Feeding the Hungry, P. C. Hiebert, 1929

prisoners, which appeared in an aggravated degree at the time of the general shortage of supplies. Friends of prisoners have told me that during the famine they se- cretly supplied food to their loved ones, else they would have starved. But this private supply of the neces- sities of life also encountered its difficulties, because of the suspicion that secret means of escape would be fur- nished to the prisoners through their sympathizers. One common effective means employed to overcome this hin- drance was to bring an additional supply of food for the guard, who would then permit admission to the window of the prison through which the food could be handed to the desired person. We can draw an example of an often repeated ex- perience from a certain, formerly wealthy, Mr. F—, from H—. After the revolution he was accused of being out of sympathy with the Soviet system of government, perhaps justly, perhaps only on a supposition drawn from the fact that he had been wealthy. But he was cast into prison where he languished days, weeks, yes, months waiting for a final hearing and disposition of his case. In the meantime his vitality was gradually giving way, because of the conditions under which he lived. He fell sick, but there was no medical care and no opportunity to supply help from the outside. After some time he was reported dead and his friends were given an opportunity 258 FEEDING THE HUNGRY to bury him. Upon receipt of the body, it was found that the vermin had literally eaten holes into his body while he yet lived and lay on the prison floor in a helpless state. On one of my visits to Halbstadt, an acquaintance of ours, a certain Mr. L—, came to our lodging by stealth, and pleaded that we should take him along to Alexan- drowsk on our return to that city. Upon our inquiry for the reason of his urgency and fear, he told us that the officials had made out a list of twenty-eight men in the colony who shortly should be arrested and that he was on the list, so he was very anxious to escape. We questioned this situation very much and counseled him to stay, but he claimed to have reliable information and was almost cer- tain that things would happen as he said. We yielded to his pleadings and took him along since he was sick with heart trouble, even though we did not put credence in his fears. About a week or two later when we were again in H—, we learned that four of the men included in the list had been arrested a few days before and had been freed only after paying a very heavy fine; and that, on the very day of our arrival, four additional men had received notice that they should report at Takmak, the county seat, because of various charges brought up against them. As it happened two of these latter ones were from among our employees at our central food-distribution headquarters in the Molotschna, whom we could not very well spare at the time; whereupon we Americans volun- teered to