mother would eat her ration if she saw her starving child looking pitifully at her. In 1933 the so-called “commercial bread” appeared in Kiev. You could buy a kilo for two and a half rubles. They would only let you buy one kilo a day, and the lines for this bread were so long that not every working person could wait so long. The police would take villagers from these lines, load them on trucks, and take them out of the city.

The so-called torgsin (acronym for “trade with foreigners”) appeared. For gold you could get all sorts of food and dry goods there. But how was one to get gold? Once my husband brought home a certificate and said he could buy some food with it at the torgsin. When I stared at him in amazement, he opened his mouth, and I saw he had steel fillings instead of gold ones.

Ever since the revolution Kiev had been full of orphans from age six to fifteen. Al¬though the government set up orphanages, the number of homeless orphans continued to grow, especially when dekulakization started and later when the famine began. Near the house where I lived there was a large building. The government converted this building into a so-called “collector” for homeless children caught on the streets, and who, after sanitary inspection, were sent to orphanages. When leaving my home, I would often see how trucks would pull up there and the police would take out the fil¬thy, bedraggled children who had been caught on the streets. A guard stood at the entrance and no one was permitted inside. During the winter of 1932-33, I often saw five or six times how in the early morning they took out of the building the bodies of half-naked children, covered them with filthy tarpaulins, and piled them onto trucks. Going as far as Artem Street, I would hear a loudspeaker (at that time there was one on every corner) blare out how children lived in horrible conditions in capitalist countries and what a wonderful life they led in our own Socialist Fatherland.

Mr. MARCHISHIN:- Thank you very much, Varvara. Your testimony will be a strong contribution to the record of the famine in the Ukraine. We appreciate it very much.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: Mr. Chairman, Congressman Mica asked a question: were there other sources of food and dry goods, other than the torgsin, during the famine? A question for Congressman Mica.
Ms. DIBERT (through interpreter): In stores you could only buy food according to special cards. There were a lot of things that you could buy without the cards.
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: This is my own question. Was this directed to foreigners, did foreigners get these certificates, is that how it worked?
Ms. DIBERT (through interpreter): All of the civil servants, all of the workers would receive these ration cards. The problem was that they were so paltry that they could not fulfill the needs of normal human beings. For foreigners there were other stores. The torgsin was for everyone, all that you were required was some sort of valuables: gold, diamonds, things of that sort, and then you could buy virtually anything that you wanted to, in terms of food.
Mr. MARCHISHIN: Okay.
Yes, I would like to ask Tatiana Pawlichka from Pennsylvania to join us and to present her testimony at this time.
Thank you very much, Ms. Dibert.