70 HUMAN LIFE IN RUSSIA
home.1 Russians, Ukrainians, Jews and Germans all agree.
Relatives of persons of other nationalities settled in the famine
districts—Bulgarians, Finns, Estonians—also confirm that
many millions of innocent persons have died of famine in
Russia.
Valuable evidence on the Russian famine and all its victims
is contained in reports emanating not only from eyewitnesses
who have visited the famine area, but also from the German
employees of the great German agricultural concession, the
Drusag;, which was founded in Stresemann's time in the
Northern Caucasus and led in some respects an independent
existence in Russia for nearly ten years. Managed by Dr. Fritz
Dittloff on modern economic principles, it was, all foreign
visitors agree, a positive oasis in the desert of the Northern
Caucasus famine area. Year after year the Drusag was able to
record large surpluses of grain and other foodstuffs, even in
1933, when the terrible famine broke out all round. (This is
probably the best proof that the theory of the cause of the
famine being dependent on good and bad harvests is untenable.)
Later the hundreds of Drusag employees had to see their neigh-
bours—apart from a small number living around the concession,
whom the Drusag was able to help from its stored surplus
—starving in numbers under their eyes. The people perished
at their very doors, and among them—a particularly tragic
element in the situation—were a large number of Germans,
those admirable settlers who quite recently had been pioneers
of agricultural progress. Leading officials of the Drusag tell how
starving German settlers used to come to them and ask: "Are
you really going to let us die?"2
1 Kronstddter Zeitung.
The Rigasche Rundschau, the Deutsches Volksblatt in Neusatz and the
Nordsckleszvigsche Zeitung also contain accounts from different sources which
agree in confirming the extinction of the German settlements in Russia*
2 Nevertheless, Dr. Dittloff and his staff were able with the stores at
their disposal to save the lives of many thousands who sought refuge on
the concession^ and grateful acknowledgments should here be made to
them for their great humanitarian effort.