Holocaust By Bullets
In this feature documentary, Linden MacIntyre talks to Desbois about the passion that has redefined his life, and why the search for answers about what really happened still matters 65 years later
Comments
The reason for their hesitation in the west was more likely due to it remaining as a vital war front, initially with the air campaign over Britain, and afterwards as the primary North Atlantic U-Boat base, training and reconstitution depot for decimated Eastern front formations, buffer against the allied bombing campaign, and then invasion defences. They needed military control of the those states and were loath to entrust it's institutions with the usual party dullards and incompetents that were typically given plum positions of governance as rewards. With Poland, it became part of the rear administrative echelon of the Reich as the front moved eastward. Eventually they did give the West over to an assortment of entities within the Reich's apparatus, including the SS. I'm not sure without some research which one of them if any had precedence of control.
Certainly. They did. In fact they did it despite the Wehrmacht's objection. That said they set up fairly stable relationships with local businesses and the existing state bureacracies. I don't know if it was so much that they were "dullards", though some were. They were all however rapacious profiteers, more or less to a man. The Nazi attitude to Poland is somewhat reminicent of the US attitude to Iraq today.
In anycase, this drivel about there being a substantive difference between the Nazi rule in Poland and what happened in the Ukraine and Belarus in 1941, is at best prevarication on details and revisionist history. This is an ethnic cleansing project that begins in Poland, and then accelerates and becomes increasingly brutal as the war progresses.
What's incredible would be for a certain toe-head to try to revise Holocaust history concerning a certain country as it's being uncovered and revealed to the world by eye witnesses to the events in question. That would take some doing.
Ok "Fidel". Nothing happened in Poland. No plans were made, no camps errected, no ghettos created, no Poles woken from their sleep and evicted. Danzig was not depopulated of Poles. No one was shot. Nothing happened: "Nothing to see here ladies and gentlemen -- now if you will please move along to the Soviet section of the exhibit..."
No I'm the one who mentioned concentration camps as well as ghettos in Poland.
And just to be clear, slippery, youre the one questioning the validity of the 400 plus eye witnesses to the more than 800 mass exterminations by the SS in Ukraine during WW II. So when did you become a Holocaust revisionist?
I did no such thing.
What I did was I posted a picture of Einsatzcommando executions in Poland, in order to demonstrate the continuity of events and policy leading up the extermination campaign against Slavs and Jews in the Soviet Union, starting in Poland. It is you who is engaged in trying to establish some kind of body count ranking system that differentiates between "Holocaust" in the Soviet Union and a "mere massacre" in Poland, as if these are not part and parcel of the same program.
You are also trying impute the idea that up until that point in time the Germans were engaged in some kind of "hostage taking" of Jews for political purposes as opposed outright ethnic cleansing.
Oh yes, I did in fact question the methodology behind identifying the specific identity of human remains burried 70 years ago. I never suggested that extensive massacres did not take place. I simply questioned the ability of determining the exact number of dead based on this forensice evidence. How is that done? For each body found you multiply by 10?
The fact that there were extensive massacres has never been in question. Finding new graves though does not say much, for example these bodies may be those of persons already accounted for in current estimates of the number killed. It would also be difficult to determine the identity of the persons killed.
The fact that there were extensive massacres has never been in question. Finding new graves though does not say much, for example these bodies may be those of persons already accounted for in current estimates of the number killed. It would also be difficult to determine the identity of the persons killed.
Identifying mass Jewish graves and collecting ballistic proof:
The presence of these German cartridge cases around the communal graves is determining evidence that executions were perpetrated by mobile Nazi units. Along with such evidence, the team picks up several personal objects belonging to the victims: glasses, children's games, or jewelry which escaped the killers' avarice
Well I'm glad they didnt recruit you for this forensic investigation, shitforbrains.
The liquidation of the Polish political and cultural elite began in earnest immediately in the wake of the advancing German armies. One Einsatzgruppe of approximately 400-600 men were assigned to each of the five invading armies, and a sixth was deployed in the Poznan border province that was to be annexed to Germany. These extermination units worked from previously compiled groups of names which included Aristocrats, priests, government officials, business people, teachers, doctors. Among them were many Jews. They were all rounded up into improvised camps behind the lines and the method of execution was usually by shooting. At that point, although there had been no specific directive singling out Jews for execution, there was one gruppe leader, SS General Udo von Woyrsch who took it upon himself to concentrate on killing Jews.
Slumber J, I dealt with that post some time ago and revised my comment accordingly. No one here is suggesting the that the nazis didnt execute Poles and Polish Jews by firing squads.
However, what we do have is a babbler doubting the evidence being uncovered in Ukraine over the last several years. That babbler has suggested that the Soviet NKVD could have been responsible for some of the mass execution sites. And this is contrary to the several hundred eye witness testimonials and physical evidence left behind at these newly discovered grave sites by the nazis' mobile death squads.
As bad as it is and continues to be, with the horrific casualties among innocent Iraqis from the first war, to the sanctions regime, and the second war and occupation, nothing tops what was done in Poland, not even the Ukraine, as monstrous as the Nazi crimes were there.
I would hope you're not opposed to additional information on the topic. It was offered as such, as gut wrenching as it is to read. In that light, why not give the Soviet NKVD their due as well for one of their monstrosities.
What's incredible would be for a certain toe-head ...
Now now. If we're going to insult each other, let's at least get our terminology straight.
2. A person with very light (almost white) blond hair, "tow" being flax or hemp fibers. Tow-headed, along with fair(-haired) and flaxen-haired, is a tradional way in the English language to refer to blond hair or lightly-colored hair, having come from its old Germanic roots (which are quite rare).
Maybe he did mean Toe Head, whatever that is. I can't find a definition for it though.
I would hope you're not opposed to additional information on the topic.
Yes actually, but it's not on-topic. The poster howardbeale attempted to sidetrack this thread about Holocaust events in the former Soviet Union and was told to cut it out by mods. You might find this to be interesting additional information about the subject at hand.
I would hope you're not opposed to additional information on the topic. It was offered as such, as gut wrenching as it is to read. In that light, why not give the Soviet NKVD their due as well for one of their monstrosities.
As horrendous as Katyn is in terms of bloodshed, I don't think you can equate the slaughter of military and police in wartime to the civilian slaughters by the Einsatzgruppen.
Why are some here so desperate to try to fabricate absolute equivalence between the Nazis and the Soviets?
He was warned for another reason.
Maybe he did mean Toe Head, whatever that is. I can't find a definition for it though.
Try trawling, or towing the line.
What a ridiculous inference, and a vile attack worthy of nothing but utter contempt. There was a suggestion up thread regarding the NKVD not being responsible for any mass graves in the former Soviet Union. The record suggests otherwise. It is not equivalence, equating, or any other boneheaded fabrication of yours.
[What a ridiculous inference, and a vile attack worthy of nothing but utter contempt. There was a suggestion up thread regarding the NKVD not being responsible for any mass graves in the former Soviet Union. The record suggests otherwise. It is not equivalence, equating, or any other boneheaded fabrication of yours.
Slumber jack, why are you doing your darndest to change the subject at hand, ie. The Holocaust, and even, Holocaust by bullets? None of the hundreds of eye witnesses to the more than 800 mass extermination sites have implicated the Soviets.
Why are you such an idiot? That's the pertinent question.
So besides having ADD, are you a Holocaust denier, too?
There's no inference, that was a bald statement. And you might recognize another statement, this one definitely implies one equates to the other as a parallel monstrosity:
In your fictional la la land, I suppose anything you conjure up can be useful, in convincing yourself with absurdities. But then from what I can gather from your most of your other posts, it's pretty much standard fare. You and Beavis the Second in this thread make quite the pair.
What can we do to prod and cajole you into discussing the thread topic, Slumberjack?
As bad as it is and continues to be, with the horrific casualties among innocent Iraqis from the first war, to the sanctions regime, and the second war and occupation, nothing tops what was done in Poland, not even the Ukraine, as monstrous as the Nazi crimes were there.
I meant in terms of the plundering of the civilian adminstration. The Iraqi economy is a basket case, because of fraud, rabid personal profiteering and mismanagement. It is somewhat simillar to the attitudes of the German Gauletiers of Poland during the war.
The lebensraun part is still reserved for the US's little attack dog, Israel.
You can go away and fuck yourself. That might get things back on track for the adults.
Obviously Patrick Debois is doing important historical work. That said, there isn't anything in that site which suggests that he is revising the estimated numbers of people killed by the Einsatzgruppen. Much of the specific nature of what they did has been studied in great detail before. Why? Because they were German military organization that were assidious record keepers. They did nothing to hide what they were doing from their superiors and were rewarded for success, and put everything on the record. Success meant exterminating undesirables, from commissars to Jews.
Fairly accurate statistical summaries of their brutality has already established simply by going through their own records.
I didn't realize that this was all news to you Fidel, and that the scope of the massacres were not something you were aware of. Frankly, I am surprised that for someone who takes such pride in his knowledge of the Stalanist period of Russian history seemed oblivious to these facts. So, I offer my appologies, since I had thought you would be aware of these historical attrocities. Therefore I was under the impression that you were saying the number of those killed should be revised upward for some reason.
I guess you just weren't aware of the numbers, and so you shock is actually not at all suprising.
Debois is not telling us anything new in terms of statistics. But working to consecrate and honour the forgotten victims of the victims of the Nazi invasion of the Soviet Union. A very worthy activity, putting names to the faces of the victims, who were more than mere statistics.
As a scholar in these matters he is also very careful to establish these events in their historical context of the racialist view of the National Socialist toward Slavs and Jews, as he does here:
[SNIP]
The Jews living in conquered Poland were assembled in immense ghettos as of the Autumn of 1939. Hunger and epidemics brought about the death of many thousands of them. From September 1939 onwards, the Einsatzgruppen massacred more than 70 000 Poles and Jews in just a few weeks.
The Start of the Genocidal Policy
Quite contrary to your assertions, Debois is properly pointing out the policy set out by the Nazis for Eastern Europe prior to the war begins in Poland and then is extended on a much larger scale in the Ukraine and Belarus.
Thank you Father Debois for keeping the record straight and free of the political motivations of those who really only want to score brownie points for their personal political agenda, not honour the victims of the Nazi extermination campaign.
First of all, "Holocaust By Bullets" was on the National last night - which means that, if you haven't seen it yet, the video is up now:
http://www.cbc.ca/national/blog/special_feature/holocaust_by_bullets/hol...
Father Patrick Desbois's story started with his grandfather who was imprisoned during the war and who said something about what happened to the Jews was worse than what happened to himself. Eventually, his grandfather told him what happened and Desbois made it his life's work to discover what happened to the remains. On the way, he met with a few survivors. Two of the survivors who were rescued by the Church and then lived in the forest for 18 months told their story to father Desbois. The is also the story about the rings - often a soon to be executed woman's last act of defiance. I wonder what the NAZIs wanted with those rings any way.
Secondly, David Lewis (second leader of the federal NDP) took steps to insure that Communists did not enter the NDP because of what the Soviets did to his father Moshe. Likewise, Naomi Klein and Linda McQuaig are great examples of the anti Communist left. That said, I don't think that the soviets were presented as the bad guys in "Holocaust by Bullets." David Lewis later returned to the town his father came from before WWII, where he met with relatives and later after WWII where he met with none.
Thirdly, although we should be discussing the mini doc, which was very moving, I don't think that the message that father Desbois wants to leave us with is that only the graves he personally dug up are worth caring about. Desbois worked with Mother Teresa once and she figured that all victems had worth. The documentation was to show that each of the victims were person, had worth, existed - that they were not nameless statistics.
Finally, we also need to take the lessons of WWII with us that when there is an economic crisis that we turn on the most vulnerable and easiest to blame and hate. During WWII it was the Jews and the Gypsies - in California right now, it is the poor and immigrants (Fault Lines). Avi Lewis came to the town his great-grandfather immigrated from and found out that all the Jews had been wiped out - though some in the town have taken it as their responsibility to preserve the memory of their existence - preserving any picture or any memory of those slaughtered by bullets. Ok it was a town in Poland rather than the Ukraine - but it was the same obliteration. In fact, the town father Desbois grandfather was imprisoned in was in the Ukraine but near its border with Poland.
Is it ok to do more slowly what the bullets did more quickly?
Vaudree you are correct, our educational system is poor at best. We have not learned anything from our past.
Not to mention many of the massacres that happened in Western Ukraine happened to Polish-Jews, since, of course, Western Ukraine was part of Poland up until the time Stalin gave his blessing the German invasion of Poland in exchange for Galicia and the surrounding area. In this sense, Soviet appeasement, for the puroposes of Soviet territorial expansion, directly implicate Stalin as an indirect accomplice.
Obviously Patrick Debois is doing important historical work. That said, there isn't anything in that site which suggests that he is revising the estimated numbers of people killed by the Einsatzgruppen. Much of the specific nature of what they did has been studied in great detail before. Why? Because they were German military organization that were assidious record keepers.
This is sad. Youre full of shit as per usual. Yes the Nazis kept meticulous records and were prolific photographers and filmers of their own crimes. But that didnt stop them from attempting to destroy evidence and paper records toward the end. As it became apparent the Red Army would overrun the death camps near Kracow, SS commanders tried to destroy as many paper records as possible before fleeing the scene of the crime.
A holy mission to reveal the truth about Nazi death squads
The oral histories they have gathered, along with detailed ballistic evidence, could soon change the face of the study of the Holocaust, pushing the final death toll upwards by as much as 500,000 victims. They are also, he hopes, providing irrefutable proof in the face of increasingly vocal Holocaust deniers, emboldened by the disappearance of the generation still able to recall the horrors of the Third Reich as they actually happened. . .
The reason for taking up this work is simple: to restore the dignity of the uncounted and largely unmourned dead who were slaughtered and piled into pits like animals, and to allow the Kaddish - the Jewish prayer of mourning - to be recited over their final resting places. But there is another reason too; to prevent a repeat of the Holocaust. . .
It is estimated that a minimum of 1.5 million Jews and Gypsies were killed in Ukraine during the Second World War. The country was second only to Poland for the number of Nazi murders on its soil. A further 500,000 perished in Belarus, while the exact numbers that perished in the vast expanse of Russia, where the German army was encamped some 17 miles from the Kremlin in the Moscow suburbs, or even in occupied Ossetia, can still only be guessed at - until that is these territories, too, welcome in the priest and his helpers to unlock the memories of survivors there too.
Oh you mean that Father Dubois intends to count all 1.5 million? How do you think these estimates were devised? They were devised using the records not destroyed, comparisons of census statistics, interogations, trials and forensic work that started immediatly after WWII. Dubois, isn't some pedant trying to prove some inane political point on a web site, about how the Nazi killed more people in the Soviet Union than Poland, or that up until 41 the Germans were "holding the Jews hostage" for political puposes.
Quite the opposite. What he is doing is quite a bit different than that, as I said he is:
Your axe grinding is a diservice to history, not to mention the dead.
Well first you said this:
And now youve backpedalled to the position that Holocaust numbers are only estimates derived from what records were not destroyed.
In fact, Holocaust deniers have pointed similarly to inconsistencies in the way that historians have wavered and changed their minds on the total number of Jews murdered during the Holocaust. They point those inconsistencies as evidence that the Holocaust either didnt occcur or in low-balling the total numbers down to the 200,000 to half a million range.
And Desbois is being very careful not to commit errors in his forensic investigation of newly discovered grave sites and is working toward revising the total number upward by as much as half a million in Ukraine alone. These are the remains of the uncounted. Desbois is working against time though.
Maybe we could agree that war crimes were committed by all military forces during the war and that these crimes likely started in September, 1939.
I really think the numbers game is a lot of crap. Personally I think the whole thing of you evaluating the Nazi racial policies and downplaying the massacres in Poland is not only a-historical, but also extremely offensive. Fact is the attrocity was so extensive that there is absolutely no way the true numbers will ever be devined... nor are they that important.
What is important about what Dubois is doing, is trying to tell the stories of indivduals and communities. This has nothing to do with evaluating the overall tally, which morally and politically speaking are irrelevant, even if shocking, though of historical import.
Stalin made famous the saying, "one death is a tragedy, a million is a statistic". It is sad that you have decided to take up this refrain in the name of Dubois work, simply because I had the audacity to point out that the program was not a unique victimization of Soviet citizens, but a general policy of the NSDAP and their operatives, as far as Jews and Slavs were concerned, Polish, Russian, Ukrainian, and Belarus.
I will not encourage this abuse further. So good night.
Maybe we could agree that war crimes were committed by all military forces during the war and that these crimes likely started in September, 1939.
We're talking about the Holocaust, and whose prime target was Jewish people. This wasnt a Soviet agenda but rather a specific policy of Adolf Hitler's and his Nazi regime during Nazi Germany's war of annihilation against Soviet communism.
Yeah, and it was a ride in the park for the Poles, half of who were forced into submission to Stalin's ambitions in order that Hitler could begin his pogrom. Get lost you wanker.
Yeah, and it was a ride in the park for the Poles, half of who were forced into submission to Stalin's ambitions in order that Hitler could begin his pogrom. Get lost you wanker.
You certainly tried to deflect blame from the Nazis to the Soviets for the mass graves now being excavated in Ukraine, your assholiness. This thread isnt about your pea-brain attempts at Holocaust revisionism. When you feel an ADD attack coming on and sense an urge to salute the fuhrer, try meditating for a few moments, breathin deeply, and not posting foot-in-mouth notes to us for a change
The only one who is engaging in Holocaust revisionism here is you. You are the one who is trying to make it out that the policy was really about the Soviet Union, and not ethnic cleansing of Jews, Slavs and other "undesirables", and first denying and then downplaying the ethnic cleansing of Poles and Polish Jews. Your insinuations are as disgusting as your crappy attempt rewrite history to obviate the obvious responsibility that Joseph Stalin carries for letting Hitler set up his house of horrors in Poland in the first place.
At first I had no idea that you were engaged in such political chicanery, and thought that you, like Father Dubois, would understand that the policy begins in Poland. But no, you insist in trying to make it look as if the Soviet Union was the only real victim, and using those myriad frightful and horrifying deaths as a means of winning political points for your buddy Joseph Stalin.
Fidel, I do not think anyone is disagreeing with you about Hitler's agenda. It is only the method some people are disagreeing with you.
The fact that most of those killed in those initial years of the conflict by firearms should not be all that surprising with anyone with a high school diploma.
I would not find it surprising that some of those mass graves were committed by Soviet forces, however that is not the point of this thread.
You were the one who stepped in it with assigning probable blame for these 800 plus mass graves to the NKVD in post#29, dickhead.
Probable? Don't see that word there. You made it up. I pointed out that there are a lot of mass graves in the old Soviet Union, and not all of them are attributable to the Wehrmacht and the Einsatsgruppen. Perhaps one day someone will start digging up the Siberian tagia, and start coallating so that people like you can start debating the ethics of statistics and mass slaughter.
It is said that history is written by the victors, in your case it is be written by a loser.
I would not find it surprising that some of those mass graves were committed by Soviet forces, however that is not the point of this thread.
Well that's what Patrick Desbois said about it - that Holocaust deniers have tried to elicit confessions from those same Ukrainians in hopes they would tell exactly what you and Joe Cuebbels up there have suggested about the Soviets having perpetrated some of the 800 mass extermination sites discovered in only recent years.
And the Nazi-sympathizing deniers have been SOL so far.
It is entirely reasonable to ask for details regarding the forensic evidence. After all, the Soviets put it over on people like you for years that the Katyn forest massacre was a german war crime, when in fact it was an NKVD war crime.
sieg heil ya nazi bastard
Thankfully Dubois does not support your insidious suggestion that the Nazi's were merely committing "batch" executions in Poland, and not real massacres, before they even got started in Russia. He knows what he is talking about. You don't. That is probably because you don't assemble evidence and then come to a conclusion, but come to your conclusion, and then assemble your evidence to fit that conclusion.
It's sad that it turns out that you started this thread for the purpose of manipulating DuBois's work to create sympathy for the Stalanist cause, as opposed to Hitler's victims.
Fidel, are you saying the Soviet Army did not conduct any war crimes during the conflict?
All I stated that there is likely speculation that some of graves were caused by Soviet forces.
But it was YOU who made insidious mention of executing Polish Jews "in batches" in post numero 27, ya frig. You should have your eyes checked, or something.
Yes, and indeed I showed a picture of just such an firing squad. Not at all like those seen at Babi Yar, where they also shot people in "batches". One "batch" at time. A whole lot of "batches" makes one big massacre. It was you who tried to make a distinction between "batches", massacre and Holocaust.
Fidel, are you saying the Soviet Army did not conduct any war crimes during the conflict?
No I've said Uncle Joe was a ruthless mofo in threads where such talk was relevant to the thread title. Red Army slaughtered hundreds of thousands of German soldiers at the infernal kessel and other sites. Murdered them in fact. And any German soldiers retreating along the way who had any hint of SS insignia or tattoos were executed on the spot by Red Army. Yes, the Red Army committed war crimes, too. They gave as good as they got in some cases during the advance on Berlin.
If so, then it's yours and Joe Cuebbel's wild speculation in this thread only a few posts ago. Dont you remember? And Desbois has stated that none of the hundreds of eye witnesses he's spoken with in Ukraine ratted on the Soviets or even the NKVD who they probably still remember being in fear of. No, they used terms like "SS", waffen SS, and German soldiers and collaborators to describe who were the triggermen on site in those days. Nothing about the NKVD in their confessions to father Desbois as you and Joe Cuebells were hoping for though.
What wild speculations? Its a matter of public record that the NKVD massacred Polish Prisoners of war in the Katyn forest, and then pretended it was a German crime. It is also well known that 90% of German soldiers captured at Stalingrad never returned home. Its perfectly logical to consider the possibility that new mass graves will be found where the victims are other than Russians, of one kind of antother. There is both a precedent, and also many questions about what happened to German soldier prisoners.
In 1989, with the collapse of Soviet Power, Gorbachev finally admitted that the Soviet NKVD had executed the Poles, and confirmed two other burial sites similar to the site at Katyn. Stalin's order of March 1940 to execute by shooting some 25,700 Poles, including those found at the three sites, was also disclosed with the collapse of Soviet Power. This particular second world war slaughter of Poles is often referred to as the "Katyn Massacre" or the "Katyn Forest Massacre".
Fidel, sorry I couldn't participate in this thread because it makes me ill. Thank you for holding firm against the moral relativism and historical revisionism of certain posters.
What wild speculations? Its a matter of public record that the NKVD massacred Polish Prisoners of war in the Katyn forest, and then pretended it was a German crime.
Yes, several thousand Polish military officers and soldiers were murdered in the Katyn forest massacre. Happy? Can we put away the straw man arg now and get back to discussing Nazi war crimes in Ukraine ie. the topic of dicussion, ya frig?
Can you take over now, Unionist? I'm exhausted scrapping with the revisionists here. TTFN
It's moral relativism to point out that the racialist policy and ethnic cleansing begun against Slavs and Jews began in Poland? There aint nothing "relative" about it. It is the truth, as Dubois points out, clearly in his description of the evolution of the policy.
Its moral relativism to point out that the Soviet government fabricated evidence and tried to pin its own massacres of Poles on the Nazis and that as late as 2000 the Russians still had not admitted where all the bodies were?
There are bodies ready to be exhumed all over the former Soviet Union, and not all of them are victims of the Nazis.
I have said nothing to negate Dubois work, Nor has anyone else. They have just asked simple questions. Reasonable ones at that. What I have objected to is this absurd rendering of the history which does everything to highlight German crimes against the Soviet Union, but downplays German crimes against Poles and Polish Jews, and even Stalin's responsibility for his own part in making that possible.
It's a bizarre equation.
There are bodies ready to be exhumed all over the former Soviet Union, and not all of them are victims of the Nazis.
In fact, there are still thousands of skeletal remains scattered around a ten or 15 mile radius around Stalin-Volgagrad and were never buried. Grass didnt grow for over a year after the battles at Stalingrad. Some soliders on both sides went mad because of the barbarism they witnessed first-hand. Meltwater from spring thaw ran pink with blood from the corpses into the next year after.
What wild speculations? Its a matter of public record that the NKVD massacred Polish Prisoners of war in the Katyn forest, and then pretended it was a German crime.
Yes, several thousand Polish military officers and soldiers were murdered in the Katyn forest massacre. Happy? Can we put away the straw man arg now and get back to discussing Nazi war crimes in Ukraine ie. the topic of dicussion, ya frig?
25,783 is not "several thousand". You are doing it again: downplaying. That is 1/3rd of what Dubois sites as the figure of Poles and Polish Jews killed by the Einsatzgruppen in the opening phase of the German ethnic cleansing program that began in Poland in October 1939, according to your source.
So tell us, herr Cuebbels, would you like someone to revise the thread title and topic so we can discuss your favourite parts of the war that took place not in Ukraine but Poland? All you had to do was ask. We're already nearing post#100 I'm just thankful you arent still on about how the nazis were shipping Romanian oil north over the Carpathian mountains as the crow flies to the Russian front. You must have laughed at yourself for that one eh,? Kinda like Homer Simpson does history. Doh! 
Why change the thread title, since the thread is about the continuation of a policy first devised by Heydrich and Himmler in 1938, as is attested to by Patrick Dubois the source you referenced in your OP, a policy that was first put into motion in October 1939 in Poland by the source you referenced in your OP. Or is it your intention that we should not read or use the source you referenced in your OP, or only choose to talk about the points from the source you referenced in your OP that suit the historical perspective you prefer, or perhaps you just want us to believe on face value what it is that you say the source you referenced in your OP, says?
How fickle is a thing such as an national boundary line to politics? Is it too much "historical revisionism" to note that a substantial part of the massacre of Jews (indeed Polish Jews) in "Ukraine" would have taken place in "Poland", if it had not been for certain "agreements" made two years prior, according to the source you referenced in your OP? Is it too tasteless to point out that a great many of the victims, were indeed Polish-Jews according to the source you referenced in your OP?
But lets not talk about Poland, in this thread about Holocaust in Ukraine!
And I am the historical revisionist?
MacIntyre: Now what was it about the Nazis that made you nervous right now? You didn't ask them for candies, you didn't ask them for cigarettes.
Levin: No, we...because the way I analyze now, because some of them who run away from the Nazis from... Poland, they told us stories what's happened, what the Nazis are doing. This is why we already knew some bad information, bad news what's going on. Some of them did not believe, the elderly people did not believe that this could happen. They remember the first world war, the same like my brother before he retreated together with the Russians, he came with a horse, with food and said to my father, let's retreat. My father said, "[for] so many generations we are here. And he remembered the first world war, he ignored the proposal of my brother. My brother didn't listen to him.. with some cousins and friends they retreated. And we remained in our town.
Long thread. And I don't have the energy to see "who started it" when it comes to all the nastiness that went on here, so I'm just going to close it.
Good for you for posting this Fidel.
You might be in for some grief about it, though. There are some on the left who feel that to even bring attention to the holomodor is to be pro-fascist and anti socialist. And, unfortunately, two of the top search results under search term 'holomodor' are from nazi bonehead sites.
I wasnt thinking that at all. And I'm sure we can appeal to moderators to keep this thread on topic, which is Holocaust in Ukraine during WW II.
Apparently they've excavated over 700 mass graves in towns and villages across Ukraine so far. Father Desbois discovered that his father was one of the thousands of French slave labourers for the nazis who were brought to Ukraine to dig graves for the large number of Ukrainian Jews murdered in that country during the war.
Ukraine and Russia were countries where the first mass exterminations took place. The nazis' first solution for extermination was to murder large numbers of Ukrainian and Russian Jews by machine gun and rifle fire with burials in mass graves. And sometimes victims were still alive as they were being buried.
Oh, I got your intent wrong. You can have your thread back. it was wrong of me to bring Stalin's extermination of Ukrainians in the 30s into your discussion of Hitler's extermination of Ukrainians five years later.
I honestly thought any discussion of Ukrainian genocide would include both. It sure has when I've discussed Ukrainian history with my Ukrainian friends over the last 30 years . A closer look at the links reveals the specificity of your topic.
Is it ok for me to despise both acts?
We've had several threads on that topic. I suggest you open another thread if youre not comfortable with this particular subject material concerning the Holocaust in Ukraine specifically.
I have no discomfort with the subject. It is you who are discomfited. I find the parameters of discussion absurd.
This is annoying.
Go ahead and report me. This is ridiculous. I posted an honest opinion and you instantly threatened me. Go ahead.
We're talking about a CBC documentary and Father Patrick Desbois' important work in Eastern Europe of the last seven years, Howard. Now stay on topic or I'll report you to the mods. Open another thread or find one of several on your preferred topic of dicussion, and which may still even be open for comment. Do a google search on rabble - dont be lazy.
HOLOCAUST COUNT IS 'TOO LOW'
Five years of research into one of mankind's darkest episodes has convinced a French Catholic priest that the death toll in the Holocaust is far higher than the generally accepted figure of 6 million.
Father Patrick Desbois has identified 800 of the estimated 2,000 gravesites of Jews who were rounded up and shot across the Ukraine.
Documenting these graves is certain to boost the current estimate of 1.7 million Jews murdered in the Ukraine, he says. He expects similar work elsewhere in eastern Europe will raise the death toll even further.
"Surely, at the end of it all, the numbers will be larger," Desbois told The Times of London. "But we are still inspecting sites in Belarus, and there is the vastness of Russia ahead of us."
You threatened me, and then edited out the threat so that it looks like I'm daring you out of nowhere, putting your absurd threat after my post rather than before it. Neat trick. Very sly. Since when is disagreement banned on babble?
So, do you have anything to say about the thread topic, Howard?
Are you a Holocaust denier by any chance, Howard?
Are you a Nazi sympathizer and anti-semitic fascist bastard, Howard?
Dont just sit there with your mouth full of cereal - say something and hopefully on topic.
You have just verified what I said up top, Fidel, except I didnt realize that that faction of the left of which I spoke included you. I really didnt. I thought this was a genuine discussion of all the underreported horrors the Ukrainian people suffered in the twentieth century. I was wrong. That might include a critique of Stalin, which you have forbidden. For me to suggest that one horrible disgrace should be discussed in its historical context: ie- the horrible disgrace which preceded it makes me a nazi. Great. Thanks a lot. Enjoy your thread.
So, do you have anything to say about the thread topic, Howard?
Are you a Holocaust denier by any chance, Howard?
Are you a Nazi sympathizer and anti-semitic fascist bastard, Howard?
Dont just sit there with your mouth full of cereal - say something and hopefully on topic.
And I've sent this post to the mods, and quoted it here before you edit it.
You whiney little turd. You deliberately disrupted this thread using the lame excuse that youre a semi-literate fascist bastard and didnt understand the thread title, and now youre complaining to the mods. Youve got more nerve than a barge captain on Lake Gitchigumi in a November storm, I must say.
You whiney little turd. You deliberately disrupted this thread using the lame excuse that youre a semi-literate fascist bastard and didnt understand the thread title, and now youre complaining to the mods. Youve got more nerve than a canal horse, I must say.
Both these posters have basically jumped the shark. However Fidel made his intention pretty clear and Howardbeale seems to be using this thread to support an agenda entirely out of place. While Fidel used language that he ought not have, it's almost understandable given howardbeale's attacks.
If howardbeale is truly interested in discussing the holomodor he is free to star a thread doing so. The documentary I saw last night on Father Desbois was very moving and I hope this subject can be revitalized.
Well said.
And may I add that if Howard took a couple of minutes to think it through, he might understand why this is so:
...unfortunately, two of the top search results under search term 'holomodor' are from nazi bonehead sites.
Right on, Fidel. Denial of Nazi crimes takes many forms, and Mr. Beale's is one of the most insidious.
I saw Father Desbois in Montreal during his visit last winter. My family members died of bullets, not death camps, so his mission was of particular interest. The mass grave in the area where my parents' families lived is known - others have yet to be identified, and as Father Desbois said, time is running out.
Good for you for posting this Fidel.
You might be in for some grief about it, though. There are some on the left who feel that to even bring attention to the holomodor is to be pro-fascist and anti socialist. And, unfortunately, two of the top search results under search term 'holomodor' are from nazi bonehead sites.
Actually, the documentary isn't about the Ukrainian famine of the 1930s but about the Nazi massacre of Jews during the occupation of the Ukraine during World War II.
Howard, I got your complaints. You left out the part about how you're trolling this thread, and trying to disrupt it with some tired old anti-left holocaust minimizing boilerplate. Please stay out of this thread now.
It's an intersting thread, let's keep it on topic.
Was in my early 20's when I started to find out about the bullet Holocaust, and the other deeper autrocities, over and above what the label of "Holocaust" connotes with only mass muder numbers and gas chamber stories. And since then, there has been no real further exposure, on a mass teaching scale, of just how broadly scoped and massive of an undertaking it was. Which is actually a travesty IMV. This documentary has a very important function to serve, glad you posted it fidel.
Perhaps if more people knew the full Holocaust history, especially that it is relatively recent, and still unfolding, they would see things of such type starting to resurface again today, as opposed to not seeing the implications of what end results would be, if these paths were continued down nowadays. And this is one of the main reasons why I supported the museum in Winnipeg, and indeed would like it to become a travelling exhibition by train too. And on that note, I would also hope that this museum of ours would go back beyond the Holocaust, to the pogroms in Eastern Europe, that can be considered to be the de-sensitizing precursors that allowed people to allow others to do these final and heinious actions.
Right on, Fidel. Denial of Nazi crimes takes many forms, and Mr. Beale's is one of the most insidious.
I saw Father Desbois in Montreal during his visit last winter. My family members died of bullets, not death camps, so his mission was of particular interest. The mass grave in the area where my parents' families lived is known - others have yet to be identified, and as Father Desbois said, time is running out.
That's terrible, and I'm sorry to know that, Unionist. Desbois said last night something in regard to the actual number not concerning him so much as the individuals themselves who were once alive and well people. He said the historical record isnt complete until all of those graves are exhumed and as many names assigned to the remains as possible. A crime committed against anyone is a crime committed against everyone.
For those interested in this time in history, I recommend Babi Yar, by Anatoli Kuznetsov.
Right on, Fidel. Denial of Nazi crimes takes many forms, and Mr. Beale's is one of the most insidious.
I saw Father Desbois in Montreal during his visit last winter. My family members died of bullets, not death camps, so his mission was of particular interest. The mass grave in the area where my parents' families lived is known - others have yet to be identified, and as Father Desbois said, time is running out.
I'm sorry to hear that, Brother Unionist. I don't have words.
Ukraine and Russia were countries where the first mass exterminations took place. The nazis' first solution for extermination was to murder large numbers of Ukrainian and Russian Jews by machine gun and rifle fire with burials in mass graves. And sometimes victims were still alive as they were being buried.
Actually this all really begins in Poland, not the Ukraine, and the victims were Poles and Polish Jews. It was accelerated and systemized after Barbarossa began. Also, areas "liberated" by the Hungarians and Romanians in Bessrabia were the site of pogroms and massacres conducted by Hungarians and Romanians, without the help of the Einsatzgruppen, more or less spontaneously and independent of German command -- picking up on the "theme" of unlicenesed barbarity.
More than likely. But according to Emory University's timeline, they were still setting up ghettos across Poland, Ukraine, and Baltics in spring and summer of '41.
September 3, 1941
Nine hundred Soviet prisoners of war and Polish prisoners are killed in a test of Zyklon B at Auschwitz ...
June 22, 1941
The German army invades the Soviet Union. The Einsatzgruppen, mobile killing squads, follow the Wehrmacht (regular army) into Russia, and begin mass murders of Jews, Gypsies and Communist leaders. By spring of 1943, the Einsatzgruppen had murdered more than a million Jews and tens of thousands of others. Some 70,000 to 80,000 Jews fled eastward to evade the first wave of German invaders.
The mobile killing squads took few if any prisoners in Russia, just blitzkrieg, machine guns, and flamethrowers - annihilation. It sounds like Desbois and investigators will be unearthing many more mass graves in Ukraine, Belarus, and Russia.
Ho hum.
Execution of Poles by Einsatzcommando in October 1939.
Massacre in batch of Polish POW's, civilians, and also Jews started almost as soon as the "civilian" authorities took over the areas of Poland siezed by the Wehrmacht. It was so brutal that Walter von Braustich the Field Marshal in command of the Wehrmacht directly complained to Hitler about the barbarity of what the SS were doing when they took over the rear area. Braustich was sacked. Later, in fact, partly because of this experience of the wanton destruction unleashed in Poland, the Wehrmacht insisted that areas in the west, such as Holland, Belgium, Luxemborg and France remain under the authority of the Wehrmacht until hostilities had ended.
This insistence, probably saved the people of Western Europe from much suffering. But yeah, go on, distort it all you like, so that we can forget about the agreement between the Soviet Union and Nazi Germany that brought doom to so many innocent Poles, and tell us all about Russian suffering, after 41.
Thanks! Par for the course.
And here's the link to your source page you neglected to include: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nazi_crimes_against_ethnic_Poles
Par for the course, and your welcome.
Well I should have said "among the first mass exterminations" carried out by firing squads early in the war. The central theme of this thread is not to point out the well established fact that 90% of Polish Jews were exterminated by 1945, but that mass exterminations by mobile killing units also took place in Ukraine, Belarus, Russia, and that mass grave sites are now being excavated in the former USSR and Russia for the first time and for the sake of updating an historical record. Desbois points out that his research leads him to believe that the generally accepted number of six million is too low.
Yes, also took place. Based on the precedent set at the end of the Polish campaign. I was merely correcting the specifics of the history, and expanding upon the point. My point is that all of this begins in Poland and is the expanded later in Russia and the Ukraine.
Yes. It is an image of an Einsatzcommando units exterminating "ethnic Poles". "Poles" is how I identified them under the photo. What the fuck does that have to do with anything? Its not like were not also exterminating Polish Jews in batches. Pogroms started immediatly and were often organized with the participation with antisemitic Poles. Are you disputing the legitimacy of the photograph? What is the point....?
Yes, the mass exterminations by gunfire, hangings, etc occurred in Poland on the order of dozens to hundreds per day and became much worse in Ukraine and Russia in terms of numbers of people shot in a matter of days ie. in the thousands as opposed to "batches."
Babi Yar is considered to be the largest mass extermination of the war by a division of einsatzgruppen and collaborators over a span of less than two weeks.
Personally I think that for the most part, the deportation of European Jews to ghettos and concentration camps in Poland up to late 1941 was considered to be a mass hostage taking by the nazis. And once the USA entered the war against Germany and serious attempt made by western countries to provide a second front against the Nazis, Hitler and reich chancellery no longer viewed the Jews as hostages and were then free to carry out mass exterminations in a more methodic and frenzied pace as the madman planned to all along.
And now there are hundreds of mass extermination sites being discovered in Ukraine and Belarus. And as Desbois said, there is still the vastness of Russia where mass graves of those executed by mobile death squads are yet to be discovered...
I am not going to argue with you about the level of massacres deportations and ethnic cleansing that went on in Poland in comparison to the Soviet Union. Be that as it may I was just pointing out that the policy really begins in Poland.
I think the idea that the Jews were hostages is bogus. But you can think what you like.
I'd have to look at the evidence, but the idea that there is something new here statistically speaking is a little far fetched. There will never be a way to coallate all the data, and firmly decide who did what to whom. For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on.
I'd have to look at the evidence, but the idea that there is something new here statistically speaking is a little far fetched. There will never be a way to coallate all the data, and firmly decide who did what to whom. For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on.
Well I disagree with your personal opinion concerning mass executions of "batches" of people by gunfire in Poland as a model used by einsatzgruppen in the Soviet Union. Mass extermination by machine gun fire and even flamethrowers in the Soviet Union was the method used by mobile death squads in the former Soviet Union during the war. Relentless blitzkrieg, starvation and disease was another.
And about NKVD being possible perpetrators? Not so far, says Patrick Desbois. None of the witnesses he's spoken with in Ukraine have pinned blame to the Soviets for any of the 800 plus mass graves. They've all identified the SS and German soldiers, collaborators etc as having perpetrated the mass executions being discovered over the last several years. Desbois says most of the old timers he's interviewed will have lived through the famine years during Soviet rule. And he estimates there are another 1200 mass grave sites in Ukraine to be unearthed.
If memory serves me correcrly is there not a former member of the Einzatsgruppen still living in Waterloo Ontario?
http://news.therecord.com/article/434894
http://wearcomp.org/decon/undress_search_special562000_13395.html
I'd have to look at the evidence, but the idea that there is something new here statistically speaking is a little far fetched. There will never be a way to coallate all the data, and firmly decide who did what to whom. For one thing I think you would have to establish that the victims were not German soldiers, captured and then dealt with by the NKVD, and so on.
Exactly! You don't. I show you an image of Einsatzgruppen executing Slavs as a part of a the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews and enslave and ethnically cleanse the Slavs of Poland, during WWII, and you don't think that it has anything to do with Einsatzgruppen executing Slavs as a part of a the Nazi campaign to exterminate Jews and enslave and ethnically cleanse the Slavs of the Ukraine and Belarus during WWII.
That is because your brain has been fused into a block by Soviet propaganda.
Let's focus on what you have said about the topic of discussion:
Desbois and Ukrainian eye witnesses to hundreds of these executions by machine gun bullet sprays during WW II in their own towns and villages say youre a filthy liar. What do you have to say about that?
Jonathan Harrison said about Holocaust by Bullets:
Could witnesses commit errors 60 years after the event? Of course. Would they incorrectly identify a murder committed by Russians as a murder committed by Germans? Not a chance. Yet deniers would have to claim that 460 witnesses all made this mistake
I think you should change your handle to Joe Cuebbels considering the amount of Cuebull you broadcast on babble
Actually, von Brauchitsch was sacked in December 1941, more than two years after the Polish campaign, due to the reversals suffered during the winter battles west of Moscow that year. During the 1939 campaign, Brauchitsch ordered his commanders to cease criticism of the measures being taken against the Polish population, because he felt they were vital for securing living space and the destiny of Germany.
Sure. Regardless his private criticisms of the conduct of the campaign are a matter of record. None of that is to say that he was a particularly moral person, nor the Wehrmacht dissatisfaction with conduct of the civilian adminstration a moral issue. The most important issue was the fact that the Nazi scorched earth policy hampered the war effort, and affected production in the newly occupied zone. For example the depopulation of the ethnic Polish people of Danzig/Gdansk was so damaging to the operation of the city as a port that the Nazi "Gauletier" halted the ethnic cleansing operation.
Poland, as a result, became an economic basket case and a net liability.
On this basis the Wehrmacht was very reticent to turn over control of the Benalux countries and France, for fear that the Nazi policies would severly undermine the productive capacity of those areas and damage the long term prospect of winning the war.
The reason for their hesitation in the west was more likely due to it remaining as a vital war front, initially with the air campaign over Britain, and afterwards as the primary North Atlantic U-Boat base, training and reconstitution depot for decimated Eastern front formations, buffer against the allied bombing campaign, and then invasion defences. They needed military control of the those states and were loath to entrust it's institutions with the usual party dullards and incompetents that were typically given plum positions of governance as rewards. With Poland, it became part of the rear administrative echelon of the Reich as the front moved eastward. Eventually they did give the West over to an assortment of entities within the Reich's apparatus, including the SS. I'm not sure without some research which one of them if any had precedence of control.
A World War Two survivor offers his eyewitness account of how Jews were exterminated by Nazi mobile units in the Ukraine in World War II. Mykola K. said:
We were just children ... They said, Don't move! ... They had helmets on. They were SS... trucks arrived and the Jews were ordered outside... At the head of the line was the rabbi ... [makes sounds like machine gun fire] Another group moved ahead [mimicks more machine gun fire] I saw this with my own eyes