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Research on Lesser-Known Nazi Sites Is Now Public

donsutherland1

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Today's edition of The New York Times reported that information from lesser-known Nazi sites has now been made publicly available.

Holocaust deniers aside, the world is not ignorant of the systematic Nazi slaughter of some six million Jews in World War II. People know of the gas chambers in Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen; many have heard of the tens of thousands shot dead in the Ukrainian ravine of Babi Yar. But little has been known about the hundreds — perhaps thousands — of smaller killing fields across the former Soviet Union where some 1.5 million Jews met their deaths.

That is now changing. Over the past few years, the Yad Vashem Holocaust museum and research center in Israel has been investigating those sites, comparing Soviet, German, local and Jewish accounts, cross-checking numbers and methods. The work, gathered under the title “The Untold Stories,” is far from over. But to honor Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts Monday evening, the research is being made public on the institution’s Web site.

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/04/20/world/middleeast/20holocaust.html

The website's url can be found at: The Untold Stories. The Murder Sites of the Jews in the Occupied Territories of the Former USSR
 
Ask why?

Remembering Ukraine's Uknown Holocaust
Millions of victims

Six million other farmers across the USSR were starved or shot during collectivization. Stalin told Winston Churchill he liquidated 10 million peasants during the 1930s. Add mass executions by the Cheka in Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania; the genocide of three million Muslims in the USSR; massacres of Cossacks and Volga Germans and Soviet industrial genocide accounted for at least 40 million victims, not including 20 million war dead.

Kaganovitch and many senior OGPU officers (later, NKVD) were Jewish. The predominance of Jews among Bolshevik leaders, and the frightful crimes and cruelty inflicted by Stalin's Cheka on Ukraine, the Baltic states and Poland, led the victims of Red Terror to blame the Jewish people for both communism and their suffering. As a direct result, during the subsequent Nazi occupation of Eastern Europe, the region's innocent Jews became the target of ferocious revenge by Ukrainians, Balts and Poles.
 
Priest uncovers ‘Holocaust by Bullets’
Book includes details of previously unknown mass exterminations

KIEV, Ukraine - The Holocaust has a landscape engraved in the mind's eye: barbed-wire fences, gas chambers, furnaces. Less known is the "Holocaust by Bullets," in which over 2 million Jews were gunned down in towns and villages across Ukraine, Belarus and Russia. Their part in the Nazis' Final Solution has been under researched, their bodies left unidentified in unmarked mass graves.

"Shoah," French filmmaker Claude Lanzmann's documentary, stands as the 20th century's epic visual record of the Holocaust. Now another Frenchman, a Catholic priest named Patrick Desbois, is filling in a different part of the picture. Desbois devotes his 233-page book, published by Palgrave Macmillan in August, to his work in Ukraine, where he says he has uncovered over 800 mass extermination sites, more than two-thirds of them previously unknown.

Desbois says he has interviewed more than 800 eyewitnesses and pinpointed hundreds of mass graves strewn around dusty fields in the former Soviet Union. Brought to Ukraine by a twist of fate, Desbois has spent seven years trying to document the truth, honor the dead, relieve witnesses of their pain and guilt and prevent future acts of genocide.

Some 1.4 million of Soviet Ukraine's 2.4 million Jews were executed, starved to death or died of disease during the war. Another 550,000 to 650,000 Soviet Jews were killed in Belarus and up to 140,000 in Russia, according to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. Most of the victims were women, children and the elderly.

Desbois' interviews and grave-hunting tie in to millions of pages of Soviet archives, heightening their credibility, says Paul Shapiro of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, who wrote the foreword to Desbois' book.

Father Desbois' work is also having an impact on efforts to preserve Holocaust sites. In December, the 26-nation International Task Force on the Holocaust called on European governments to ensure the protection of locations such as the mass graves Desbois is uncovering, according to Shapiro, who helped draft the resolution.
Source: msnbc.com

I've read father Desbois' book and highly recommend it.
 
If you enjoy wearing the symbol of people who murdered 100 million of their own people, sure.

Not even the infamous Black Book goes that high, so congratulations! You've just made an ass out of yourself.

Oh and by the way, I'm a Trotskyist. That probably doesn't mean anything to you, though. Communists = Stalin worshippers, right?
 
Not even the infamous Black Book goes that high, so congratulations! You've just made an ass out of yourself.

Stalin, 30-40 million. Mao, 50 million. Pol Pot, 3-4 million. Gosh, I rounded up. Sue me. Those 6-16 million make all the difference in the world. (Not counting all the other miscellaneous Communist tinpots.)

Oh and by the way, I'm a Trotskyist.

You didn't specify when you said you'd wear the symbol proudly, and it doesn't matter anyway.

That probably doesn't mean anything to you, though. Communists = Stalin worshippers, right?

It's funny how you can accuse someone of making unfair leaps in the same post when you made two yourself.

Communist = a set of regimes, all of which were brutal totalitarian dictatorships and who murdered (about!) 100 million of their own people.

Which makes them the most prolific butchers of all time.
 
It's funny how you can accuse someone of making unfair leaps in the same post when you made two yourself.

Communist = a set of regimes, all of which were brutal totalitarian dictatorships and who murdered (about!) 100 million of their own people.

Lulz.:2wave:
 
Trotsky murdered thousands if not tens of thousands of people before he failed in his bid to out scheme Stalin after Lenin died.
 
So did Lincoln.;)

Yeah. That's EXACTLY the same. :roll:

Trotsky:
  • We are for regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to socialism ... [O]bligation and, consequently, compulsion are essential conditions for overcoming bourgeois anarchy, securing socialization of the means of production and labor, and reconstructing economic life on the basis of a single plan.

  • [E]even chattel slavery was productive ... Forced labor did not grow out of the feudal lords’ ill-will. It was a progressive [that is, a wave of the future] phenomena.

  • [R]epression remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.


    [*]Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way: it kills individuals and intimidates thousands ... The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned ‘morally’ only by a man who, on principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence whatsoever. ... For this, one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.


No, he wasn't Stalin, but I'm hard-pressed to see how was any better.

And the original point still stands -- the Communists killed nearly 100 million of their own people.
 
Yeah. That's EXACTLY the same.

It's a pretty good comparison, I would reckon, as both were significant figures during their respective country's respective civil wars. Although perhaps a prominent US Civil War general such as Grant might have made a more fitting comparison, my point got through and that's what matters.

Trotsky:

* We are for regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to socialism ... [O]bligation and, consequently, compulsion are essential conditions for overcoming bourgeois anarchy, securing socialization of the means of production and labor, and reconstructing economic life on the basis of a single plan.

* [E]even chattel slavery was productive ... Forced labor did not grow out of the feudal lords’ ill-will. It was a progressive [that is, a wave of the future] phenomena.

* [R]epression remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.

* Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way: it kills individuals and intimidates thousands ... The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned ‘morally’ only by a man who, on principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence whatsoever. ... For this, one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.

First, sources. I'm not going to waste my time looking up sources for your argument. I'll reply to your slander once you've done that.

Second, this:

No, he wasn't Stalin, but I'm hard-pressed to see how was any better.

Probably because you don't know that much about the Russian Revolution, then, or the development within the Bolshevik Party following War Communism. Also, I have no interest in historical speculation about how history would have turned out had Trotsky become the General Secretary. The differences between Trotskyists and Stalinists is political, not historical.

And the original point still stands -- the Communists killed nearly 100 million of their own people.

How many have capitalists killed?
 
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It's a pretty good comparison, I would reckon, as both were significant figures during their respective country's respective civil wars. Although perhaps a prominent US Civil War general such as Grant might have made a more fitting comparison, my point got through and that's what matters.

There's a pretty big difference between fighting a war and rounding up your citizens for slaughter in a time of peace.

Man, if you can't see that, than I'm profoundly sorry for you.

But whats a few dozen million systematically murdered next to the glory of the revolution, eh?


Sources:

Leon Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism (Chapter 4)

Leon Trotsky and the Dewey Commission



Also, I have no interest in historical speculation about how history would have turned out had Trotsky become the General Secretary.

Neither am I. I couldn't care less. It means nothing to what I said whatsoever.



How many have capitalists killed?

Don't know. How many? Communists keep excellent records and boast of their accomplishments, so it's pretty easy to track.

Besides, the difference is, capitalISTS are individual people. The murders I speak of were done officially by the Communist Party, whose symbol you'll wear gladly.
 
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There's a pretty big difference between fighting a war and rounding up your citizens for slaughter in a time of peace.

Sure, but I don't see how that's relevant. The Russian Civil War lasted until 1921.

Sources:

Leon Trotsky: Terrorism and Communism (Chapter 4)

Leon Trotsky and the Dewey Commission

I was referring to your earlier quotes that you provided without sources. As far as these links are concerned, now I'm going to have to ask for quotes because I really have no idea what you're attempting to prove with these links.
 
I just noticed that the links you provided are the sources for your quotes (you just didn't specifically state that).

* [R]epression remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.

Here is a more full quote for context:

Kautsky, in spite of all the happenings in the world to-day, completely fails to realize what war is in general, and the civil war in particular. He does not understand that every, or nearly every, sympathizer with Thiers in Paris was not merely an “opponent” of the Communards in ideas, but an agent and spy of Thiers, a ferocious enemy ready to shoot one in the back. The enemy must be made harmless, and in wartime this means that he must be destroyed.

The problem of revolution, as of war, consists in breaking the will of the foe, forcing him to capitulate and to accept the conditions of the conqueror. The will, of course, is a fact of the physical world, but in contradistinction to a meeting, a dispute, or a congress, the revolution carries out its object by means of the employment of material resources – though to a less degree than war. The bourgeoisie itself conquered power by means of revolts, and consolidated it by the civil war. In the peaceful period, it retains power by means of a system of repression. As long as class society, founded on the most deep-rooted antagonisms, continues to exist, repression remains a necessary means of breaking the will of the opposing side.

Source

I don't see what's wrong with this quote at all, and don't understand why you cited it as some kind of evidence that Trotsky is "as bad as Stalin" or whatever you're trying to prove. This was written in 1920, at the height of the Civil War, when such repression was a real necessity.

The American Civil War was fought for the purposes of repressing the secessionists and unifying the country. What do you think a Civil War is?

Now, I've addressed this quote first, as it is the only quote for which you have provided a legitimate source (MIA is the most authoritative online collection of Marxist works). The other source you've provided is some obscure site that was incredibly crudely made and which I am much less inclined to accept as a source.

* [E]even chattel slavery was productive ... Forced labor did not grow out of the feudal lords’ ill-will. It was a progressive [that is, a wave of the future] phenomena.

As for this, due to the source, I am not going to trust the paraphrasing of the author here in claiming that Trotsky was saying that chattel slavery was "a wave of the future". Nor could I find any information on the source that is cited. This simply does not fit in with anything he has ever said. I have found an article that does state that Trotsky did make such a claim (that chattel slavery played a progressive role) at the Third All-Russian Congress of Trade Unions.

Based on the few minutes of searching that I put into this I can pretty much guarantee that Trotsky was claiming that historically chattel slavery played a progressive role, much in the same way that capitalism played a progressive role. It would be ridiculous to claim, though, that because they claimed this that they would also claim that it still plays a progressive role (in their time, or ours) or that they endorsed either.

We are for regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to socialism ... [O]bligation and, consequently, compulsion are essential conditions for overcoming bourgeois anarchy, securing socialization of the means of production and labor, and reconstructing economic life on the basis of a single plan.

This quote is from here:

History has known slave labor. History has known serf labor. History has known the regulated labor of the mediaeval craft guilds. Throughout the world there now prevails hired labor, which the yellow journalists of all countries oppose, as the highest possible form of liberty, to Soviet “s1avery.” We, on the other hand, oppose capitalist slavery by socially-regulated labor on the basis of an economic plan, obligatory for the whole people and consequently compulsory for each worker in the country. Without this we cannot even dream of a transition to Socialism. The element of material, physical, compulsion may be greater or less; that depends on many conditions – on the degree of wealth or poverty of the country, on the heritage of the past, on the general level of culture, on the condition of transport, on the administrative apparatus, etc., etc. But obligation, and, consequently, compulsion, are essential conditions in order to bind down the bourgeois anarchy, to secure socialization of the means of production and labor, and to reconstruct economic life on the basis of a single plan.

Source

Sounds dreadfully totalitarian, doesn't it? But wait, let's look a few paragraphs above this:

The very principle of compulsory labor service is for the Communist quite unquestionable. “He who works not, neither shall he eat.” And as all must eat, all are obliged to work.

I think this speaks for itself.

Last quote:

* Intimidation is a powerful weapon of policy, both internationally and internally. War, like revolution, is founded upon intimidation. A victorious war, generally speaking, destroys only an insignificant part of the conquered army, intimidating the remainder and breaking their will. The revolution works in the same way: it kills individuals and intimidates thousands ... The State terror of a revolutionary class can be condemned ‘morally’ only by a man who, on principle, rejects (in words) every form of violence whatsoever. ... For this, one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker.

Source here.

Nothing in this quote is false, again, so I don't see what your problem is with it. The state monopoly on violence is the vast majority of the time maintained not directly through violence but indirectly through the threat of violence. This is true for all revolutions, from the Russian to the French to the American. Every single class/group that rises to power must "suppress, rifle in hand, all attempts to tear the power out of its hands" for it to maintain such power (the quote is Trotsky's, from the same chapter of the book as this quote is from). He goes on:

Where it has against it a hostile army, it will oppose to it its own army. Where it is confronted with armed conspiracy, attempt at murder, or rising, it will hurl at the heads of its enemies an unsparing penalty.

As Trotsky rightfully said in your quote, "one has to be merely and simply a hypocritical Quaker" to "morally condemn" this truth.

Anyways, you can keep going if you wish; I'm well used to the dishonest attempts at misrepresenting Trotsky as saying/doing/being something that he isn't or didn't do. I'm just more used to it coming from Stalinists than you.

By the way, did you even read Terrorism and Communism or did you just go to Google and type in something like "communism terror trotsky"?:roll:
 
I'm not trying to "prove" anything by those quotes, really; Trotsky himself is meaningless to the point. The history of the Communist Party speaks for itself. Which isn't to say there isn't a very powerful apologist movement; always has been.

But hey, whatever you gotta do to justify the most brutal and deliberate mass murderers in all of history . . . and that's a plain, simple fact. They were unspeakably ghastly.
 
I'm not trying to "prove" anything by those quotes, really; Trotsky himself is meaningless to the point.

I think the Trotsky issue really came up when you responded to my comparison of Trotsky to Lincoln with sarcastic remarks and these quotes, then later went on to say:

There's a pretty big difference between fighting a war and rounding up your citizens for slaughter in a time of peace.

Which wasn't relevant to the conversation at all, as both Lincoln and Trotsky were fighting a war and not "rounding up...citizens for slaughter in a time of peace."

Basically I was refuting your attempt at character assassination of Trotsky, which was a rather poor attempt based on others I have seen. If you don't want to defend your claims then that's your prerogative.

The history of the Communist Party speaks for itself.

It's senseless to claim that the history of the CCCP is some kind of monolithic entity, whereby if you support it in one instance you must support it in all. I support the Revolutionary Social Democratic Labour Party, its Bolshevik faction before the split, the Bolshevik Party after the split and its formation into the Communist Party up to around Lenin's death in 1924.

Following Lenin's death and the bureaucratization of the party up to the rise of Stalin policies changed; hence the political split between Trotskyists who recognize this shift and Stalinists who deny it and claim that Stalin was in line with Lenin's politics and Marxism in general.

That is of course all I can say; while the political differences still exist, it is absurd to approach history in such a way whereby one outright supports or denies an action, a decision, a development, etc... From a historical point of view I can recognize the developments under Stalin and the benefits achieved under his rule, while also recognizing the faults and the horrors as well. This in the same way that Trotsky claimed that chattel slavery was once progressive or how Marx claimed that capitalism was once progressive.

But hey, whatever you gotta do to justify the most brutal and deliberate mass murderers in all of history

Which mass murderers do you think I support?
 
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Which mass murderers do you think I support?

The Communist Party, the one whose symbol you'd gladly wear.

Saying you support it up until 1924 is like saying you support the Nazis until Ernst Roehm was killed, before the death camps. You know, the "good Nazis," the ones who fixed the economy and rebuilt the country. :roll:
 
The Communist Party, the one whose symbol you'd gladly wear.

The hammer and sickle is the symbol of the international communist movement, and not simply the "symbol of the CCCP". Its origins lie in the 1917 Revolution, and through Russia's influence on the international communist movement at the time the symbol spread internationally very quickly.

I have even seen anarchists incorporate the hammer and sickle into some of their symbology.

EDIT: Here's the coat of arms of Austria:

561px-Austria_Bundesadler.svg.png


Notice how it incorporates the hammer and sickle. This was created in 1919 and has been in use as the official coat of arms of the country ever since. Here's the 1919 version:

646px-Coats_of_arms_of_Austria_%281919_-_1934%29.jpg


Do you think that the Austrian government supports the CCCP?

Saying you support it up until 1924 is like saying you support the Nazis until Ernst Roehm was killed, before the death camps. You know, the "good Nazis," the ones who fixed the economy and rebuilt the country.

No it is not, as I am stating that I politically support the Russian communists up until around Lenin's death. NAZI ideology never went through any kind of politico-ideological split as the Communist Party did following Lenin's death (unless you have some groundbreaking new evidence, at least).

Mein Kampf was published in 1925.
 
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The hammer and sickle is the symbol of the international communist movement, and not simply the "symbol of the CCCP". Its origins lie in the 1917 Revolution, and through Russia's influence on the international communist movement at the time the symbol spread internationally very quickly.

You keep dishonestly trying to limit what I say to the "CCCP." I didn't say "the CCCP." I didn't say "the Soviet Union." I didn't say "Russia." I said "the Communist Party." I have been quite clear about that.


No it is not, as I am stating that I politically support the Russian communists up until around Lenin's death. NAZI ideology never went through any kind of politico-ideological split as the Communist Party did following Lenin's death (unless you have some groundbreaking new evidence, at least).

Well, that was kind of the point of the Night of the Long Knives. To prevent it from happening, actually.
 
You keep dishonestly trying to limit what I say to the "CCCP." I didn't say "the CCCP." I didn't say "the Soviet Union." I didn't say "Russia." I said "the Communist Party." I have been quite clear about that.

I'm sorry, but since we were talking about Russia, and since you said "the Communist Party" I assumed you were referring to the Communist Party of Russia/The Soviet Union. If you are not referring to this Party then to which are you referring?

EDIT: Sorry, I was getting my acronyms mixed up. When I was saying CCCP I meant RCP(B)/AUCP(B)/CPSU.

Well, that was kind of the point of the Night of the Long Knives. To prevent it from happening, actually.

Yes, I know. That is why I said what I did. Why are you supporting my argument? Are you agreeing with me now?
 
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I'm sorry, but since we were talking about Russia, and since you said "the Communist Party" I assumed you were referring to the Communist Party of Russia/The Soviet Union.

Yes. You assumed. Apparently didn't matter that I mentioned Mao and Pol Pot.


If you are not referring to this Party then to which are you referring?

The Communist Party. You know, Big-C Communists, brutal thugs who took over the governments of a number of countries and systematically killed "inconvenient" people by the dozens of millions.

Why is that so difficult to understand? I mean, other than simply wanting to ignore it.

Yes, I know. That is why I said what I did. Why are you supporting my argument? Are you agreeing with me now?

How am I supporting your argument? You appear to be signing on to mine.
 
Yes. You assumed. Apparently didn't matter that I mentioned Mao and Pol Pot.

Can you provide evidence of where I have supported Mao or Pol Pot?

As for the Khmer Rouge, they were an anti-intellectual/anti-industrial primitivist group bent on destroying industry for some kind of mystical return to a humble peasant past that never existed. They weren't communist in any way except for the rhetoric that they occasionally used and their use of terms. But that is a debate for another thread, if you would like to open one up.

The Communist Party. You know, Big-C Communists, brutal thugs who took over the governments of a number of countries and systematically killed "inconvenient" people by the dozens of millions.

You'll have to be more specific than that, as you were above with providing names, and then you will have to show that I support them.

How am I supporting your argument?

My argument was that your claim was utterly ridiculous because there was no politico-ideological shift in the NAZI party as there was in the Bolshevik party following Lenin's death. Night of Long Knives supports my claim because it crushed all dissent and ultimately prevented any chance of such a split occurring. Stalin used the same tactic a few years later to crush all opposition and consolidate his power, thus completing the shift in Russia.

Whereas in Germany the tactic was used as a defensive measure to prevent such a shift from occurring, in Russia it was used by Stalin as an offensive measure to ultimately crush his remaining political opponents and finally consolidate power in his hands. In Germany it was used to prevent such a shift; in Russia it was used to consolidate such a shift. That is why you bringing up the Night of Long Knives supports my assertion.
 
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