Even the WTS has admitted that some witnesses , no doubt including pioneers , have starved to death.
***
yb02p.153Ukraine***In 1944, seven brothers from one congregation in Bukovina refused to join the military and were sentenced to from three to four years’ imprisonment each. Four of them starved to death in prison. That same year five brothers from a nearby congregation were sentenced to ten years each in a Siberian prison camp. Only one of them returned home—the others died there... In the late 1940’s, many of the brothers from Ukraine, Moldavia, and Belarus starved to death in Soviet prisons