Famine As an Instrument of Nazi Occupation Policy

in Ukraine, 1941-441
Oleksandr Lysenko
Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Tetiana Zabolotna
Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Oleksandr Maievs'kyi
Institute of the History of Ukraine, National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine

Translated from Ukrainian by Mark Baker

Abstract: The article examines a range of questions tied to Nazi Germany’s socio-
economic policies in occupied Ukraine during World War II. In line with
implementing the General Plan “Ost,” the top leadership of the Third Reich intended
to cleanse the “eastern territories” of its “superfluous” population for German
colonization. As contained in the “Principles of Economic Policy in the East,” these
directives provided for the physical extermination of tens of millions of people in
various ways, as well as the deportation of part of the indigenous population to
remote areas. Ukraine’s economic exploitation was built in such a way that it doomed
the local urban and rural societies to a miserable, half-starved existence. The
systematic seizure of food for the needs of the Wehrmacht, the Reich, and its allies
made the death of the inhabitants of the occupied lands only a matter of time. The
instrumentalization of terror by famine was manifested, on the one hand, by the
creation of special structures that requisitioned food resources, and on the other by
establishing norms of food supplies that were below the minimal needs for existence.
As well, the strict regulation of trade set limits to the sources of food products that
could be brought to the cities. This caused mass starvation. The deaths and the
diseases that followed created hundreds of thousands of victims among Ukrainians.
Keywords: Ukraine, World War II, Nazi occupation policy, famine, survival
strategies, morbidity.

1 This is a condensed version of the original Ukrainian-language article, authored by

Oleksandr Lysenko, Tetiana Zabolotna, and Oleksandr Maievs'kyi, that appeared in
the journal Viis'kovo-istorychnyi merydian, vol. 4 (18), 2017, pp. 61-92. It is
republished here in translation with permission. Bibliographic references have been
reformatted according to MLA, as per EWJUS’s style guidelines.

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218 Oleksandr Lysenko, Tetiana Zabolotna, and Oleksandr Maievs'kyi

n the numerous memoirs of ordinary participants and contemporaries of

I World War II, memories of famine are among the most difficult
experiences described. The war created conditions that allowed for the
use of famine as an instrument through which the Wehrmacht and its allies
could achieve strategic goals of the eastern campaign. While significant
differences of opinion existed among the leaders of the Third Reich on how
best to manage the “eastern territories” they planned to conquer, their views
concerning the concept of developing “Lebensraum” basically concurred.
This vision was most clearly outlined by Adolf Hitler, who stated,

We have an obligation to depopulate to the same degree to which we are

obliged to worry about the German population. We must develop a
technique of depopulation. You ask, what does it mean to depopulate? Do I
intend to eliminate whole peoples? Yes, exactly, everything is leading to
this. Nature is harsh; thus, we are obliged to be the same. (Rauschning 129-
30).
In the process of realizing the sinister general plan “Ost,” the Nazi
leaders intended to resettle and eliminate 31 million inhabitants of Poland
and the western regions of the USSR, where 65 percent of the Ukrainians, 75
percent of the Belarusians, and 80-85 percent of the Poles lived. There were
proposals to increase to 51 million those from the native population to be
removed in order to quicken the tempo of colonization from thirty to ten
years.
On 17 October 1941, during a meeting with Reich Minister of
Armaments and Munitions Fritz Todt and Gauleiter Fritz Sauckel, the Führer
stressed the necessity of determining the responsibilities of the Reich
Minister for the Occupied Eastern Territories, Alfred Rosenberg.
Rosenberg’s task “would be to push the Slavs, gathered on reservations, as
quickly as possible to such a state where they would either abandon their
fatherland or die” (Kosyk 537).
Commenting on his “Principles of Economic Policy in the East” (2 May
1941), Hermann Goering noted, “without a doubt, tens of millions of people
will perish from hunger when we take all that we need” (Istoriia Ukrains'koi
RSR 136). The Reich Marshal considered the food problem easy to overcome
with the help of cabbage and turnips. Whoever refused to work would be
deprived of all food, and the stubborn ones would be shot on the spot.
“The Directives on Economic Policy for Organizing the Economy in the
East,” included the following instructions:

The isolation of the black-earth regions will ensure for us in any

circumstances the availability of more or less significant surpluses in those
regions. As a result—the cessation of supply for the whole forest zone,
including large industrial centres (Moscow and Petersburg) . . . . the German

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administration in this region must make every effort to mitigate the

consequences of famine, which undoubtedly will break out and accelerate
the process of naturalization. It is necessary to strive for the more intensive
agricultural development of these regions, for example, by expanding sown
areas of potatoes and other important, useful, high-yielding crops. But
famine ultimately cannot be avoided. Several tens of millions of people in
this territory will become superfluous and die or will be forced to resettle
to Siberia. Attempts to save this population from starvation by sending
surpluses from the Black Earth zone could be made only at the cost of the
deterioration of the European food supply. They could undermine the
capacity of Germany to sustain itself in the war and weaken the blockade
strength of Germany and Europe. (Sukharev 435)
Pre-war Germany experienced a substantial shortage of agricultural
products, and domestic production did not cover the food requirements of
the population. In wartime conditions, the situation was further complicated
as previously established trade connections with other states were severed;
also, agriculture lost large numbers of workers to mobilization while
receiving fewer machines and work tools. The leadership of the Third Reich
sought to make up for the deficit in food products at the expense of the
occupied, dependent, and “neutral” countries of Western Europe and the
newly occupied territories of eastern Europe. Ukraine, with its agricultural
potential, was given a leading role. Nazi officials planned to export to
Germany from the south and southwestern Soviet Union (that is, Ukraine)
all food products and raw materials that they considered “in excess
amounts.” For the local producers of these products and raw materials, they
planned to leave less than the minimum necessary to sustain this population.
The Nazis established the following hierarchy for the distribution of food
products: “1) for the active army; 2) for the rest of the troops on hostile
territory; 3) for troops located in Germany; 4) for the German civilian
population; and, in the last instance, for the population of the occupied
countries” (Perekhrest 173). Ukraine was also viewed as a market for
manufactured goods of western European industry that were to be paid for
in agricultural products and raw materials.
An analysis of the directives and orders of the Reich ministries, in
particular, of Herbert Backe’s Ministry for Food and Agriculture (1942-45),
shows that in the occupied eastern territories the organization of a massive
famine was foreseen, one that would lead to maximal destruction of the
urban and village populations of the region and open up limitless
possibilities for German colonization of Ukrainian lands.
The preconditions for famine had been created well in advance. The
systematic evacuation measures of the Soviet authorities, implemented in
line with a “scorched earth” strategy, had led to the removal of reserves of
food products and raw materials, forage for livestock, and the livestock

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220 Oleksandr Lysenko, Tetiana Zabolotna, and Oleksandr Maievs'kyi

themselves from territory threatened with German occupation. All that

could not be evacuated to the eastern regions was ordered destroyed or
ruined by burning, soaking with water, gasoline, etc. Any reserves of food
products (cellars, stores, bases) that remained after the Red Army’s retreat
were taken by the local population, which anticipated the onset of difficult
times. The savviest managed to accumulate significant stores of valuables.
However, the majority were unable to create reserves for a “rainy day.”
Already in the summer of 1941, difficulties with food supplies were
evident, even in areas near the front and under Soviet administrative
control. For example, on 15 August 1941, the People’s Commissar of Internal
Affairs of the UkrSSR, V. Serhiienko, reported to the leader of the NKVD,
Lavrentii Beria, and the secretary of the Central Committee of the
Communist Party (B) of Ukraine, Nikita Khrushchev, that the food supply
situation for inhabitants of Kyiv was in a clearly unsatisfactory state.
According to preliminary estimates, the city had available fats and sugar for
only two days. The situation with delivery of meat and vegetables to the city
was particularly bad. Over the previous five days, no meat at all had been
delivered to trade organizations. The actions of the director of a nearby state
farm (State Farm No. 8), Tikhonov, had negatively affected the vegetable
supply for Kyivites: he had ordered the destruction of a whole store of
vegetables—trampled and flooded with water from the irrigation system.
Stocks of flour for the capital barely reached ten tons, and deliveries from
the periphery had become irregular. Eating establishments had not received
produce for five days and their stocks were rapidly vanishing. The author of
the report stated that there were two main causes of the extremely
unsatisfactory situation: a sharp reduction in the delivery of food products
and the desertion of many leaders of the trade network, the communal
eateries, and delivery systems (altogether 250 persons). Those fleeing often
took state monetary resources with them.2
From the first days of the occupation, the “new” authorities introduced
their own order and legal norms. The initial measures were aimed at
subduing the local population and ensuring a comfortable stay for the
functionaries of the occupying authorities and officers and soldiers of the
Wehrmacht. Representatives of the German occupation organs demanded
the return of anything the population had “illegally” appropriated. Severe
punishments were to be applied for violations, as announced in periodicals
of Kirovohrad (now Kropyvnytskyi), Dnipropetrovsk (now Dnipro), and
Zaporizhzhia (“Vid mis'koi upravy”; “Obov''iazkova postanova;”
“Rozporiadzhennia”).

2Haluzevyi derzhavnyi arkhiv Sluzhby bezpeky Ukrainy (hereafter HDA SBU), fond
16, opys 34 (1951), sprava 2, arkush 82-88.

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Famine As an Instrument of Nazi Occupation Policy in Ukraine, 1941-44 221

While confiscating looted goods, the authorities would quite frequently

take personal food stocks as well. Severe limits on food reserves were
established; anything that exceeded them was subject to requisition. For
example, on 16 December 1941, the command of the German army in Crimea
issued an order to the population of Symferopil that surpluses of food
products were to be taken to the city government’s warehouses (the
territory of Crimea until 1954 was part of the Russian Soviet Federative
Socialist Republic [RSFSR]). A representative of the authorities explained
these measures as necessary to address the hunger, which threatened the
population that had no food reserves (“K prikazu o sdache” 2). Subsequently,
the military commandant of Symferopil issued a demand that before the end
of 1941 all citizens surrender product surpluses in excess of forty kilos of
grain or flour, two kilos of fat, and two kilos of sugar per person (Pashchenia
83). In Artem district, people were allowed to keep fifty kilos of grain and
thirty-five kilos of flour per family member (“Ob''iavlenie” 2). That these
limitation orders were issued throughout the whole period of occupation
suggests the population was sabotaging the authorities’ explicit decisions.
No doubt with their earlier experience of famine in 1932-33 in mind, the
population, especially the peasants, strove by any means to hide food
products. However, the threat of punishment forced the population under
occupation to act carefully. Whoever did not manage to keep some food,
would soon experience hunger. The situation was even worse in the cities
where the absence of foodstuffs in trade networks meant that people were
not able to stock up. However, even in the countryside the situation became
more difficult in connection with requisitioning introduced by the occupying
organs. For the needs of the German armed forces, they seized cattle, horses,
pigs, poultry, and animal products from the village inhabitants (Marchenko
11).
German military and civilian leaders were well aware that such
measures would induce famine. The Commander of the Eleventh Army, Erich
von Manstein, in an order from 20 November 1941, emphasized the
necessity of exporting the maximum amount of agricultural products to the
homeland, while foreseeing that in the cities a significant portion of the local
population would go hungry (Nuremberg 641). The German administration
gave certain privileges (especially in the provisioning of food) to Russian
Cossacks on occupied territories of the RSFSR. Cossacks that served in the
occupation structures and armed forces received tax benefits and were given
additional grants of lands and draught animals (Kadyrov 190). Support of
the population in occupied Belarus had its own specifics. The “General
political-economic directives for the economic organization ‘East,’” issued
23 May 1941, stated that Belarus, which was part of the “forest zone,” was to

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222 Oleksandr Lysenko, Tetiana Zabolotna, and Oleksandr Maievs'kyi

provide “significant meat deliveries.”3 At the same time, the territory of

Belarus was to be treated separately from the black earth zone, where there
were “surplus products.” The foreseen deficit of food products in Belarus,
however, did not mean that the products would be supplied from the black-
earth districts or from Germany itself. Thus, even here the program of
supplying the population of the Reich and the Wehrmacht doomed millions
of local inhabitants to hunger (Novikov 51-52).
From other documents, it becomes clear that the Nazis’ food supply
policy was oriented toward solving a pre-war task: a) obtaining reliable
sources of food supplies for Germany; and b) depopulating the future
“Lebensraum.” A report by the inspector of armaments in Ukraine (2
December 1941) included a list of actions necessary to ensure the Reich an
uninterrupted supply of food. The decisive measure was the reduction of the
internal consumption of the “natives” to a bare minimum through the
following steps: a) the elimination of surplus eaters—Jews, inhabitants of
large cities; b) a maximal reduction of the food ration norms of the local
population; c) reduction of the food supplied to the rural population
(Sorokin 179).
The occupying authorities had no single system for supplying food
products to the civilian inhabitants of the occupied territories. In any event,
the complex food supply situation negatively influenced the attitude of the
local population toward the Nazi occupants, raising the threat of the
emergence and/or activization of a passive or active resistance movement.
Given this “mine of slow-motion activity,” the occupation organs developed
plans, and local military and civilian authorities addressed this problem,
depending on the specific situation. However, measures were largely in the
form of propaganda rather than improvements in food security. The local
press played a special role in propaganda. Newspapers included pieces
informing readers about the organization of special communal dining outlets
and on procedures for issuing food ration coupons and the provisioning of
products to certain entitled categories of the population (orphans, invalids,
pensioners, families of those repressed by the Soviet regime).
The local administration’s active measures in this sphere were
announced in the press. For example, as early as 7 October 1941, the Kyiv
press published an image of the bread ration card that building
administrations and building owners were to issue to each family
(“Oholoshennia” 4). However, there was no mention of what the norms of
provision through the cards would be, or that bread would not be distributed
for weeks. We know from the diary of a Kyivite, I. Khoroshunova, that she
first used ration cards to obtain bread on 10 October 1941 (the Germans had

3 See “Wirtschaftspolitische Richtlinien für die Wirtschaftsorganisation Ost von

23.5.41., erarbeinet von der Gruppe Landwirtschaft” in Ferchl 65-66.

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arrived in Kyiv on 19 September). The initial norm was 200 grams per
person, regardless of whether or not she worked. “Eleven streets are
assigned to each store. So the queues begin from early morning. And many
go without bread. And the bread for that day disappears” (Khoroshunova;
entry from 11 Oct. 1941). Herring was offered for sale twice, sold in
allotments of a half-kilo per person. “Get Stalin’s [herring], while it is still
available, for we won’t get a taste of Hitler’s [herring] for some time to come,”
Kyivites sadly joked (Vronsʹka 281). By mid-October 1941 the reserves of
bread had been exhausted. Khoroshunova commented: “A real famine has
begun here. There is no bread . . . . It’s been impossible to buy anything. All
the stores are closed. And now at the markets peasants exchange produce
for completely new things only.” Further, she noted, “It turns out that one
hundred grams of bread is a huge portion. They last gave us bread, two
hundred grams each, on the thirtieth [of October 1941]. They promised
[more bread] on the fifth [of November], but they did not give it”
(Khoroshunova; entries from 17 Oct. and 8 Nov. 1941). The next time
Kyivites received this critical product was on 16 and 30 November. In
December, bread was also distributed only twice, and this concluded the
deliveries for 1941 (Vronsʹka 281). Thus, the rations provided were miserly,
and depended on the region, the time of year, and the category of ration card.
While in Sumy region and in “Transnistria” the daily ration for working
people was 200 grams of bread daily, and in Kirovohrad—400 grams,
dependents were not entitled to receive anything; in Kyiv, however, this
category of the population could count on receiving 200 grams of bread per
week, that is, about 29 grams per day (Tarnavsʹkyi 301).
Taking into account German occupation laws on food supply and the
limited resources available, local governments strove to improve the
situation of city dwellers by establishing norms of food supply. Thus, the
Kyiv city administration in April 1942 issued the instruction “On the
procedure for issuing food ration cards to the population of Kyiv and with
them implementing control over the distribution of food products.”
According to this document, food ration cards were to be issued to

a) working men; b) unemployed men; c) dependents of the mentioned

persons—women and boys up to age 16; d) invalids and pensioners; e)
pupils and students who were studying at the time of issue of the cards; f)
female housekeepers and dependent women, regardless of age; g) families
of individuals repressed or deported by the Bolsheviks from Kyiv; h)
women and children of POWs; i) artisans and private traders with licences
at the time of registration; j) individuals of the free professions (doctors,
lawyers, and others); k) workers and employees who work outside Kyiv
and come to the city on business or vacation for more than two weeks; l)
families of the sick or those staying for in-patient treatment; m) individuals
evacuated from other locations whose periods of stay in Kyiv are

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determined to be more than two weeks; and n) children staying

permanently in homes for children.4
Four categories of consumers were established for the ration cards: the
first included invalids, pensioners, private traders, and members of the free
professions; to the second belonged dependents of working people and the
families of those who had left to work in Germany; to the third belonged
those working full time at enterprises and institutions; and to the fourth
belonged Volksdeutsch and workers in demanding jobs (at facilities
producing weapons, on railroads, in mineral mining, and so on).5
The situation with bread supplies stabilized more or less only in the
second half of 1942, once the harvest came in: the average weekly bread
ration, even for dependents, rose to 1,500 grams. This increase, however,
coincided with a significant decrease in the quality of bread, which was
confirmed by the spike in the number of people who became sick from eating
products with various inedible admixtures.6 The hungry inhabitants of the
large Ukrainian urbanized centres were forced to add to their diets
unsuitable items: oilcake, bran, frozen potatoes, beets, potato skins, meat
from dead horses, pets, and even casein glue, as was recorded in Kramatorsk
and Kharkiv.
Socially unprotected categories (children, the disabled, the elderly)
constantly suffered from hunger. The local authorities organized cafeterias,
where a small portion of the needy could suppress the feeling of hunger for
several hours with a thin soup, sometimes with a slice of bread. The average
cost of lunch in these special public eateries was 1.1-1.7 rubles. Of course,
the number of lunches at that subsidized price was limited because the
cafeterias did not receive expected funds from the administrations. District
departments referred to the fact that they did not have the necessary funds
and could cover only part of the expenses.
The local authorities were not successful in addressing the food
shortages. They did not, after all, have their own food reserves. The only
remaining option was to haul in food products from the villages. However,
the absence of means of transportation and fuel hindered this simplest way
to solve the food problem, and the newly established co-operatives and
consumer associations gradually transformed into conduits for enriching
their founders.

4 Tsentralʹnyi derzhavnyi arkhiv vyshchykh orhaniv Ukrainy (hereafter: TsDAVO), f.

3676, op. 4, spr. 475, ark. 460.
5 Derzhavnyi arkhiv Kyivsʹkoi oblasti (hereafter: DAKO), f. R-2356, op. 5, spr. 13, ark.

62, 63.
6 TsDAVO, f. 3676, op. 4, spr. 475, ark 43.

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Famine As an Instrument of Nazi Occupation Policy in Ukraine, 1941-44 225

Townspeople, attempting to solve the difficult food problem themselves,

hiked to nearby and distant villages to exchange industrial goods for food.
Throughout the Nazi occupation, street markets were important sources,
although the occupation authorities restricted food imports, introduced
“firm prices,” fought the “bagmen,” and even banned the street market trade,
which left many people during the winters of 1941-42 and 1942-43 on the
verge of death by starvation. The shortage of food products and the spread
of the “black market” caused speculation, inflation, and a surge in prices at
the markets. In Kharkiv during the summer of 1942, one kilo of bread cost
150 rubles, while the officially set price was 1.7 rubles; one egg cost 8 rubles
(officially, 0.80 rub.); one litre of milk—20 rubles (1.2 rub.), one litre of
sunflower oil—280 rubles (14.5 rubles), butter—600 rubles, one kilogram
of backfat—1,000 rubles, one kilogram of wheat bread—50 rubles, rye—35
rubles, one kilo of sugar—500 rubles (Pashchenia 86).
The low purchasing power of the local population was determined by
extremely low wages in comparison with prices. In the territory of the
Reichskomissariat Ukraine, a worker earned 400 rubles per month, an
accountant—500 rubles, a typist—400 rubles, managers of various levels—
from 900 to 1,500 rubles. In the summer of 1942, the salary of the average
white-collar employee was 700-800 rubles, at a time when one kilo of
backfat cost 750 rubles. By March 1943, one kilo of this product could be
bought for six thousand rubles, while salaries remained the same (Spudka
13).
Neither the personal efforts of the urban population nor the actions of
the local occupation authorities could prevent the onset of starvation. In
early March 1942, Joseph Goebbels noted in his diary: “The situation with
food supply in the occupied eastern regions is extremely difficult. There,
thousands and tens of thousands of people are dying from hunger, which
does not interest anyone at all” (Miuller 132).
Nazi policies that induced the famine also led to the eating of corpses
and cannibalism. According to Oleksandr Symonov, a professor of fine arts
from Kharkiv, the Germans hanged those accused of cannibalism with a sign
on their chests: “I was hanged for selling human meat” (Skorobahatov 278).
According to some sources, in the summer of 1942, at the street market in
“Kinna Ploshcha” (Equestrian Square) in Kharkiv, a man was hanged for
selling a liver and lungs of people who had died of hunger (Skorobahatov
278). In Kyiv, there were rumours that in the Podil neighbourhood a group
had been uncovered that was killing people and selling their meat. There
were other cases of killing for this purpose. All the same, the official press
reported only one act of cannibalism, when a fifty-year-old man named
Korniienko ate a sixteen-year-old girl. As a result, Korniienko was publicly
hanged on 27 January 1943 in the centre of Kyiv (Berkhoff 181).

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Nazi policies and practices also led to mass diseases associated with
systematic malnutrition—hypertrophy, dystrophy, rickets, nephritis,
scurvy, tuberculosis, measles, scarlet fever, diphtheria, whooping cough—
and death from these diseases. From the arrival of the German troops in Kyiv
(19 September 1941) to 1 April 1942, about eight thousand of the city’s
inhabitants died of hunger, cold, and illnesses caused by them (Malakov).
According to data from the Kharkiv city administration, as presented by A.
Skorobahatov, in 1942 (more exactly, from the second half of December
1941 to the first half of December 1942), 13,139 people of Kharkiv starved
to death, accounting for 58.4 percent of all deaths in that period. Even this
unprecedented high percentage of deaths from hunger was likely higher
still: according to the head of the department of Kharkiv’s city
administration, Professor Ie. Ie. Dobrovolʹs'kyi, some doctors filled out the
“doctor’s reports” about the death of citizens incorrectly, avoiding the
diagnosis of “death from hunger,” replacing it with other causes, such as
“edema from insufficient protein,” “paralysis of the heart,” “child frailty,” and
others (Skorobahatov 279). Thus, as in Soviet times, the truth was concealed;
the “new” authorities avoided the disclosure of information about the
terrible consequences of its rule for the local population, giving preference
to self-congratulatory, optimistic newspaper articles with a perceptible,
propagandistic “spirit.” Timothy Snyder, speaking about the commonalities
of the two totalitarian regimes, asserts, “in light of the scarcities, particularly
of food supplies, both regimes integrated mass murder with economic
planning” (16).
The food supply situation in the occupied settlements of Ukraine
remained difficult throughout the entire stay of the German authorities and
troops in the captured territories and for long after. The actions of local
authorities in this area as reported in the newspapers seemed rather
effective and active, but, in fact, they mostly had a declarative character. In
fact, the population was compelled to save itself from death by starvation.
And the delivery norms anticipated by the local authorities, based on the
food ration cards, were so paltry as to look more like mockery than help.
The course taken to organize an artificial famine was a component of
German agrarian policy. As planned, large cities were not sufficiently
provided with food. People starved who did not have work or social
connections with the village, especially in the winter. This was primarily the
case in Kyiv, the Donbas, the Crimea, and northeastern Ukraine. The Kharkiv
region was declared a zone of “total requisitioning” (in German:
“Kahlfraßzone,” literally where “absolutely everything is eaten”), in which
the Wehrmacht divisions obtained food at their own discretion. The
consequences were disastrous for the local population (Polʹ), who were
offered trips to Germany, where the Ostarbeiter would supposedly be

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ensured a pleasant living situation and nourishment (“Pratsia v

Nimechchyni”).
Although the policy of forced removal of working people from the
occupied territories to contribute to the Third Reich economy was framed in
terms of their rational use and preservation, in practice it was often
otherwise. Already during the transportation stage, Ostarbeiters were
subjected to starvation. Paraskeviia Kyslenko, a resident of the town of
Ladan (Pryluky district), recalled that she was first taken away with others
from her village in a closed train car to Kyiv; there they stayed in a camp;
they were then sent to Magdeburg in closed train cars. During this
exhausting trip, they were given food only once. Vasylʹ Nalyvaika, a resident
of the village of Andriivka (Mykhailo-Kotsiubynskyi district), recalled: “We
travelled in a closed train car under guard. They gave us nothing to eat.” A
native of the village of Ivankivtsi, Olʹha Berezhna, who was taken to Germany
as a sixteen-year-old because her father was a party member, wrote, “We
travelled for a month; there was nothing to eat; they only gave us boiling
water” (Nesterenko 155). Kateryna Kashka from Chernihiv region recalled
the following:

They brought us to a concentration camp. Each morning they gave us bread

with sawdust (only 100 grams per day) and margarine (5 grams each). And
for lunch there was some sort of brew made from moldy biscuits—it would
hang down from the ladle, when it was poured onto the plates. No matter
how hungry I was, I could not swallow even a spoonful! Well, I thought, I’ll
die, what can you do? . . . For two weeks we were kept in that camp. Then,
they took us to the bathhouse, but people were so exhausted that some did
not make it there. All were emaciated, skinny, like living skeletons.
(Nesterenko 157).
The press of the occupation authorities gave the opposite impression.
Indeed, it was reported in these newspapers that the future workers of the
Third Reich were provided with food in transit, and there were descriptions
of the pleasant living conditions in Germany. And the trip abroad was
generally viewed as a chance to change one’s life for the better: to see the
world, to gain a profession, to experience life in a cultured environment, and
so on. Especially persuasive for the population were letters from the
Ostarbeiters published in the periodicals.7

7 Holos Volyni, 21 Feb. 1942, p. 2; Nove ukrainsʹke slovo, 26 April 1942, p. 3; Volynʹ, 14
May 1942, p. 2; Volynʹ, 17 May 1942, p. 2; Volynʹ, 21 May 1942, p. 2; Nove ukrains'ke
slovo, 13 June 1942, p. 4; Uriadovi Dunaievetsʹki visti, 14 June 1942, p. 3; Nove
ukrainsʹke slovo, 19 July 1942, p. 4; Vasylʹkivsʹki visti, 26 July 1942, p. 3; Dniprova
khvylia, 26 Sept. 1942, p. 3; Olevs'ki visti, 4 Oct. 1942, p. 4; Volynʹ, 12 Nov. 1942, p. 3;
Volynʹ, 15 Aug. 1943, p. 4; Volyn', 19 Aug. 1943, p. 4; Volyn', 26 Aug. 1943, p. 4;

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Volume VIII, No. 1 (2021)
228 Oleksandr Lysenko, Tetiana Zabolotna, and Oleksandr Maievs'kyi

A rather common practice for distracting the local population from the
problems of daily life was the publication of articles on the Famine of 1932-
33 (“Ugroza goloda v SSSR;” “Do statystyky holodu”). One of these
publications included vivid statistical data that underscored Soviet crimes
(“Do statystyky holodu”). Such articles were intended to increase the hatred
of the local population toward Soviet rule and to divert people’s attention
from the problems of the present to the horrific times of the past. In addition,
the occupation press contained reports on the difficult food situation in the
Soviet Union.8
Thus, the Nazi leaders and the occupation administration created a
contradictory situation, which they were not able to overcome. The first
dichotomy was that while the Reich truly needed a healthy workforce,
economizing had a detrimental effect on the working capabilities of the
inhabitants of the occupied territories, prisoners of war, and Ukrainian
Ostarbeiters. The second dichotomy was between Germany’s growing needs
for agricultural raw materials and products, on the one hand, and the
reduction of these resources in the occupied lands, on the other. The
methods chosen by the Nazi authorities to conquer and subjugate Ukraine
determined the collapse of Berlin’s occupation policy and caused enormous
demographic losses among the inhabitants in the occupied territories and
their descendants.

Ukrainsʹkyi holos (Proskuriv), 16 Sept. 1943, p. 4; Olevsʹki visti, 15 Aug. 1943, p. 4; and
others.
8 “Prodovol'che postachannia naselennia SSSR pid chas viiny,” Nove ukrains'ke slovo,

no. 234 (249), 8 Oct. 1942, p. 3; “Golod v Kuibysheve,” Donetskii vestnik, 24 Feb. 1943,
p. 2; “Tsar'-golod v SSSR,” Molva, 30 Sept. 1943, p. 1; “Predstoit zima poval'nogo
goloda,” Nash putʹ (Kherson), 8 Aug. 1943, p. 3; “Holod u bil'shovykiv,”
Dnipropetrovsʹka hazeta, 9 Feb. 1943, p. 2; “Golod nastupaet,” Poslednie novosti, 26
Jan. 1942, p. 1; “SSSR nakanune goloda,” Golos pravdy, 4 Feb. 1944, p. 6.

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Volume VIII, No. 1 (2021)
Famine As an Instrument of Nazi Occupation Policy in Ukraine, 1941-44 229

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