THE HOLODOMOR WAS NOT ONLY 7 MILLION LIVES BUT ALSO
66 TONS OF GOLD, 1,439 TONS OF SILVER AS WELL AS
DIAMONDS AND ANTIQUITIES
Holodomor was also a large scale and effective pillage of people
By Oleh Nadosha and Volodymyr Honsky (in Ukrainian),
Ukrayinska Pravda on line, Kyiv, Ukraine, Friday, January 5, 2007
Published by the Ukrainian Genocide Journal
Issue Two, Article One (in English)
Washington, D.C., Sunday, March 11, 2007
The official events to commemorate the victims of the Holodomor and
repressions are over. Viktor Yushchenko should get a lot of credit for his
commitment to the truth and determination to make his case in front of those
who are not aware of the full measure of the manmade famine in 1932-1933.
Such awareness-raising efforts should have been undertaken earlier and on
a larger scale. In my opinion, this year's commemoration was the most
convincing, marking a watershed in the realization by Ukrainians of true
dimensions, causes and consequences of the Armageddon that struck
Ukraine in 1932-1933.
But: No matter what people are talking about, they are talking about money,
runs Murphy's Rule 1.
It looks that only the horrors of the Holodomor can contradict this truth.
But, in fact, the whole world must be told that the 1932-1933 Holodomor
was not only the largest genocide recorded in history but also the most
large-scale and effective pillage of people.
It was a kind of gold procurement, a gold rush the Communist style, with
the victims taking out their family valuables from hiding places and
bringing them to pillagers in the hope of putting off death from starvation
or surviving.
We must admit that this idea took some time to dawn on the authors. It
came when one of us asked his mother in a telephone conversation about
how the family managed to survive the famine.
Their salvation, it turned out, was thanks to 7 massive gold things of rare
beauty and purity presented by grandfather, nobleman Kyrychenko and
captain of a ship in the Far East.
Having taken this gift of her father (in cash terms, it was a well-sized
capital) to a Torgsin store, grandmother saved the family and many
residents in her village of Monastyryshche, Ichnya rayon, Chernihiv oblast.
The rest of the villagers died.
The big question came up quickly: how much wealth had been pocketed by
the Communists in Ukraine? After digging in libraries and pestering several
professors, we can point to some facts.
Torgsin stores (an abbreviation of "trade with foreigners") during the
Holodomor became the only chain of state-run stores where the populace
could buy some food essentials - but only for precious metals or hard
currency.
Formally, the all-union chain was set in the summer of 1930 under the
foreign trade ministry. In Ukraine, such stores began to operate actively
since January of 1932, with starving peasants, not foreigners, as their
customers.
The resolution "On creating the all-Ukrainian Torgsin office" was passed
by the Ukrainian Economic Council under the government of Ukraine on
June 29, 1932.
Government experts said that "the collection of hard currency held by the
populace will play a major role", that "the gold kept in households must be
collected via a chain of Torgsin stores and used to serve the interests of
the proletarian state." Can the dates and directives be viewed as
coincidental?
We compared the time and content of various resolutions and documents
on setting up the Torgsin chain in Ukraine with Communist party resolutions
to launch a genocide by starvation (on
[1] raising grain procurement targets, on
[2] "the three spikelets law" [law imposing criminal liability for taking
even three spikelets from the state farm fields - Trans.], on
[3] banning food trade in rural areas, on
[4] combating "saboteurs" [peasants whom the authorities accused
of sabotage of mandatory grain deliveries - Trans.] and others).
We were horrified by the perfectly synchronized timing of these documents.
The time pattern was as follows:
1) the party takes away all grain from peasants;
2) Torgsin stores take away all gold and hard currency. Further
analysis of how the party and the Torgsin chain worked
revealed that
3) everything was done to prevent the survival of Ukrainians.
In exchange for their gold and silver jewelry, peasants received coupons
which they could later exchange for food. The exchange could take up to
two months, and very often bearers of coupons were dead by the time
they could get some food. There was a secret instruction to Torgsin
salesmen: "do not promise customers a quick exchange."
According to eye-witnesses, many starving people died when standing in
kilometer-long lines to Torgsins or immediately after they received food.
Here are some of the eye-witness reports:
NINA PEREPADA:
Every morning a 7-year-old boy Yury Perepada saw the following scene:
horse-driven carts used to go along Khreshchatyk [Kyiv's main street -
Trans.] One man was in the cart, with two other men escorting it by feet.
Their mission was clear the street from corpses or those close to death.
The two lifted the bodies, put them on the cart and covered with matting.
Children and adults walked the streets by-passing the dead. The bodies
were reportedly taken to the Oktyabrsky hospital, laid up in layers and
from there taken to the Bajkove cemetery to be thrown in ditches and
covered up with sodium chlorite.
He remembers that there was a commercial bakery in 6 or 8 Pushkin St.
where they sold bread at very high prices. Still, the line of customers
stretched farther than Proriizna St. People often died standing in the
line." (The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933: Evidence of survivors.
Ed. By O. Mytsyk. Kyiv Mohyla Academy publishers, 2004 - Vol. 2).
HALYNA NAZARENKO:
"Since late night, we had to line for bread that tasted like sawdust. We
stood in line all night, and broke into tens in the morning as they would
allow only ten persons into the store.
Mom took her and dad's golden wedding rings to the Torgsin store,
receiving several kilos of flour for them. From it, she made halushkas
(boiled lumps of pastry)." (The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933:
Evidence of survivors. Ed. By O. Mytsyk. Kyiv Mohyla Academy
publishers, 2004 - Vol. 2).
ANDRIY OPANASENKO:
In Kyiv I saw dying peasants from nearby villages. Those miserable creatures
didn't look like humans. They didn't ask for food, they sat or lay, their
bodies swollen and big like logs, under the walls of building on Podol's
Upper and Lower Banks. The dead were taken to Babyj Yar to be buried.
Half dead inhabitants were also taken there to die. (The Vechirny Kyiv,
November, 1998).
LIDIYA KUZNETSOVA:
I well remember bread lines. Sometimes, they were several kilometers long.
Those who lined for bread at dawn could get their small piece of bread only
late at night. Mostly, they were peasants from nearby villages.
I remember how people from villages would get their bread, sit in the corner
and die right there on the street. (The Ukrainian Holocaust of 1932-1933:
Evidence of survivors. Ed. By O. Mytsyk. Kyiv Mohyla Academy publishers,
2004 - Vol. 2).
Very often the starving peasants were intercepted by GPU (sectet police)
officers who arrested the alleged speculators and took away their bread.
GPU often scattered peasants or locked them up - to ensure their deaths.
HALYNA AFANASYEVE:
I remember well how in the fall of 1932 Kyiv was full of starving and
swollen peasants, trying to exchange their inexpensive possessions for bread
or other food. A major inflow of starving peasants took place in the spring
of 1933. The capital's squares and streets were full of live skeletons and
swollen people.
Their numbers were especially large in the Polol district on the Upper and
Lower Bank where there were many wide benches on which hundreds of
poor victims crowded. They were sitting, lying and dying.
Every morning carts went around the city streets. Their teams consisted of a
horseman and his assistants who picked up dead bodies. Together with the
dead, they also took away still living people. The dead and the half dead
were taken to a church on the Horeva St. where they were piled up.
Around the church a deep and wide ditch was dug out in which they put the
dead when the church was full of bodies. There was a bakery on the Upper
Bank St. which sold bread at commercial prices. One could buy only one
kilo of bread.
As the bread was in short supply, people stood in huge lines since late
night. Militsiya (police) scattered lines of exhausted people, drove them
into the church and locked them up there. They died in the church.
My mother Ulyana Khomenchuk got into one of such police raids and was
locked up in the church. After 2 days they opened the church to get rid of
the bodies and put new victims into it. But my mother was alive and was
spared this satanic conveyor of death.
No one was swollen from starvation in our family, because we lived on the
Trukhaniv island and gathered deadwood which we floated across the
Dnieper and sold on the market. Besides, we had some valuables inherited
by my mother. Traders willingly accepted the valuables in exchange for food.
In Torgsin stores, supplies of flour, lard, sausage, tinned food were
abundant. In exchange for golden decorations we bought the cheapest brand
of maize flour from which my mother baked pies and sold them on the market
to feed her family. All Kyiv residents were involved in such business not to
die from the famine. (The Samostijna Ukrayina, October, 1999).
The major cause of deaths of peasants, even of those who got food from
Torgsin stores, was the mark-up, an officially allowed profit of a Torgsin
salesperson which was the difference between the amount of gold accepted
from the populace and the amount handed over to the bank. Very often,
salesmen understated in their receipts the weight and quality of gold they
took from starving people.
The mark-up could reach several kilos, with every gram of gold stolen from
peasants paid for by their lives. There were other kinds of fraud in which
Torgsin salesmen were involved, despite their high salaries and additional
food rations. Torgsin stores bought gold from Ukrainians at much lower
prices than those on the international market.
We cannot but agree with V. Marochko, Doctor of History, about another
dimension of this criminal robbery: the gold, titled by the authorities as
scrap gold, was a dangerous asset because it was part of sacred spiritual
traditions.
Family valuables, crosses, wedding rings, baptizing crosses were kept in
the families and handed over by one generation to another, adding to the
national spirit.
October 1933, a chain of 263 Torgsin stores operated in Ukraine. Each store
had its own network of smaller outlets. The largest number of Torgsins was
in the Kyiv oblast (58), the smallest number in the Donetsk oblast (11) and
the Moldavian autonomous Soviet republic (5). The chain had its specific
targets for the purchase of gold and hard currency which, because they were
excessive, were never met.
The scale of the Communist-engineered gold rush matched the time frame set
for the genocide: with 6 mn hard currency karbovanets earned by Torsins in
1931, the figure ballooned to 50 mn in 1932 and to 107 mn in 1933.
Of the total amount of valuables sold by starving Ukrainians, 75.2% was
precious metals, gold, silver, and platinum. Of the total amount of gold,
38% was in tsarist coins, or 18% of the total revenue received.
While in 1932 Torgsins "procured" 21 tons of gold (worth 26.8 mn
karbovanets) and 18.5 tons of silver (worth 0.3 mn), the figures for 1933
were respectively 44.9 tons of gold (worth 58 mn karbovanets) and 1420.5
tons of silver (worth 22.9 mn).
It was extremely unprofitable for Ukrainian to sell silver as the price of
it dropped threefold since 1917. Peasants were paid 1.25 karbovanets for
1 g of silver, with the price on the New York stock exchange at 1.8
karbovanets. Communist party revenues from such transactions were
colossal.
The government allowed Torgsins to purchase diamonds in the fall of 1933
when gold and silver buying fell significantly as the populace had sold what
they had and the number of Ukrainians dropped sharply. There was only
one Torgsin store buying diamonds, in Kharkiv.
Ukrainians got 12 karbovanets for one carat of defective diamonds and 260
karbovanets for pure diamonds. Any guesses why such a huge disparity in
pricing?
In four months alone, Torgsins bought 600,000 karbovanets worth of
diamonds. In 1932-1933, the Soviet Union sold abroad antiquities,
pictures and ancient jewelry worth 5.8 mn golden karbovanets.
Torgsins were not the only tools to rob starving Ukrainians. Who can
count the money Ukrainians had to pay for food on the black market
where the prices for bread were tens of times higher than even in the
Torgsins?
Or the amount of gold pillaged by the authorities from individual farmers?
A recount of such incident was given by war veteran Oleksij Riznyk in his
article "Gold for the dictatorship of the proletariat" (The Ukrayina moloda,
23.11.2006, p. 11):
"In 1931-1932, the authorities launched a large-scale operation against
individual farmers. Militsiya took groups of them to a prison in Vinnytsia.
My father was one of them.
On arriving in prison, every farmer was told the amount of ransom in golden
rubles he had to pay for his freedom. Militsiya officers rushed into the
cell, took inmates by the hair and hitting their heads against the heads of
others said, 'Oh, hear how the gold chimes.'
Some were taken to torture cells where they were beaten up, had their
fingers broken by doors - until the victim agreed to name the sum of ransom
sufficient for butchers. My father told them he had only 35 golden rubles
left. The militsiya officers happily took the money and let him go."
In conclusion, let us hear another eye-witness report:
MYKAL from the village of Pukhivka, Brovary rayon:
It was in the spring of 1933. I was eighteen and was a student at Kyiv's
college of teachers. The enrollment was 99 persons, while only 33 graduated
from the college. Where are the rest 66 students? Some of them died and
some of them left for good. Sahno Volodya died at the math lesson after
working a night shift at the Ukrkabel plant. We carried him out and buried
at the Lukyanivsky cemetery.
We ate at a students' canteen on Dyka street. They would give us a plateful
of water with one pea, calling it soup. We got 150 g of bread a day. I
prayed that nobody stole my bread coupons. The bread ration was so
meager you didn't feel you ate anything.
One episode has remained engraved in y memory. We had a lesson in military
training outside Kyiv near the Lukyanivsky cemetery. We were dog-tired but
our instructor ordered us to run. Three of us didn't run, we sneaked away.
There was a boy who had lived in an orphanage, Kostya. It was time to
return, but he was sitting at a distance and didn't move.
When we came up to him we were scared stiff - he was sitting near a ditch
full of children's corpses. They all lay in a mess: positions of legs, arms
and bodies showed that they had been dumped in the ditch from a cart.
There were seven such graves there. They did it at night, bringing the
bodies, dumping them and going away for more corpses.
Our instructor called us, but we were shaking and crying, especially the boy
from the orphanage. He said: "This is going to happen to me, too."(1933:
Famine; People's Book. - Memorial. /Compiled by L. Kovalenko and V.
Manyak. Kyiv, 1991.)
If you divide the amount of gold and silver pumped out from Ukrainians
by the Communist regime, you'll get 5 convertible karbovanets. Or 12
kilos of flour. That was the price of life, to be exact, the price of a
horrible death of one Ukrainian.
Is there any place for graves on the cemetery of destroyed illusions?
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The authors express their acknowledgments to V. Marochko, Doctor of
History, S. Vakulyshyn, expert on Kyiv, N. Sukhodolska, Ph.D.(Biology),
R. Krutsyk, head of the Kyiv branch of Memorial and other researchers
for their help in preparing the article for publication.
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LINK: http://www.pravda.com.ua/news/2007/1/5/53000.htm)
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NOTE: This article has been used with the permission of the Ukrainian Genocide Journal, Washington. The site wishes to thank the journal and its publisher Morgan Wiliams. For more information on the Ukrainian Genocide Journal please contact Morrgan Williams at: morganw@patriot.net
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