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UNWLA INC SCHOLARSHIP PROGRAM We have received over fifty new applications for scholar sh ip s from Ukrainian students from Brazil and Argentina. Ages ronge from 12 years old and up, boys and girls, very well recommended by their superiors in schools, all of Ukrainian descent and all from needy and poor families. Some are already in Seminaries, others attend college-level schools. Please help us — to help them!!!! Become a sponsor or a benefactor — or find a sponsor for them. Your help is greatly needed and will be appreciated! For more information please write to: Mrs. Anna Krawczuk 26 William Street Maplewood, New Jersey 07040 Every day we spent a few hours on a guided tour, like other tourists. We saw and were impressed by the broad avenues of Leningrad, its ambitious modern buildings, the tremendous factories on the outskirts. We were taken to worker’s clubs, theaters, concerts, while a guide gave us a stereotyped lecture on the glorious lot of the Soviet worker. But when we had gone through this routine, we were on our own, and we had resources of which the authorities knew nothing. Although almost all of Mother’s relatives had left Russia when Uncle Fox sent for them, I had many aunts, uncles, and cousins on my father’s side who were still living in the Soviet Union. Some of them had participated in the revo lution, joined the Communist party, and risen into the higher ranks of the oligarchy. Three of Reb Chaim’s grandchildren were in the OGPU. Others were army officers, administrators of collective farms, or supervisors of factories. These relatives were scattered through Russia. My Aunt Sarah had been told of our impending visit, and word had spread through the entire clan. They awaited us with impa tience, hope, and fear. They rarely corresponded with each other, for, as I was told, they were afraid to put anything in writing lest it be used against them, but now they were brought together again by our arrival. Life in Soviet Russia, they confessed, was so dull and drab that they had become emotionally numb. Our visit suddenly woke them up, made them realize how much richer life could be. Genuinely impressed by some of the things we had seen in the Soviet Union, Harry and I had done our best to convince ourselves that the future at least was bright. Harry said to Aunt Bassia that perhaps the sufferings of the present would be justified by the happiness of the next generation. "That is not the way to look at Russia,” she said sternly. “You talk about the new life that is to come. Now look at us here! In the beginning of the revolution I was told that I be longed to the old generation and that I must expect to make sacrifices so that my children should have food and happiness. Then my children were told that they must sacrifice themselves for the sake of their children. Now look at my grandson. Already he is being told that he must go without food and clothes so that the nation can be rebuilt. But the nation will not be rebuilt. Here we are, three generations, and not one of us will live to see a better day. From day to day, week to week, year to year, things are getting worse. It is Russia that will perish." We all shuddered. What a terrible prophecy! Her children and grandchildren grew pale and remained silent. I knew that Aunt Bassia had given vent to what was in their hearts. Their dwellings, their clothing, their faces, all testified to the fact that the voice of the old woman was the voice of the strangled mass of the Russian people. In the office of a Moscow functionary, there was a picture of a mother in distress, with a swollen child at her feet, and over the picture was the inscription, “The eating of dead children is barbarism.” I spoke of this poster to the official. “It is one of our methods of educating the people,” he said. “We have distrib uted hundreds of these posters, especially in the villages of the Ukraine.” "Are conditions as bad as that?” There was a moment of painful silence. “Some of our people are very unenlightened,” he replied somberly. We saw for ourselves the misery in the Ukraine. In Kharkow the factory workers wore rags and strips of sacking. Again we saw women with babies in their arms. And all, men and women alike, had lumps of black bread under their tattered sleeves. They nibbled as they walked along, careful not to lose a crumb. Through a member of my family, we met a high official of the Ukrainian Soviet, who, like many other Ukrainian Com munists, had nationalist inclinations and was constantly at odds with Moscow. He talked frankly, advising us to visit the villages. “Six million people have perished from hunger in our country this year,” he told us. “Six million.” We hired an automobile for the suggested trip, paying the local Intourist $50 a day, and the official accompanied us. No one was to be seen in the fields. Although it was late in the fall, the hay had not been taken in, nor had the grain been threshed, and crops were rotting everywhere. It was early morning, and a vapor was rising from the damp and putrid stacks. The previous spring a curtain had been dropped over certain provinces of Russia, so far as the outside world was concerned, but within Russia the truth was known. In order to recruit farm laborers from the cities, the government had charged that the peasants were seeking to starve the urban population. City workers had gone into the country, and they knew what was happening. At the entrance to the first village we reached, there was a crude gate with a Soviet star over it and in the center of the star, under glass, a picture of Lenin. A soldier in a long army coat was seated near the gate, his face buried in the collar of his coat. He was dozing. An investigation was going on in the village, and there was a truckload of soldiers. The village had been collectivized; that is, the peasants had been forced to join a kolkhoz — a collec tive farm. Now it appeared that tractors had been damaged, and the peasants were charged with sabotage — the worst of crimes. Officials in boots and short leather jackets tramped in and out of the huts. I noticed that both officials and soldiers carried chunks of black bread; they knew well enough that they would find no bread in the villages. While I was watching the Soviet investigators at work, a peasant woman, dressed in patched sacking, appeared from a side path. She was dragging a child of three or four years by the collar of a torn coat, as one might drag a heavy bag. When she reached the main street, she simply dropped the child in the mud and went away. Everyone saw what had happened, but no one made a move. The child’s face was bloated and blue, and its hands and tiny body were swollen. Obviously it was near death, but it was still alive. The mother left the child in the road in the hope that someone might do something to save '*■ Will be continued
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