no one in the village of Terny to weed the beets, be¬cause everyone had died of hunger. Our […]

In 1934 I was taken to work at a concentration camp in Byelorussia. The people in this camp were engaged in building the Stalin line. This line was a line of defense against the Germans stretching from the Baltic to the Black Sea. All of the workers in the camp where I had been taken […]

In 1929 the Ukrainian Autocephalous Church was forced to proclaim its self-liquida¬tion which marked the period of the destruction of Ukrainian Orthodox churches in Ukraine, and then Stalin engineered the famine of 1932-33 in order to quote/unquote, ‘tie the bag’, and he succeeded.
He said that if he destroyed the politically aware segment of the peasant […]

lion of a kulak at that time, and what proportion of the population of your village was
so classified?
Mr. M.: Kulak means they start the collectivization, people doesn’t want to go, and at that time, my father was educated, and why he doesn’t come, they say he’s a kulak. They come to him and said I […]

We were taken 30 miles away to a small village near a railroad station where dekulakhed people were gathered from eight nearby villages. We were kept there a longtime. They fed us little, and no one bothered us. Each had to get food any way he could After a short while, my grandfather and two […]

returned from the mine in Donbas, where he had found work and lodgings. He then took me, our surviving child and two of his brother’s children. Then he took in my mother and her children, and so by the miracle of God, we survived.
Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much for that testimony. I hate to […]

for sale in the mine. The miners were able to buy the vegetables with their salary, but those who worked in the garden received 600 grams of bread per day, which was not enough for them to eat.
I remember how these women would stand in line in the cafeteria with their small bowls and cry […]

died, as did her younger brother. At the same time as starvation killed so many, five families died out from typhus.
TESTIMONY OF MR. LEONID PETRENKO OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA
I was bora in April 1928 and was five years old during the famine. I remember when our cow was taken from the cattle shed. In order to […]

bread which came from Ukrainian wheat, and Moscow had plenty. The wheat was grown in Ukraine, but we had a lack of it
Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you. Does your father have any estimation of while he was there how many people he thinks died?
Mr. PETRENKO: He couldn’t even quote any figures for that, because he […]

I saw the starving population for the first time in the winter of 1932-33. These were mainly groups of emaciated people moving from agricultural areas in the direction of big cities in search of food.
They looked starved and wore rags. Once a day, the cook in our village prepared soybean soup and salt which was […]

Mr. HARMASH: I wonder myself. I think that the officials, they knew the condi¬tions. They could do nothing, but they had to fulfill orders from the center to send somebody to the village to organize them working on the fields, and there was nobody.
They knew it
I was afraid, of course, for months, but the punishment […]

Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much for your testimony. Dr. SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV: With the permission of the witness, I will read the testimony of Nadia Harmash.
TESTIMONY OF MS. NADU HARMASH OF SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
At the end of 1931 and throughout the year 1932, I resided in the city of Dnipropetrovsk. When I got married and my […]

ing it Then they went outside without a word, like shadows and lay down on the ground.
The next day they were not there any more. The watchman said that in the morning five bodies were picked up. He complained that the foreman did not want to give him the horse and help which he […]

Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Were they adopted later on? Did some families adopt
them?
Ms. HARMASH: Yes, they may have been adopted, or something-even toe parents would come back and find them, but that didn’t happen often.
Some were adopted, but most of them would be educated, brought up, and of course, educated in the spirit […]

Dr. KUROPAS: How was the distribution of the bread rations for the city people handled? Were there ration cards?
Ms. HARMASH: There were rations. City people got rations of bread, but you have to get up about 4:00 in the morning and stand in line to get your bread.
Dr.KUROPAS: Did everybody living in the city have […]

probably. We don’t know exactly, but it seems so, that it was done to absolutely get rid of any kind of resistance by hunger. Hunger is a very strong and terrible thing.
Mr. HARMASH: Lessen resistance, very important to remember, Ukrainian resis¬tance.
Ms. HARMASH: Because since Ukraine is a very rich country in comparison with other part […]

STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM KREWSUN OF SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA
But, from the very beginning, I would like to thank United States Senate and Chair¬man, Senator DeConcini, and Commissioners for raising this issue so that more people know what happened in 20th century that never happened any place ever before Com¬munists came to power continues today.
I was […]

cow politics and believed what the government said, that the whole country was in trouble.
Villagers regarded the Communist system with great suspicion. These seizures brought the villages into a bad condition which resulted in the famine which began in 1932.
On the streets of the town there appeared swollen bodies, swollen people. In the marketplaces, there […]

farm life. One day, we went out to the field in the collective farm for the weeding of sugar beets.
The women collective farm workers who were weeding the sugar beets were talking among themselves, that their children are missing somewhere. One woman was saying, my son, my little son has disappeared, and no matter where […]

Dr.KUROPAS: Very quickly, how old was the boy?
Mr. K.: Twenty-two to twenty-four probably, a very good looking boy.
Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much. Let me just say that the next witness will be Mr. Pylypenko. We will hear from him. We do have several witnesses that asked to be heard, the Kuzins, Mike and Halyna, […]

The picture of hunger was the same in Poltava as it was in the other cities in the Uk¬raine at that time. This is the main aspect of my testimony.
Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much.
Mr. PYLYPENKO: I had a wife and two children and received 200 grams of bread a day. We also had a […]

Commissioners, do you have any questions of the witnesses? Thank you very much. Let’s proceed and see if we can’t finish. Next is Mrs. Tetiana Kysil.
TESTIMONY OF MS. TETIANA KYSIL OF PHOENIX, ARIZONA
I was bom in Poltavshchyna. I left the village of my birth in 1932. I was 13 years old. I worked there, left […]

Senator DeCONCINI: I do want to thank you, Dr. Tsvetkov, again, for the outstand¬ing work you’ve provided for the Commission, the translation, and the orderly manner as well as Dr. Mace, and thank you, ladies and gentlemen.
(Whereupon, the hearing was adjourned at 4:10 p.m.)

HEARING AND MEETING
The commission met at 10:35 a.m.
Wednesday, April 30,1987
Rayburn House Office Building, Room 2359
Washington, D.C.

COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
HON. DANIEL A. MICA, Chairman
HON. WILLIAM BROOMFIELD
AMBASSADOR EUGENE DOUGLAS
MR. BOHDAN FEDORAK
HON. BENJAMIN GILMAN
HON. DENNIS HERTEL
DR. MYRON KUROPAS
MR. DANIEL MARCHISHIN
MS. ULANA MAZURKEVICH
MS. ANASTASIA VOLKER
DR. OLEH WERES
OTHERS PRESENT: I
DR. JAMES E. MACE, Staff Director
DR. OLGA SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV, Staff Assistant and Interpreter/Translator
MR. WALTER PECHENUK, Staff Assistant
WITNESSES PRESENT:
DR. NINA STROKATA MR. IVAN KONONENKO

PROCEEDINGS
Congressman HERTEL: Good morning. We’ll call the Commission meeting to order. I thank all the members for being here this morning. I realize how busy their schedules are and am very sorry about the delay. The House is trying to finish some legislation today and so they had a vote on the Journal at ten […]

My parents, apparently realizing that their ‘God will provide’ threatened to diminish their authority in my eyes, one day let in a boy who was both cold and hungry. They fed him and warmed him up. The next day, the boy left our dwelling to continue his quest for bread. Some time after that, I […]

In Western Ukraine at this time, there was still active resistance to Soviet rule. At the time of renewed occupation, it was easy to create issues around the new famine and new deportations. The retribution against the farmers in Ukraine had barely been completed when the Stalinist regime pronounced an end to the rationing. This […]

When people heard about this, they went around concealing their smirks to show their disbelief that the government was making a show of being worried about the selection of food when there was no food anywhere.
Congressman HERTEL: Thank you very much. Any other comments you’d like to make at this time?
Dr. STROKATA (through interpreter): As […]

Congressman HERTEL: As an assumption could we say that, without a number, a
lot of people in the Ukraine do know about the famine and very few people outside of
the Ukraine know about the famine? ,
Dr. STROKATA (through interpreter): When one generation succeeds another, it s a normal process to have the young forget what happened many […]

in which it was included would culminate in the destruction of the Bolshevik system in the Ukraine.
And my parents hoped that perhaps I didn’t have to go to school in Soviet schools, which turned children into conformists. But because it turned out that Moscow suc¬ceeded in squelching the resistance in Ukraine, it actually safeguarded the […]

Congressman MICA: Will the gentlelady suspend a moment? The House has a vote on. I guess the other members have already had to leave. But I would just like to interject this comment I commend the Commission for the work they’re doing and our staff. They’ve done nearly 180,200 oral interviews already and the work […]

rainians were the predominant population. At least two-thirds of the population was
Ukrainian. .
So, I think we have to clarify this. I hope that we can, that the famine of 1932/33 is considerably different than these other periodical hungers.
Dr. STROKATA (through interpreter): What you say is true, but the constant quest for food is creating a type […]

When I became that first year a teacher of the third graders, I felt like I was related to him because I knew he had been very close to my father. School began in Septem¬ber 1932. I remember those little ones, boys and girls. I knew they did not have enough food. Most were skinny, […]

In 1935, he died. 1935,1 came to mother and local Communists hated my father so, and they arrested me because they heard I so successful in Zaporizhzhia Pedagogical Institute.
I was arrested on August 23, 1936. For months, the great Russian police inves¬tigated me in city Dnipropetrovsk. They tried to connect me with another student. I […]

Ukrainian, like Visti Vtikh or Komunist, and I had to read them while they eating. This was in spring 1933. It was meant to educate them and the topic was always political. How wonderful was the Soviet political system, how lucky we are to have a leader like Joseph Stalin. And I read them. I […]

thing hidden underground, they would make a different noise. And if they found these things, forget it, that man was finished. They warned every farmer, “Don’t do that” But some farmers tried to save their families by hiding food.
Dr. MACE: Who led-this procurement brigade in your village, who led it? You mentioned that a Communist […]

Mr. Kononenko, thank you very much for your testimony. We will proceed now to the business portion of our meeting. Mr. KONONENKO: Thanks so much for listening to me. I feel something has been contributed for human society all over the world. Thank you. Ms.
MAZURKEVICH: Thank you.
Jim, you’re going to lead […]

It is extremely important to recall that when the individuals who lived through the
famine left the Soviet Union, a hostage system was legally embodied in the Soviet
penal code, whereby a relative of a ‘traitor’-and flight abroad was considered treason
under Soviet law under Stalin-the relative of a traitor could be punished with up to
ten years imprisonment […]

have half a loaf of bread sitting on the stove, you take that too. Clearly, this was not an attempt to merely procure produce for the state, but very quickly assumed a markedly punitive character on the part of those who carried it out
The school teachers were, I think, the most tragic of all figures […]

mission work that the Commissioners arc most familiar with, since we attended, the majority of them. I was wondering if, perhaps, we could ask Dr. Mace to just sum¬marize that part of his report and concentrate more on the diplomatic dispatches of the progress of the Commission’s report which are matters that we are not […]

Congressman GILMAN: I might mention that at the Glen Spey hearing, there was some good coverage locally but nothing in the New York metropolitan papers, and we were hoping that we would have picked up something in the New York metropolitan
papers.
But, for the southern part of New York State, we had some good regional coverage.
Can […]

Soviet type regimes, set at the time of the Great Famine of 1932-33. And, the fact that the manipulation of all of the psychological, physiological and political elements that intend the use of food as a weapon and a lever on human behavior is traceable, is noticeable in one Soviet-style regime after the other.
Now, when […]

create a Europe free of Jews than to obey ordinary human decency, which includes the notion that people have a right to live and groups have a right to exist
In the Soviet case, likewise, one of the most important themes in the history of die Ukrainian Famine is, precisely this type of dehumanization, which is […]

And, the type of material which is gathered there is very much like the type of material you’ve heard in the course of hearings, with the exception that it’s a great deal more detailed.
I think it’s something that’s going to be very much an important part of our legacy, but given the very severe time […]

supply difficulties exist, I was in a district with great food supply difficulties. In the vil¬lage of Novokrasne, Okniansy District, in Moldavia…,” (the portion of Moldavia then in the U.S.S.R, was an A.S.S.R. which was part of the Ukrainian S.S.R.), and he quotes the person there saying. This is the reason, it is because they […]

Under pressure from Moscow, the Ukrainian S.S.R, authorities issued a decree in November 1932 prohibiting collective farm members from creating any reserves or dis¬tributing any food to its members until all obligations to the state had been met. That means, the legalized seizure of the last pound, the last kernel of grain.
December 6, 1932, a […]

seem that the only plausible motive for the otherwise incomprehensible policy of starv¬ing millions of people to death in peacetime was to break them as a national organism.
I think that this pretty well sums up where we are in terms of our documentary re¬search. If there is anything we should talk about in order […]

Dr. KUROPAS: I, from the very beginning, have felt that one of the major roles of our Commission would be to make the American educational system aware of the famine, as quickly as possible, and to that end, with the help of the staff, we were able to put together this Curriculum and Resource Guide […]

Dr. KUROPAS: The one thing that I would suggest to you, if you do it on the scale that we did it in Chicago, it really helps to have a non-Ukrainian group be the major sponsor. We were able to go in Chicago to the American Jewish Committee, and they agreed to sponsor the seminar […]

Dr. MACE: That it exists. Dr.KUROPAS: Right Dr. MACE: That can very easily create it
Dr. KUROPAS: Right And, all we need to do is to add it to the packet Dr. MACE: One of the best things, I think, about the guide that you put together is, especially, in the flexibility of its format You […]

state say that this is something they want in all the schools, there is a greater likelihood that textbook publishers will begin to write about it.
Mr. MARCHISHIN: I just wanted to ask as far as the teachers, I’m not familiar with teachers’ operations either, but do I have the wrong impression, but that up to […]

I think that it would be extremely valuable if we could have a teachers’ conference sponsored by that Commission in the State of New Jersey.
Other states have, you know, other specific things. Dr. Samilenko-Tsvetkov was able to address a major group of teachers, prominently a Jewish group, about the famine and what we were doing […]

Dr. MACE: Yes. Well, obviously, the first part, which will be the last to be written, will be the Executive Summary, which can be anywhere from two pages to 100 pages. It win probably be about 15 to 20 pages. That’s extremely important That’s what gets read, that’s the basic findings of the Commission.
The body […]

So, that’s going to be available, I hope, in the near future. I apologize because we are way behind schedule on that But, hopefully, that will be available in the next few months, at least for calendar year 1986.
Dr. WERES: What about these diplomatic dispatches, this sort of documentation?
Dr. MACE: Again, as annexes to the […]

Ms. MAZURKEVICH: So, how many are in the English language? Dr. MACE: I think we have two that are in the English language.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: That’s it? Dr. MACE: That’s it
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Two in the English language.
Dr. MACE: Yes. We may have a few more.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Well, we have to have more.
Dr. MACE: Fine.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Well […]

Dr. WERES: May I make a suggestion. Even though I’m not familiar with the body of the oral testimony that Sue Ellen collected, I would expect that there is a fair amount of redundancy between that documentation and the hearing testimony.
Dr. MACE: True.
Dr. WERES: Perhaps, it would be possible to arrange the publication of the […]

Dr.MACE: Yes.
Dr. KUROPAS: So, it would be something that would add credibility to everything
we’ve been saying.
Ms. VOLKER: A question. Therefore, $50,000 would be worthwhile to have that material in English available to future reporters, whatever, and certainly, wouldn’t that lead to the extension of the Commission beyond our limited time so the Ukrainian community could […]

edited, and then put into a desk-top publisher, and then that would be rearranged so it can be printed easily. So, you will cut costs there.
But, the translation in itself will be very expensive.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: But, some of the-how many testimonies have you transcribed so far?
Dr. MACE: Transcribed? We have about 130 to 150 transcribed.
Ms. […]

would be a little better because then you’d have some market value here, and the likelihood of more people reading it
Dr. MACE: Yes, that’s very possible. In fact, since one of the inevitable things about our mandate is that I will be unemployed in a year and will have to do some¬thing, that is, something […]

Dr. MACE: Which means-
Mr. MARCHISHIN: And, how about universities? This would include universities?
Dr. MACE: Yes, most-Mr. MARCHISHIN: libraries?
Dr. MACE: -of the repositories of government documents are universities. Most major universities are officially designated as repositories of government documents. Mr. MARCHISHIN: And, it also includes public libraries, I assume?
Dr. MACE: We can send it to […]

Mr. MARCHISHIN: No, no doubt about it No doubt about it But, one of the primary purposes of the campaign to establish the Commission was to produce documentation that would be included in the curriculum material, specifically, textbooks.
Dr. MACE: Yes. . .
Mr. MARCHISHIN: And, that’s another project, granted. I mean, the Commission will produce documents […]

lifetime of the Commission. We’re not going to get these incorporated into the textbooks in a year, or two years, or five years. We may get a couple of them within five years.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: You know what we should do? We should plan an all-day meeting some time in the near future, because these two […]

Mr. MARCHISHIN: I’ve been trying to think about commemorating the famine, and we don’t have a date of commemorating the famine. I don’t believe we have a kind of official date for commemorating the famine. And, you know, the Holocaust, they have a date. The Armenian genocide, they have a date. Somehow there should be […]

Mr. MARCHISHIN: Well, it would be worthwhile. I think it might be interesting to see if the Ukrainian Helsinki members, how they reacted to his recommendation. You know, I think—
Dr. KUROPAS: Jim, this is something that we can discuss at a business meeting that we are going to have in Detroit
I’d like to suggest one […]

bit more widely available and in better English, than The White Book on the Black Deeds of the Kremlin Because, unfortunately, very few people in the field of Soviet studies ever read The Black Deeds of the Kremlin, even though it is probably the best compilation of eyewitness material in any language, even if it […]

Dr.KUROPAS: All right Does anybody have anything they’d like to ask?
Dr. WERES: Yes, there is still a question dangling about things in the nature of scholarly publications resulting from this and, basically, what are the, you know, major advances to the branch of the Ukrainian history that have been made here on the work of […]

As to money, we’ve spent about $100,000, which means that at our current rate we 11 run out of money about two years after our mandate.
Dr. WERES: Well, Dr. Mace, I think you’ve just accomplished what’s never been accomplished in this town before. Usually it works the opposite way from the ex¬perience.
Dr. MACE: Now, as […]

Dr. WERES: Myron, on that subject, well, at the risk of offending Ms. Volker, could we do that in Chicago rather than Detroit? It would mean one additional public member traveling, you know, other than the other way, but it’s Chicago -
Dr.KUROPAS: Well, two, because -
Dr. WERES: Yes, but then you don’t travel But, Chicago, […]

Dr. KUROPAS: Yes. We have a motion from the -Dr. WERES: Second.
Dr. KUROPAS: Okay. This meeting is now adjourned. (Whereupon, the meeting was adjourned at 2:09 p.m.).

HEARING
The commission met at 10:30 a.m.
Friday, June 5,1987
Superior Court of Pennsylvania, Courtroom 3, Chestnut and 9th Streets
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania

COMMISSIONERS PRESENT:
HON. BENJAMIN GILMAN, Chairman MS. ULANA MAZURKEVICH,
MS. ANASTASIA VOLKER
ALSO PRESENT:
DR. JAMES. E. MACE, Staff Director
DR. OLGA SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV, Staff Assistant and Interpreter/Translator
WITNESSES PRESENT:
MR. IWAN ZINCZENKO
MR. YURI
MR.DANYLO
MR. NICHOLAS CHYMYCH
MR. IVAN ORZHANSKY
MS. ANNA P.
MS. MARGARITA BORZAKIVSKA
MS. LARYSA DONCHUK
MS.LYDIA A.

PROCEEDINGS
Congressman GILMAN: Ladies and gentlemen, our hearing on our Famine Com¬mission will come to order, and I welcome you to our hearing.
I would like to first introduce to you our Commission member who sits to my left, Anastasia Volker of Detroit, and the Commission member who sits to my right, Ulana Mazurkevich of Philadelphia, As […]

The continued Soviet denial of what occurred in the Ukraine, a strategy of denial which began with the seizure of crops and which continues to this day, also tells us much about the techniques of denial and disinformation which are still routinely employed by totalitarian governments.
I would also like to take this opportunity to briefly […]

Dr. ROSEN: I just want to say that one of the purposes is to see that the school dis¬tricts receive the information and include it in their curriculum, and that certainly, I will do everything possible to do so; because what we call-it really is not even collec¬tive victimization. If s collective murder and, unfortunately, […]

The Bolsheviks, led by Lenin and Trotsky, aided by Ukrainian Communists, defeated the army of the Ukrainian National Republic (U.N.R.). First they destroyed the big landowners who had from fifty to one hundred and more hectares of land. The majority of these landowners were shot, except for those who managed to escape abroad. This was […]

dustrialization could they achieve from the half glass of corn which they took from my
neighbor?
In the winter of 1932-33 all the villagers in my village got from the village Soviet a list of what and how much had to be given to the state. Everyone was treated the same and repeatedly had to hand over […]

We children spent the entire summer of 1932-33 on the stove, while mother, like a bird, would bring us anything she could find. In May of 1933 my sister, and I went to the meadows outside the town to collect sorrel, and came upon one house. We saw that it was empty. Snakes were even […]

Congressman GILMAN: They resisted the collectivization.
Mr. ZINCZENKO: Yeah. My village had not belonged to a landlord, a member of the gentry. In Ukraine there were villages where the Russian tsar would send some general, and he would oversee the land and people; but my village was not one of these. Congressman GILMAN: Excuse me. Would […]

Mr, ZINCZENKO: Yes. And they sent them to Siberia. At the time of the famine, my grandfather lived with us in Popivka, but my father lived in Donbas.
He was—I don’t know how you would say it—
Dr. SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV: A strong middle peasant
Mr. ZINCZENKO: Yes. Another category was the poor peasant who was much poorer. They Joined […]

Congressman GILMAN: The collective farms weren’t too good at that time? I’m going to ask if our fellow Commissioners, Ms. Mazurkevich, Anastasia—
Ms. VOLKER: Anastasia is fine. Yes, I have a question. I did not quite under¬stand your statement on the involvement of the priest in your village. Was the priest one of the villagers or […]

TESTIMONY OF MR. YURI OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
At the end of the summer of 1930,1 was six-and-a-half years old. We lived in the city of Donetsk, formerly Stalino. My father decided to visit his family in the village of Hiunivtsi, which was part of the Bulgarian colony in the south of Ukraine in Tavriches-ky Province near […]

This it what had become of the farm products and possessions of the farmer which had once been valued so highly.
Congressman GILMAN: Thank you. Mr. Yuri, is that your statement that you gave to the staff? Mr. YURI: Yes. Congressman GILMAN: It’s been translated, and we’ll make that part of our
record.
Mr. Yuri, what […]

tory which was manufacturing agricultural machinery, and he was general manager over there. So he asked me if I wanted to-at this time I was nine-and-a-half years old. He asked me if I wanted to go and see the factory. So I was glad, you know, and he took me around and showed me everything.
Then […]

The next witness is Mr. Danylo. I would like to note the presence today also of one of our other Commission member’s representatives. Congressman Hertel is repre¬sented today by Greg Hawkins, who has joined us during the hearing. We thank you for participating today.
Mr. Danylo, would you please raise your right hand
(Whereupon, Mr. Danylo was […]

Congressman GILMAN: Thank you, Mr. Danylo, for your statement Mr. Danylo, did you live on a farm during this time at all? Mr. DANYLO: Yes.
Congressman GILMAN: Was that the family farm? Mr. DANYLO: Yes, family farm.
Congressman GILMAN: Were you raising -what were you raising on this farm? Mr. DANYLO (through interpreter): Many different kinds of […]

Mr. DANYLO (through interpreter): You returned to the village where your parents were living after your prison sentence. Is that correct? Mr. DANYLO: Yes.
Congressman GILMAN: What village was that? Mr.DANYLO (through interpreter): Zazulie. Congressman GILMAN: In what part of the Ukraine is Zazulie? Mr. DANYLO (through interpreter): In the Poltava region.
Congressman GILMAN: When you returned […]

statement If we have time, well try to put you on the list of witnesses today. If you’d like to be a witness, please let one of our staff people know, but in order to have an or¬derly process, please withhold comments. Mr. Mace.
Dr. MACE: Was it possible for individuals to […]

TESTIMONY OF MR. NICHOLAS CHYMYCH OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
At the time of the famine I was living in town but had a sister who still lived in my native village of Verhuny. From her I discovered there was a famine in the villages, but it was impossible to either send food or take food to the […]

Congressman GILMAN: Thank you for your statement, Mr. Chymych. Mr. Chymych, is that your full name?
Mr. CHYMYCH (through interpreter): Yes, it is. I would gladly answer any ques¬tions.
Congressman GILMAN: I’ll be pleased to discuss the statement with you. Mr. Chymych, where in the Ukraine was your […]

Mr. CHYMYCH (through interpreter): They were all dekulakized but in several dif¬ferent ways. Some people had their land property taken away from them but could live in villages. Other people had their property taken away but were transported to another village but not outside of the territory of the Ukraine. Still other people were considered […]

Mr. CHYMYCH (through interpreter): I worked in a chemical factory where I did in fact get plenty of food Because the work that I did involved the manufacture of chlorine which was considered dangerous, I was given good food, including a liter of milk a day. Ms. VOLKER: The question: could he share that with […]

Mr. CHYMYCH (through interpreter): I cannot say this in one word. I need an hour. Many, many different kinds of methods. I was neither a Party member nor a member of the Youth League. Because I was not a member of the Komsomol Youth League or the Communist Party, I could get around many of […]

We now have a time problem. We’re supposed to wind up our hearing by one o’clock, and we still have four witnesses. So I’m going to ask if we can limit each wit¬ness, since there’s forty minutes left, to about a ten minute period of time. And I call the next witness, Ivan Oransky. Ivan […]

agriculture, to get rid of private capitalist property, and to make society fortunate and
socialist
The wounds of the people healed slowly. In 1937 during summer vacation my father, and I stopped in front of a house in the village of Prokhorivka located on the Dnieper River. The windows and the doors were boarded up with pieces […]

Mr. ORANSKY (through interpreter): The city was very much differentiated in terms of who got food and who did not get food. There were people who belonged to the Party, the civil servants and people like that There were many factories and in¬dustrial plants in Kharkiv, and the workers who worked the hardest physically received […]

Congressman GILMAN: Would you please read the statement.
TESTIMONY OF MS. ANNA P.
I was born and lived in the Kirovohrad region of Ukraine. In my village, people
began to be arrested in 1931, and many people disappeared. Not long thereafter
people began to flee the village. All that were finally left were the aged […]

Congressman GILMAN: And did you live on a farm in that village?
Ms. P. (through interpreter)! Everybody had their own private plot of land and fanned that plot
Congressman GILMAN: And you were farming at that time?
Ms, P. (through interpreter): There was some discussion about what we mean by farm. So it was much smaller than farms […]

Dr. MACE: Just one brief one. You mentioned ‘enemies of the people’ and of the collective farm movement, who were members of the collective farm.
Ms. P. (through interpreter): The collectivization process worked as follows: first, the people that were considered kulaks were deported, and then you were left with so-called middle peasants and poor peasants […]

beets swam around here and there. We didn’t even get salt, because there wasn’t any
salt
I became sick with scurvy because of a lack of nourishment My gums bled, and my teeth were all loose. The disease was already in its third stage, which brings a person close to death. Every day the dentist smeared my […]

Congressman GILMAN: Was your family in agriculture? Was your family in farm¬ing? Ms. BORZAKIVSKA: No. My father was a bookkeeper in that city. He got 45
rubles a month for the entire family. It was not enough.
Congressman GILMAN: Actually then, urban dwellers were a little better off than
the farmers. Isn’t that true?
Ms. BORZAKIVSKA: […]

TESTIMONY OF MS. LARYSA DONCHUK OF PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
I was born in the region of Poltava on September 18, 1908 and was 24 years old when the famine began in 1932. As the daughter of a Ukrainian Orthodox priest, I belonged to what the Soviet state called the ‘foreign class element9. As a priest’s daughter, I […]

Congressman GILMAN: Did your parents actually receive the bread that you mailed to them in Poltava?
Ms. DONCHUK: Yes. They used to receive it. I would help them out.
Congressman GILMAN: And that’s the only way they survived?
Ms. DONCHUK: Yes.
Congressman GILMAN: Thank you. I ask our Commissioners, Ms. Mazurkevich?
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: No questions.
Congressman GILMAN: Commissioner Volker?
Ms* […]

There were also the so-called ‘closed co-operative stores’ (zakryti rozpredil’nyky) for the Party elite, the military elite, and the N.K.V.D. Thus, the urban population could not in any way help those who were coming to the city, those who were exhausted, fainting in the open and dying right in the streets, in people’s yards and […]

We returned to Kharkiv at daybreak, but we were not allowed to go home. We were taken to an institute, despite the feet that we were hungry and dirty. When government officials arrived, an errand girl told me that I had to go to a special depart¬ment The manager asked me what I had seen. […]

Ms. A.: Yes. They forced us to go. Not asked us to go, but forced. You come to work, or you come to your school. They just ordered you.
Congressman GILMAN: But did they tell you why you had to go out there and work?
Ms. A.: They told us, to help - to help […]