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 ration cards?
Ms. HARMASH: Only people that worked and their families, dependents. Yes, they got some bread, but only bread that I know about Village people or peasants, people from collective farms, didn’t have any help. They didn’t get anything, just the opposite. Everything was taken from them.

Officials or village activists would go to the house, to the little huts of these people that left, and it wasn’t done only to kulaks. It was done to everybody, and they would go and knock on the walls, tear apart the floor boards and look all over.

They would ruin walls, ruin floors, everything just to look if somebody hid two or three kilos of flour or some kind of grain, and it would be taken right away, in spite of the fact that there was a family with four or five children, and the children were hungry, almost dying.

It’s two or three pounds of grain or flour, it would be taken away immediately.
Senator DeCONCINI: When you lived in the city, there was no recourse, no one to complain to?
Ms. HARMASH: I never heard, no. Nobody complained. Everybody knew what was going on, but people were silent about it.
Senator DeCONCINI: Was there an army in the city?
Ms. HARMASH: I didn’t see the army, no.
Senator DeCONCINI: What kept the people from rising up?
Ms, HARMASH: How can you rise when you’re dying from hunger? It was already done. People were subjugated.
Senator DeCONCINI: I mean, was there a police force there?
Ms. HARMASH: Police force, militia, yes, but they did nothing. People were weak, and nobody had to fear people in this condition. What can you expect from people that are dying from hunger?
Senator DeCONCINI: What about before they were dying from hunger, did people attempt to storm the local store, local police station, and try to exercise some control or a revolution or anything?
Ms. HARMASH; I don’t remember seeing this, but I know that during collectiviza¬tion, it was done earlier than this time when hunger started. Collectivization started earlier, when people were still strong, and they resisted.

Yes, there were uprisings. There were terrible things done and there was militia that was killed, party activists that were killed by kulaks. They called them kulaks. You never knew who could be designated as a kulak.

You know, there was no special yardstick for the kulak, so that if I don’t like you, and I am party activist or a regular activist, I can put this label on you making you a kulak, and you are gone.

But, this was before. At the time, when hunger started, the collectivization was al¬most complete. That’s how the party leaders thought, and assumed, and then it was much easier, but they knew. People didn’t want to be collectivized, so they decided