PROCEEDINGS

Congressman HERTEL: Good morning. We’ll call the Commission meeting to order. I thank all the members for being here this morning. I realize how busy their schedules are and am very sorry about the delay. The House is trying to finish some legislation today and so they had a vote on the Journal at ten o’clock. But the busi¬ness meeting will take place later.
First of all, we want to call forth our first witness, Nina Strokata of Denton, Maryland and a founding member of the Ukrainian Helsinki Group, to testify at this time.
We’re so very happy to have you here with us. Please come up.
Dr. STROKATA: My English conversation is very bad.
Congressman HERTEL: You make your choice.
Dr. STROKATA: I prepared my statement in writing.
Dr. SAMILENKO-TSVETKOV: Testimony of Dr. Nina Strokata from Denton, Maryland.

TESTIMONY OF DR. NINA STROKATA OF DENTON, MARYLAND

I was born in 1926 in Southern Ukraine in the city of Odessa. My contemporaries devoted their lives to keeping a watchful eye on the possibilities of any dangers that could threaten the existence of the nation from whose roots we all sprang.

The year 1933 was destined to become a memorable one for me. First and foremost because, as it happened, I did not attend school that year and my recollec¬tions of the period are filled with adult themes.

My parents suddenly started to recall the period 1920 to 1922 before I was born. At first, they talked among themselves about the famine of 1921 to 1923 and then about the famine that residents of Odessa were beginning to notice in the spring of 1933.

After awhile, my parents became so engrossed in their conversation that they were no longer aware of my presence. They talked of how my grandmother had saved her¬self from being attacked by hungry people when in the ’20s, she and some other women went to the formerly well-off villages in the Odessa area expecting to barter some town goods for bread and other foodstuffs.

After awhile, I heard an account of how, in 1921, my mother’s cousin and his young son went from village to village in the steppes of Ukraine trying to find foodstuffs. They both returned to Odessa empty-handed, but with memories that were to haunt them their entire lives.

Travelers were faced with the dilemma of spending the night in a forest, thereby leaving themselves open to various dangers, or of asking villagers to give them shelter, which the latter were often reluctant to do fearing attack from travelers crazed from starvation.

During the entire winter and spring of 1933, people went from apartment to apart¬ment in Odessa begging for a morsel of bread. At first, my parents would give them bread, but when the number of beggars grew with each coming day, they started to reply that God would provide. I remember thinking that if God didn’t provide for these people, what would they eat?