DR. LATERNSER: When did you first get any food from the German troops?
KIVELISHA: I personally, and for the first time, received food from the German troops when I reached the town of Uman.
DR. LATERNSER: How much time had passed between the moment you were captured and your first meal?
KIVELISHA: When I was first fed I had been a prisoner of war for about 4 or 5 days.
DR. LATERNSER: You were a Red Army doctor and must have been quite aware that the feeding of armies is not so simple a matter.
KIVELISHA: I could not imagine this, especially as the Germans had then at their disposal time and many possibilities for supplying the prisoners of war with food. Further, to my previous statements I shall again repeat that if the German authorities were unable to provide the prisoners of war with food, the peaceful population did everything in their power to feed the Russian prisoners. However, obviously neither the German authorities nor the German Command issued any instructions on this matter.
I have already reported that no opportunity was given for friendly relations between the prisoners of war and the peaceful citizens. On the contrary, any persons who tried to bring food to the prisoners or any prisoner who accepted the food from the citizens was promptly shot.
DR. LATERNSER: But you can certainly imagine that it must have presented immense difficulties if, as you have just testified, 100,000 prisoners had been taken at that time in the area of Uman?
KIVELISHA: Not all the prisoners of war were concentrated at Uman at one and the same time. There were several stationary and permanent camps, only several of them were at Uman.
DR. LATERNSER: I was not speaking about the food problem in Uman Camp. We are still talking about the feeding during the first days after their capture.