STATEMENT OF MR. WILLIAM KREWSUN OF SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

But, from the very beginning, I would like to thank United States Senate and Chair¬man, Senator DeConcini, and Commissioners for raising this issue so that more people know what happened in 20th century that never happened any place ever before Com¬munists came to power continues today.

I was born in small hamlet of Sai, Lypova Dolyna district, Poltava region in 1922. I was about ten, ten-and-a-half years old when this catastrophe happened.

A lot were removed from their homes, and homes were taken away too. In connec¬tion with the so-called S.V.U., my father was arrested in 1929, and was sentenced to die first and then changed to ten years in a concentration camp. Two small children, my brother and I, grandmother, grandfather, and my mother were left totally helpless.

I remember very, very clearly that foreign people mostly speaking Russian, of course, came to our hamlet, and in the early fall of 1932 they went from room to room and removed all edible food including of course, poultry and all domestic animals, all grain, all flour, even bread that was still in the oven, absolutely everything was taken away.

In the early spring of 1933, my grandmother Evdokia died of starvation, and in April 1933, my grandfather died of starvation. We survived on tree limbs. It is hard to believe, but
some of those tree limbs are very tasty, and grasses.

Most delicious food that I remember in those days is potatoes, plowed in spring, the old potatoes destroyed by frost, and it was delicious for us.

I am a well-to-do American today, but when I think what I possess, one piece of bread at that time was much, much more valuable to me, even today when I think about it, than whatever I have in this world.

So I like Americans to know what really could happen under Communist dictator¬ship.

Senator DeCONCINI: Thank you very much Mr. Krewsun. Any questions of the witness? I want to thank you. You thanked the Commission and myself, but it’s really the Ukrainian community of the United States that brought this about.

It’s an educational process for us and these Commissioners and many in this room, and those of you around the country who are such strong Americans and believe so strongly in this great nation that you’ve brought about this Commission to meet around the country to do just what we’re doing today. So thank you.
Our next witness will be Mr. Jacob K.

TESTIMONY OF MR. JACOB K. OF SAN DIEGO, CALIFORNIA

I was born in the city Uman in Ukraine, in the Kiev region. I saw the following. In 1932, I
was a student Where we students were mixed or added to the Komsomol (Communist Youth League) and sent to the villages to seize grain and all kinds of foodstuffs in the village.

The seizures were motivated by the government’s insistence that certain persons in the village had not fulfilled their grain quotas. We students had no concept of Mos-