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 KUROPAS

Senator, it’s a deep honor to be here today. I am impressed with the wonderful state of Arizona, primarily because of the weather right now, but also because of the fact that I had an opportunity, along with Dr. Mace, yesterday to visit with various educators at the State Department of Education to encourage them to see if there was some possibility for including the facts about the famine within the state social studies curriculum.

The response we received there was very, very positive, and they indicated that they would continue to investigate the possibilities of having the famine become a part of the social studies curriculum.

We also met with the writer Mr. Lessen who works for the Arizona Republic, and he indicated that he would write about the famine.

So I’m very much impressed, and I’m looking forward to the testimony of the wit¬nesses here this afternoon.

Senator DeCONCINI: Mr. Weres from Oakland?

STATEMENT PRESENTED BY DR. OLEH WERES

Thank you, Senator. I’d like to say hello to the Ukrainian community of Phoenix, and thank you for your assistance in making this hearing possible. Particularly, I would like to thank the witnesses who will be testifying today, because I know that this requires remembering painful memories and some courage to do this.

In recent months we have heard quite a bit about the new policy of openness being promulgated from the Soviet Union, but we know that the new policy of openness is not yet extended to admitting the facts of Soviet history and how the system came into being and evolved.

For this reason, what we’re doing here to record these tragic events in the past of Ukraine is extremely important, because they cannot be recorded, cannot be talked about, cannot be studied within Ukraine at this time, and we must preserve them for history and for future generations to know.

What we do also presents a litmus test, if you will, for just what loss this represents. We are, in effect, challenging the leadership of the Soviet Union to take a major step to admit to what happened 54 years ago, and thereby to categorically cut off with their identification with the regime that did that. Thank you.