If not, I would like to go on. Sue Ellen mentioned that there are a few anonymous testimonies, but we also have the pleasure of non-anonymous personal testimonies. And we have, I think, four of them here with us today.

And I would like to ask first Varvara Dibert, who is presently living in Silver Spring, Maryland, to come forward, and to please read the testimony.

Sue Ellen will read the testimony for Varvara. Please come forward.

TESTIMONY OF MS, VARVARA DIBERT

In 1932 and 1933 Kiev seemed like a paradise to nearby villagers who had been stripped of all they had by the Soviet government. And no wonder: some villages were dying out completely, except for those who still had the courage and strength to flee. There were cases where mothers had gone mad and killed a child to feed the rest of the family. So thousands of villagers flocked to the city of Kiev. Many of the weak ones sat or lay down by buildings and fences, most never to get up again. Trucks, driven by policemen or Communist Youth League members mobilized for that purpose, went around picking up bodies or carrying those still alive somewhere out¬side the city limits. It was especially terrible to see mothers whose faces had turned black from hunger with children whose little faces had wrinkled up like baked apples, children who could no longer cry, but only squeal, moving their lips in an attempt to find sustenance where there was none. People sought salvation and found death. I saw these things as I walked to work through the Haymarket on Pidvilna Street near the Golden Gates and Volodymyr Street.

No one in Kiev had the right to allow even their closest relatives to stay the night in their residences. One had to go to the building manager with a certificate and get it stamped with a date indicating the length of the stay. For most villagers, particularly the men and boys, such certificates were not easy to get. Single women and girls were more fortunate. Sometimes they were able to get jobs as servants for party people and thereby acquire union cards, even without residency certificates. Later they could even attend evening courses and get permanent jobs. This was sometimes done not only by villagers but also by women of the intelligentsia who had been denied employ¬ment because their husbands had been arrested as so-called class enemies of the people or because of their own “nonproletarian” class origins. I knew of four such cases of the latter from among my own relatives, and my aunt in this way saved six women, two of whom had already begun to swell up from hunger.

Townspeople tried in every possible way to help relatives who were living in the countryside, but it was not easy. Workers and officials in Kiev received ration cards, but the rations were so small that even some of them began to swell up and even die. Only those allowed to use the so-called “closed distribution points” were able to get as much food as they needed. They had enough of everything. They were the members of special organizations and the party but not even all party members were so for¬tunate. Civil servants got 400 grams of bread per day and another 200 grams for each dependent. Factory workers got 500 grams per day, while workers at military factories got 800. Some millet, sugar, and fat was also given out. Today some people may say that 400 grams per day does not constitute a famine, but this is because we have other things to eat besides bread and don’t need as much of it. And in those days, what