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 have grain, and all the people that belonged to the corporation were arrested. The first kulak that was arrested in the village never came back. Then the children-you know, four or five [years old], I was at the time not quite ten years old-walked and cried and asked their mothers for bread, and they just took everyone away.
Senator DeCONCINI: Why didn’t they arrest your father, or did they ultimately ar¬rest him?
Mr. KASIIANENKO: No, they did not arrest him.
Senator DeCONCINI: Why didn’t they arrest him?
Mr. KASIIANENKO: Because he had run away.
Senator DeCONCINI: Where did he run? He went to the fields all the time?
Mr. KASIIANENKO: To the neighbor, any place.
Senator DeCONCINI: Any place he could hide?
Mr. KASIIANENKO: That is right. This is why I don’t remember him, because he was always on the go.
Senator DeCONCINI: Ms. Mazurkevich?
Ms. MAZURKEVICH: No questions.
Senator DeCONCINI: Mr. Weres? 1
Dr. WERES: Mr. Kasiianenko, you spoke of being in an orphanage for children whose parents had been lost in the famine. Do you know how extensive such or¬phanages were and also from your experience, what ultimately became of the children who were in those orphanages?
Mr. KASIIANENKO: Children that came from good parents and had a little bit of knowledge were well-behaved and sympathetic to each other. Some of them were ’street people’, especially girls. They had run away because there was no supervision as such. There was nobody to take proper care of us. If you are hungry, you will go any place for a piece of food. I would say about 20% maybe grew up and realized that it was a tragedy, and they became decent people. Maybe they didn’t belong in the Communist party, but decent family people, I would say.
Dr. WERES: Thank you.
Senator DeCONCINI: Any other questions?
(No response)
Thank you very much.
Our next witness is Oleksander Merkelo.
Dr. SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV: With the permission of the witness, I will read the testimony of Oleksander Merkelo.