The official blog of the site “Der Stürmer” – http://der-stuermer.org
Saturday, June 30, 2018
Wednesday, June 27, 2018
High Finance - Part II
Part II
„The responsibility for the last World War [WW I] rests solely upon the
shoulders of the international financiers. It is upon them that rests the blood
of millions of dead and millions of dying.“ (Congressional
Record, 67th Congress, 4th Session, Senate Document No. 346)
„How then was it that this Government [American], several years after
the war was over, found itself owing in London and Wall Street several hundred
million dollars to men who never fought a battle, who never made a uniform,
never furnished a pound of bread, who never did an honest day’s work in all
their lives?...The facts is, that billions owned by the sweat, tears and blood
of American laborers have been poured into the coffers of these men for absolutely
nothing. This ‘sacred war debt’ was only a gigantic scheme of fraud, concocted
by European capitalists and enacted into American laws by the aid of American
Congressmen, who were their paid hirelings or their ignorant dupes. That this
crime has remained uncovered is due to the power of prejudice which seldom
permits the victim to see clearly or reason correctly: ‘The money power
prolongs its reign by working on prejudices. ‘Lincoln said.“ (Mary
E. Hobard, The Secrets of the Rothschilds).
„If this mischievous financial policy [the United States Government
issuing interest-free and debt-free money] which had its origin in the North
American Republic during the war (1861-65) should become indurated down to a
fixture, then that Government will furnish its money without cost. It will pay
off its debts and be without a debt. It will have all the money necessary to
carry on its commerce. It will become prosperous beyond precedent in the
history of civilized governments of the world. The brains and the wealth of all
countries will go to North America. That government must be destroyed or it
will destroy every Monarch on the globe!“ (London
Times Editorial, 1865)
„[The world] forgets, in its ignorance and narrowness of heart, that
when we sink, we become a revolutionary proletariat, the subordinate officers
of the revolutionary party; when we rise, there rises also the terrible power
of the purse.“ (The Jewish State, New York, 1917)
„I am afraid the ordinary citizen will not like to be told that the
banks can, and do, create money...And they who control the credit of the nation
direct the policy of Governments and hold in the hollow of their hands the
destiny of the people.“ (Reginald McKenna, former
Chancellor of the Exchequer, January 24, 1924)
„Five men meet in London twice daily and decide the world price of gold.
They represent Mocatta & Goldsmid, Sharps, Pixley Ltd., Samuel Montagu
Ltd., Mase Wespac Ltd. and M. Rothschild & Sons.“ (L.A.
Times-Washington Post, 12/29/86)
„The division of the United States into two federations of equal force
was decided long before the Civil War by the High [Jewish] Financial Powers of
Europe. These bankers were afraid of the United States, if they remained in one
block and as one nation, would attain economical and financial independence,
which would upset their financial domination over the world. The voice of the
Rothschilds predominated. They foresaw tremendous booty if they could
substitute two feeble democracies, indebted to the Jewish financiers, to the
vigorous Republic, confident and self-providing. Therefore, they started their
emissaries to work in order to exploit the question of slavery and thus to dig
an abyss between the two parts of the Republic...’“ (La
Vieille France, No. 216, March, 1921)
Walther Rathenau, the Jewish banker behind the Kaiser, writing in the
German Weiner Frei Presse, December 24th, 1912, said: „Three hundred men, each
of whom knows all the other, govern the fate of the European continent, and
they elect their successors from their entourage.“ Confirmation of Rathenau’s
statement came twenty years later in 1931 when Jean Izoulet, a prominent member
of the Jewish Alliance Israelite Universelle, wrote in his Paris la Capitale
des Religions: „The meaning of the history of the last century is that today
300 Jewish financiers, all Masters of Lodges, rule the world.“ (Waters
Flowing Eastward, p. 108)
„From the strictly financial point of view, the most disastrous events
of history, wars or revolutions, never produce catastrophes, the manipulators
of money can make profit out of everything provided that they are well-informed
before-hand...It is certain that the Jews scattered over the whole surface of
the globe are particularly well placed in this respect.“ (G.
Batault, Le problème juif; The Secret Powers Behind
Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins, p. 136)
„I know of nothing more cynical than the attitude of European statesmen
and financiers towards the Russian muddle. Essentially it is their purpose, as
laid down at Genoa, to place Russia in economic vassalage and give political
recognition in exchange. American business is asked to join in that helpless,
that miserable and contemptible business, the looting of that vast domain, and
to facilitate its efforts, certain American bankers engaged in mortgaging the
world are willing to sow among their own people the fiendish, anti-democratic
propaganda of Bolshevism, subsidizing, buying, intimidating, cajoling. There
are splendid and notable exceptions but the great powers of the
American-Anglo-German financing combinations have set their faces towards the
prize displayed by a people on their knees. Most important is the espousal of
the Bolshevist cause by the grope of American, Anglo-German bankers who like to
call themselves international financiers to dignify and conceal their true
function and limitation. Specifically the most important banker in this group
and speaking for this group, born in Germany as it happens, has issued orders
to his friends and associates that all must now work for Soviet recognition.“ (Article
by Samuel Gompers, New York Times, May 7, 1922; The Secret Powers Behind
Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins, p. 133)
„The mode of government which
is the most propitious for the full development of the class war, is the
demagogic regime which is equally favorable to the two fold intrigues of
Finance and Revolution. When this struggle is let loose in a violent form, the
leaders of the masses are kings, but money is god: the demagogues are the
masters of the passions of the mob, but the financiers are the master of the
demagogues, and it is in the last resort the widely spread riches of the
country, rural property, real estate, which, for as long as they last, must pay
for the movement.
When the demagogues prosper
amongst the ruins of social and political order, and overthrown traditions,
gold is the only power which counts, it is the measure of everything; it can do
everything and reigns without hindrance in opposition to all countries, to the
detriment of the city of the nation, or of the empire which are finally ruined.
In doing this do not
financiers work against themselves? It may be asked: in destroying the
established order do not they destroy the source of all riches? This is perhaps
true in the end; but whilst states which count their years by human
generations, are obliged in order to insure their existence to conceive and
conduct a far-sighted policy in view of a distant future, Finance which gets
its living from what is present and tangible, always follows a short-sighted
policy, in view of rapid results and success without troubling itself about the
morrows of history.“ (G. Batault, Le problème juif, p. 257; The Secret Powers Behind Revolution, by Vicomte Leon De Poncins, pp. 135-136)
„The full history of the interlocking participation of the Imperial
German Government and international finance in the destruction of the Russian
Empire is not yet written...It is not a mere coincidence that at the notorious
meeting held at Stockholm in 1916, between the former Russian Minister of the
Interior, Protopopoff, and the German Agents, the German Foreign Office was
represented by Mr. Warburg, whose two brothers were members of the
international banking firm, Kuhn, Loeb and Company, of which the late Mr. Jacob
Schiff was a senior member.“ (The World at the Cross Roads, by
Boris Brasol, pp. 70-71; Rulers of Russia, Rev. Denis Fahey, p. 7)
„The warning of Theodore Roosevelt has much timeliness today, for the
real menace of our republic is this Invisible Government which like a Giant
Octopus sprawls its slimy length over the city, STATE AND NATION. Like the
octopus of real life, it operates under cover of a self-created screen. It
seizes in its long and powerful tentacles our executive officers, our
legislative bodies, our schools, our courts, our newspapers, and every agency
created for the public protection. It squirms in the jaws of darkness and thus
is the better able to clutch the reins of government, secure enactment of the
legislation favorable to corrupt business, violate the law with impunity,
smother the press and reach into the courts. To depart from mere
generalizations, let say that at the head of this octopus are the
Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests and a small group of powerful banking houses
generally referred to as the international bankers. The little coterie of powerful
international bankers virtually run the United States Government for their own
selfish purposes. They practically control both parties, write political
platforms, make catspaws of party leaders, use the leading men of private
organizations, and resort to every device to place in nomination for high
public office only such candidates as well be amenable to the dictates of
corrupt big business. They connive at centralization of government on the
theory that a small group of hand-picked, privately controlled individuals in
power can be more easily handled than a larger group among whom there will most
likely be men sincerely interested in public welfare. These international
bankers and Rockefeller-Standard Oil interests control the majority of the
newspapers and magazines in this country. They use the columns of these papers
to club into submission or drive out of office public officials who refuse to
do the bidding of the powerful corrupt cliques which compose the invisible
government.“ (Former New York City Mayor John Haylan
speaking in Chicago and quoted in the March 27, 1927 New York Times)
In „Washington Dateline,“ the president of The American Research
Foundation, Robert H. Goldsborough, writes that he was told personally by Mark
Jones {one-time financial advisor to the late John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and
president of the National Economic Council in the 1960s and 1970s} „that just four men, through their interlocking directorates on boards
of large corporations and major banks, controlled the movement of capital and
the creation of debt in America. According to Jones, Sidney Weinberg, Frank
Altshul and General Lucius Clay were three of those men in the 1930s, ‘40s, ‘50s,
and ‘60s. The fourth was Eugene Meyer, Jr. whose father was a partner in the
immensely powerful international bank, Lazard Freres...Today the Washington
Post {and Newsweek} is controlled by Meyer Jr.’ daughter Katharine Graham.“
WALTER CRICK, British Manufacturer, in the NORTHAMPTON DAILY ECHO, March
19. 1925): „Jews can destroy by means of finance. Jews
are International. Control of credits in this country is not in the hands of
the English, but of Jews. It has become the biggest danger the British Empire
ever had to face.“
This startling piece of prediction is particularly impressive to those
who have observed the Soviet scene and notice its strange relationship with
capitalist financiers - overwhelmingly Jewish - since the revolution. The line
runs from Olof Aschberg, self-described „Bolshevik banker“ who ferried to
Trotsky the huge sums raised for the revolution by financiers in Europe and
America, to Armand Hammer in the 1970s, who has specialized in
multimillion-dollar trade concessions with the now supposedly ‘anti-Semitic’
commissars.
PRIMO DE RIVERA, JOSE. 20th century Spanish political reformer
(assassinated by the Communists). He stressed that the
instruments of Jewish domination in the modern world are money and the press,
and that communism is an instrument of international Jewish capitalism used to
smash and afterwards rule the nations. (El
Estado Nacional)
Sunday, June 24, 2018
Dr. David Duke - “Six Steps to Communist Slavery”
Special
guest Dr. Duke joins TradCatKnight to discuss: the hand behind the scene
manipulating the masses, who was behind the immigration laws in 1965?, mass
immigration, gun control, social justice movement, ISIS, rise in censorship,
prophecy indicating Christian victory, Fatima and Russia, latest geopolitical
moves of Trump, fake news propaganda, Catholic bashing and MUCH more!
Friday, June 22, 2018
Wednesday, June 20, 2018
Illusion and Leverage
by Dr. William L. Pierce
Today I’ll
continue with the same general concept we talked about last week: the
house-of-cards concept. The Jews maintain their power only by maintaining
an illusion, and that illusion is that most people are in agreement with
their policies and programs, when in fact a very large number of people
are not. The Jews have, of course, a substantial number of willing Gentile
collaborators, who collaborate because they depend upon the Jews to help
them maintain their own unearned advantages: the feminists, the
homosexuals, the welfare rabble, the politicians, and a significant
portion of the business and corporate elite. And I’m speaking of White
collaborators only. I’m not even concerned about non-Whites. But all of
these White collaborators could be swept away were it not for the majority
of Whites who are being fooled by the illusion.
After last week’s broadcast a
listener commented that the people who pretend to be shocked by Atlanta
Braves pitcher John Rocker’s expression of distaste for the denizens of
Times Square and the New York subways are the same people who will never
give an honest explanation of why they have fled the cities for the
suburbs or small towns. The outflow of White families from the cities –
the so-called “White flight” – is the direct consequence of the influx of
non-Whites into the cities. The Whites are desperate to get away from the
non-Whites – but not one in 20 will admit it. They believe that everyone
around them will condemn them if they do admit it. They are so terrified
of being thought “racists” that many of them won’t even admit the truth to
themselves. Instead they invent a Politically Acceptable reason for their
flight: the schools are better in the suburbs because of the higher
teachers’ salaries, the suburbs provide easier access to the shopping
malls, or whatever.
How is this illusion maintained?
Almost entirely through the Jewish control of the mass media of news and
entertainment. Most people – most White Americans, anyway – like to
believe that they observe the world around them and then come to objective
conclusions about things. They like to believe that they are rational
individuals. They like to believe that they are independent thinkers. And
of course, a few of them are – but most of them, about 95 per cent of them
– aren’t. They are conformists. They conform their opinions, their
thinking, their attitudes, to what they believe is expected of them.
Consider religion, as an example.
People are not Baptists or Lutherans or Roman Catholics or Muslims because
they have examined the various religious doctrines, compared them, and
then made a rational decision. In 98 per cent of the cases one is a
Lutheran or a Catholic or a Muslim or a Buddhist because one’s parents and
the other people in one’s community are. A thoughtful person who takes his
religion seriously may be prepared to argue about it and to defend
cleverly the merits of his particular sect against the claims of a
different sect, but the fact remains that his adherence to his own sect is
not based on an independent decision. It was based from the beginning on
conforming his beliefs to the perceived beliefs of the people around him.
All of his arguments are only attempts to rationalize what in the first
place was not rational. Think about it, and I’m sure you’ll agree with me.
It works a little differently with
other types of belief, but the psychology, the human element, remains the
same. In America, the government and the mass media don’t take a position
favoring one Christian sect over another or even a position favoring
Christianity over Buddhism or Islam, say. The pressure to conform in
religious matters must come from family and neighbors. But in political
ideology the pressure to conform comes very much from the government and
even more from the mass media. And when I say pressure comes from
the government, I mean all government-controlled institutions,
including especially the schools. All of the media and all of the
government institutions promote the belief that mass democracy, American
style – television style – is the best possible form of government.
Beyond this they promote the beliefs
that men and women are essentially the same, except for the configuration
of their genitalia, and that it is “unfair” to treat them differently in
any way; that homosexuals are just like heterosexuals except for a
different sexual orientation, and that it is “bigoted” to treat them
differently in any way; that Jews are clever and witty people, good at
business, but honest and also sensitive and caring, and it is “hateful” to
have any other ideas about them; and that Blacks and other non-Whites may
look different, but under the skin they are just like us – in particular,
they are just as intelligent, just as creative, just as good at solving
problems, and just as inclined to accept personal responsibility.
Now, whether you personally believe
these things or not, I think you’ll agree with me that the government and
the mass media do push quite hard for conformity to these beliefs. For
example, have you ever seen any television news program showing people
using computers – children with computers in a classroom, say – in which a
Black wasn’t shown at the keyboard? I mean, it’s like there is a rule that
all news program directors must follow: you cannot show a computer unless
you show a Black at the keyboard. It’s transparently obvious that they are
pushing the idea that computers and Blacks go together, like blackeyed
peas and collard greens. That’s what they want the public to believe.
The reality, of course, is that
computers are a White thing and always have been: the invention, the
engineering, the programming, you name it. Blacks just aren’t involved.
You can teach a Black to use a computer, of course, just as you can teach
a chimpanzee to ride a bicycle. But computers remain in the White domain,
just as bicycles remain in the human domain. And that’s certainly not
because anyone is holding Blacks back. It’s a matter of aptitude and
inclination. Chinamen certainly are capable of understanding the science
involved, which is why under the Clinton policy of globalizing the economy
much of the computer technology we developed is moving to China, and we’re
now forced to buy some computer products from the Chinese. But if you ever
see computer products being imported from Ghana or Zambia it will only be
because someone who is not a Black has built a factory there to take
advantage of the cheap labor. It will not be because a Black computer whiz
in Africa has developed something on his own.
You know, most people understand
this at a certain level. They know that this business of always showing
Blacks at computer keyboards is a media trick, but they have a hard time
resisting it. They feel a compulsion to believe that the illusion is real.
The same trick is used in other
ways. If NASA has a public announcement to make about one of its
scientific space probes, the chances are pretty good there will be a Black
chosen to stand in front of the television cameras, make the announcement,
and explain to us the science involved – unless, of course, there has been
a screwup and the space probe failed to do what it was supposed to do.
Then it’s OK to have a White spokesman. Or if the National Institutes of
Health or the Food and Drug Administration has something important to tell
us, a Black in a white lab coat will be trotted out for the cameras. The
idea is to create the illusion that technology and science and progress
and intelligence are associated somehow with Blacks – or at least, that
Blacks are just as good at that sort of thing as we are.
And as I already mentioned, it’s
difficult to resist this sort of illusion. One cannot turn on a television
set or pick up a mass-circulation magazine these days without seeing
Blacks presented to us in White roles as if it were the most natural thing
in the world. Flip through the channels, and you see Black face after
Black face, and the smiling Whites all around them always are approving.
Black doctors, Black businessmen, Black teachers, Black scientists, Black
comedians, Black singers, Black dancers, Black announcers, Black ball
players, Black detectives, Black men running off with White girls, and all
the Whites around them smiling and approving. It’s almost hypnotic.
But you know, it is an illusion. The
smiling Whites who are so approving of the Blacks are being paid to smile.
The Whites in the television audience aren’t being paid, of course, but
it’s difficult for them to resist smiling too. It’s a very primitive but
very strong impulse, this need to laugh when those around you are
laughing, to smile when everyone else is smiling. The television bosses
understand this impulse perfectly, and they use it effectively.
And it’s not just in the United
States that this illusion is being promoted. The mass media and the
democratic politicians in Germany have been collaborating with the Jews
for the past 55 years in an effort to foster a similar illusion in the
public consciousness of the German people. The Germans always have
believed that there was something special about being German, about being
born of German parents. Every German inherited through his genes something
of the greatness of his nation, its history, its genius.
Of course, the French and the
Russians and the English and the Irish have similar beliefs about their
own nations. It’s an ethnic thing – but very undemocratic: something which
the Jews and their collaborators have been trying hard to stamp out. So
shortly after the beginning of this year, early on New Year’s Day, German
collaborators chose a newborn baby to be the “German of the Millennium.”
And of course, they didn’t choose a German baby for this distinction; they
chose a Turkish baby, born in a German hospital to two Turkish “guest
workers.” And for the past week politicians and the media people have been
holding up this Turkish baby to television audiences in Germany as a
typical German of the new millennium, and all of the collaborators and
paid media people on the screen at the same time have smiled proudly whenever
this announcement has been made. And unfortunately, all too many
German television viewers have smiled along with them. That’s the way
our people are. And so the German public gradually begins falling victim
to this carefully engineered illusion that Turks and Gypsies and
Pakistanis and Zulus born in Germany are really Germans, just like all
other Germans.
I’ve spoken of the Jewish power
structure shielded by this illusion as a “house of cards.” That’s a
reasonable term to use, I believe, but let’s try now to understand it a
little better. If tonight Washington and New York City and Hollywood all
were devastated by massive earthquakes – if most of the people and the
institutions which generate and maintain the illusion in America –
suddenly were destroyed, the house of cards would not immediately come
tumbling down. In fact, the illusion would not instantly be replaced by a
clear view of reality. Illusions have a tendency to persist for a while.
People who were deceived by the illusion would continue deceiving themselves
for a while; they would continue clinging to the illusion. Many people
would need guidance in freeing themselves from the illusion and gaining a
firm grasp on reality. Providing that guidance would be a far easier task
and require much less work than the work the Jews and their collaborators
have put into building the illusion. The truth does have its advantages.
But still, uprooting the illusion and pulling down the house of cards
would not be something that could be accomplished overnight.
There’s another important
consideration: the organizational consideration. If a minority wants to
maintain its control over a majority – especially if a substantial number
of the members of that majority don’t want to be controlled – then the
controlling minority needs to have an effective organizational structure
through which to exercise its control. The organizational structure
provides the necessary leverage which a numerical minority needs in order
to control an unwilling majority.
Well, that’s pretty simple and
obvious, I guess, but it’s still something to think about in coming to an
understanding of our situation. The rule is this: the larger the disparity
in numbers, the more the organizational leverage that is required; and the
greater the leverage needed, the less is the stability. Which is why the
Jews are pushing a number of long-range programs to decrease our numbers,
both absolutely and in relation to the feminists, homosexuals, non-Whites,
and the others in their camp. At the moment their situation is still
quite precarious, in that without governmental compulsion they could
not maintain their control; illusion alone would not hold their house
of cards up.
At this time, however, they have
both: they have the machinery of illusion in their hands, and they have
organizational leverage. And they need both. If someone could put a big
enough monkey wrench into the gears of the illusion machinery to shut it
down for an extended period, the leverage would become very shaky indeed.
The politicians and the bureaucrats and the secret police agencies and the
military people don’t do the will of the Jews because they love the Jews.
They do it because they are part of an organization, part of the
governmental establishment. Their paychecks come from the government, and
they are hoping that one day their pensions also will come from the
government. But the government itself still is based on the idea of
popular support, on the idea of elections and votes. When the illusion
machinery is no longer available to control the votes, the politicians
will be making new calculations, and so will the head bureaucrats. In
every case it will be their own advantage they will be seeking, of course.
Patriotism is a thing of the past.
On the other hand, if a big enough
monkey wrench could be thrown into the government’s gears, then even a
fairly small number of determined people could wreck the illusion
machinery, and I believe it’s not necessary for me to explain how that
could be done. But now the government and the illusion machinery support
each other, and I don’t know of anyone who has a big enough monkey wrench
to shut down either of them. That’s a shortcoming to which we must address
ourselves.
Anyway, do you remember the
miniature civil war in Russia back in the early part of the Yeltsin era,
in September and October 1993? That was just six years ago. Boris Yeltsin,
of course, was the candidate of the Jews – sort of the Bill Clinton of
Russia. He had been elected only with the all-out support of the mass
media – especially the television networks, which then as now were under
the tight control of the Jews, most notably Boris Berezovsky and Vladimir
Gussinsky. Progressive Russian patriots, along with conservative elements
from the earlier era, tried to take the organizational machinery away from
Yeltsin – which is to say, away from the Jews. The Russian legislature –
the Duma – voted to depose Yeltsin, but without anyone to take his place
immediately the Army and the KGB continued to take their orders from him.
Patriots stormed the Russian
parliament building in Moscow and also the main television station there.
They broke through the troops around the parliament building, the
so-called White House, seized the building, and barricaded themselves
inside. They did not succeed in taking the main television station,
however, because the KGB had its toughest troops – its elite troops –
guarding the place. They were far more concerned about protecting the
television headquarters – about maintaining their hold on the machinery of
illusion – than they were about holding onto the White House and its
legislative machinery. When the patriots tried to storm Berezovsky’s
television station, the KGB troops simply machine-gunned them, and they
died in the streets. Keeping the population entranced with the usual
television fare, it was then a simple matter to send tanks against the
White House. Yeltsin had the Russian Army shelling the White House with
tanks to drive out the patriots. And so Yeltsin and his gang – which is to
say, the Jews – were able to hang onto power. How different it might have
been if the Russian patriots had succeeded in taking over the machinery of
illusion at the same time they were barricaded in the White House! A day
or two of control of Russian television by a crew of intelligent patriots
could have been enough to bring hundreds of thousands of ordinary
Russians into the streets and also to cause the Army and KGB bosses to
make new calculations.
We might also note that
organizational leverage works at the international level pretty much as it
works at the national level. During the 1993 crisis in Russia, the Jews
and their collaborators over here were sweating the outcome. I don’t know
what threats and promises were made behind the scenes, but I can imagine. It’s
clear that any small country, without nuclear weapons, that doesn’t take
orders will get the same treatment Serbia got. It would have been quite a
bit more difficult for the Jews if things had gone better for the patriots
in Russia in 1993. And things still may take a turn for the better
in Russia. Certainly, even a nuclear war, if it unhinges the leverage
or wrecks the machinery of illusion, will be better than a continuation
of the present course of events. The best chance for avoiding a nuclear war,
however, and also for unhinging the Jews’ international leverage, would be
to put a big enough monkey wrench into the organizational machinery here
so that the U.S. government cannot exercise the Jews’ will against any
other country using cruise missiles, the way it did against Iraq and
Serbia.
Well, all of my talk today hasn’t
provided anything in the way of a concrete plan of action, but perhaps it
may help us focus our thinking a little better when we do work out a plan.
For now what we must do is continue reaching our people in every way we
can. I’ll be happy to have your help in this endeavor.
Sunday, June 17, 2018
The Bolshevik Revolution – Darkness Descends
The untold
story of the Bolsheviks, the Romanovs, the Kulaks, and Holodomor, and the
greatest massacre of innocent lives in human history.
Thursday, June 14, 2018
Tuesday, June 12, 2018
Stalin’s War Against His Own Troops
The Tragic Fate of Soviet Prisoners of War in German
Captivity
By Yuri Teplyakov
Published: 1994-07-01
Yuri Teplyakov, born in 1937, studied journalism
at Moscow State University. He worked as a journalist for the Moscow daily
newspapers Izvestia and Komsomolskaya Pravda,
and for the APN information agency. From 1980 to 1993 he worked for the weekly Moscow
News. In writing this article, he expresses thanks to Mikhail
Semiryaga, D.Sc. (History), „who provided me with considerable material, which
he found in German archives. As for the documents of Soviet filtering camps, I
shall go on with my searches.“ This article originally appeared in Moscow
News, No. 19, 1990, and is reprinted here by special arrangement.
At dawn on
June 22, 1941, began the mightiest military offensive in history: the
German-led Axis attack against the Soviet Union. During the first 18 months of
the campaign, about three million Soviet soldiers were taken prisoner. By the
end of the conflict four years later, more than five million Soviet troops are
estimated to have fallen into German hands. Most of these unfortunate men died
in German captivity.
A major reason for this was the
unusual nature of the war on the eastern front, particularly during the first
year – June 1941-June 1942 – when vastly greater numbers of prisoners fell into
German hands than could possibly be accommodated adequately. However, and as
Russian journalist Teplyakov explains in the following article, much of the
blame for the terrible fate of the Soviet soldiers in German captivity was due
to the inflexibly cruel policy of Soviet dictator Stalin.
During the war, the Germans made
repeated attempts through neutral countries and the International Committee of
the Red Cross to reach mutual agreement on the treatment of prisoners by
Germany and the USSR. As British historian Robert Conquest explains in his book
Stalin: Breaker of Nations, the Soviets adamantly refused to cooperate:
When the Germans approached the Soviets, through Sweden, to negotiate
observance of the provisions of the Geneva Convention on prisoners of war,
Stalin refused. The Soviet soldiers in German hands were thus unprotected even
in theory. Millions of them died in captivity, through malnutrition or
maltreatment. If Stalin had adhered to the convention (to which the USSR had
not been a party) would the Germans have behaved better? To judge by their treatment
of other "Slav submen" POWs (like the Poles, even surrendering after
the [1944) Warsaw Rising), the answer seems to be yes. (Stalin's own behavior
to [Polish] prisoners captured by the Red Army had already been demonstrated at
Katyn and elsewhere [where they were shot}.
Another historian, Nikolai Tolstoy,
affirms in The Secret Betrayal:
Hitler himself urged Red Cross inspection of [German} camps [holding
Soviet prisoners of war}. But an appeal to Stalin for prisoners' postal
services received a reply that clinched the matter: "There are no Soviet
prisoners of war. The Soviet soldier fights on till death. If he chooses to
become a prisoner, he is automatically excluded from the Russian community. We
are not interested in a postal service only for Germans."
Given this situation, the German
leaders resolved to treat Soviet prisoners no better than the Soviet leaders
were treating the German soldiers they held. As can be imagined, Soviet
treatment of German prisoners was harsh. Of an estimated three million German
soldiers who fell into Soviet hands, more than two million perished in captivity.
Of the 91,000 German troops captured in the Battle of Stalingrad, fewer than
6,000 ever returned to Germany.
As Teplyakov also explains here, Red
Army "liberation" of the surviving Soviet prisoners in German camps
brought no end to the suffering of these hapless men. It wasn't until recently,
when long-suppressed Soviet wartime records began to come to light and
long-silenced voices could at last speak out, that the full story of Stalin's
treatment of Soviet prisoners became known. It wasn't until 1989, for example,
that Stalin's grim Order No. 270 of August 16,1941 – cited below – was first
published.
What is the most horrible thing about war?“
Marshal Ivan Bagramyan, three-time Hero of the Soviet Union Alexander
Pokryshkin, and Private Nikolai Romanov, who has no battle orders or titles,
all replied with just one word: „Captivity.“
„Is it more horrible than death?“ I was asking soldier Nikolai Romanov a
quarter of a century ago when, on the sacred day of May 9 [anniversary of the
end of the war against Germany in 1945], we were drinking bitter vodka together
to commemorate the souls of the Russian muzhiks who would never return to that
orphaned village on the bank of the Volga.
„It’s more horrible,“ he replied. „Death is your own lot. But if it’s
captivity, it spells trouble for many ...“
At that time, in 1965, I could not even vaguely imagine the extent of the
tragedy which had befallen millions upon millions, nor did I know that that
tragedy had been triggered by just a few lines from the Interior Service
Regulations of the Workers’ and Peasants’ Red Army: a Soviet soldier must not
be taken prisoner against his will. And if he has been, he is a traitor to the
Motherland.
Captured during the great military victories in
the first months of Hitler’s „Barbarossa“ offensive against the Soviet Union,
seemingly endless columns of Red Army prisoners such as these are marched to
captivity in German camps.
How many of them were there – those „traitors“?
„During the war years,“ I was told by Colonel Ivan Yaroshenko, Deputy Chief
of the Central Archives of the USSR Ministry of Defense, in Podolsk near
Moscow, „as many as 32 million people were soldiers, and 5,734,528 of them were
taken prisoner by the enemy.“
Later I learned where this happened
and when. Thus, the Red Army suffered the most tragic losses in terms of
prisoners of war in the following battles: Belostok-Minsk, August 1941,
323,000; Uman, August 1941, 103,000; Smolensk-Roslavl, August 1941, 348,000;
Gomel, August 1941, 30,000; Demyansk, September 1941, 35,000; Kiev, September
1941, 665,000; Luga-Leningrad, September 1941, 20,000; Melitopol, October 1941,
100,000; Vyazma, October 1941, 662,000; Kerch, November 1941, 100,000;
Izyum-Kharkov, May 1942, 207,000. People were taken prisoner even in February
1945 (Hungary), 100,000.
The same archives in Podolsk hold
another 2.5 million cards „missing in action“ – two and a half million who
never returned home. Experts believe: two million of them are still lying in
Russia’s forests and marshes. And about 200,000 must be added to the list of
POWs. Proof? From time to time the Podolsk archives receive a letter from
somewhere in Australia or the United States: „I was taken prisoner. Request
confirmation that I took part in battles against fascism.“
This person was lucky – he survived.
The majority, however, had a different lot. German statistics put it on record:
280,000 person died at deportation camps and 1,030,157 were executed when
trying to escape or died at factories or mines in Germany.
Many of our officers and men were
killed by famine before they reached the camps. Nearly 400,000 men died in
November-December 1941 alone. During the entire war there were 235,473 British
and American prisoners of war in Germany – 8,348 of them died. Were our men
weaker? Hardly. The reasons were different. In the West it is believed that the
millions of our POWs who died in captivity fell victim not only to fascism but
also to the Stalinist system itself. At least half of those who died from
hunger could have been saved had Stalin not called them traitors and refused to
send food parcels to them via the International Red Cross.
It can be argued how many would have
survived, but it’s a fact that we left our POWs to the mercy of fate. The
Soviet Union did not sign the Geneva Convention concerning the legal status of
prisoners of war. Refusing to sign it was consistent with the Jesuitical nature
of the „leader of the peoples.“
From Stalin’s point of view, several
provisions of the Convention were incompatible with the moral and economic
institutions which were inherent in the world’s „freest country.“ The
Convention, it turns out, did not guarantee the right to POWs as working
people: low wages, no days off, no fixed working hours. Exception was also
taken to the privileges fixed for some groups of POWs. In other words it should
be more humane. But greater hypocrisy can hardly be imagined. What privileges
were enjoyed at that very same time by millions in [Soviet] GULAG prison camps?
What guarantees existed there and how many days off did they have?
In August 1941 Hitler permitted a
Red Cross delegation to visit the camp for Soviet POWs in Hammerstadt. It is
these contacts that resulted in an appeal to the Soviet government, requesting
that it should send food parcels for our officers and men. We are prepared to
fulfill and comply with the norms of the Geneva convention, Moscow said in its
reply, but sending food in the given situation and under fascist control is the
same as making presents to the enemy.
The reply came as a surprise. The
Red Cross representatives had not read Stalin’s Order of the Day – Order No.
270, signed on August 16, 1941. Otherwise they would have understood how naive
their requests and offers were, and how great was Stalin’s hatred for those who
had found themselves behind enemy lines.
It made no difference: who, where,
how and why? Even the dead were considered to be criminals. Lt.-Gen. Vladimir
Kachalov, we read in the order, „being in encirclement together with the
headquarters of a body of troops, displayed cowardice and surrendered to the
German fascists. The headquarters of Kachalov’s groups broke out of the
encirclement, the units of Kachalov’s group battled their way out of the
encirclement, but Lt.-Gen. Kachalov preferred to desert to the enemy.“
General Vladimir Kachalov had been
lying for 12 days in a burned out tank at the Starinka village near Smolensk,
and never managed to break out to reach friendly forces. Yet this was of no
concern for anyone. They were busy with something else looking for scapegoats
whom they could dump all of their anger on, looking for enemies of the people
whose treachery and cowardice had again subverted the will of the great
military leader.
We had to be „convinced“ again and
again: the top echelons of authority, the leaders, have no relation whatsoever
to any tragedy, to any failure – be it the collapse of the first Five-Year Plan
or the death of hundreds of thousands of soldiers on the Dnieper. Moreover,
these misfortunes cannot have objective reasons either, being due solely to the
intrigues of saboteurs and the enemies of the progressive system. For decades,
ever since the 1930s, we have been permanently looking for scapegoats in the
wrong place, but finding them nevertheless. At that time, in the first summer
of the war, plenty of them were found. And the more the better. On June 4,
1940, the rank of general was re-established in the Red Army. They were awarded
to 966 persons.
More than 50 were taken prisoner in
the very first year of the war. Very many of them would envy their colleagues –
those 150 generals who would later die on the battlefields. The torments of
captivity proved to be darker than the grave. At any rate the destinies of
Generals Pavel Ponedelin and Nikolai Kirillov, mentioned in the same Order No.
270, prove that this is so. They staunchly withstood their years in the German
camps. In April 1945 the [western] Allies set them free and turned them over to
the Soviet side. It seemed that everything had been left behind, but they were
not forgiven for August 1941. They were arrested after a „state check-up“: five
years in the Lefortovo jail for political prisoners and execution by a firing
squad on August 25, 1950.
„Stalin’s last tragic acts in his
purging of the military were the accusations of betrayal and treachery he
advanced in the summer of 1941 against the Western Front commanders, Pavlov and
Klimovskikh, and several other generals among whom, as it became clear later,
there were also people who behaved in an uncompromising way to the end when in
captivity.“ This assessment is by the famous chronicler of the war, Konstantin
Simonov. It appeared in the 1960s, but during the wartime ordeals there was
indomitable faith: the prisoners of war (both generals and soldiers) were
guilty. No other yardstick existed.
International law states that
military captivity is not a crime, „a prisoner of war must be as inviolable as
the sovereignty of a people, and as sacred as a misfortune.“ This is for
others, whereas for us there was a different law – Stalin’s Order No. 270.
If... „instead of organizing resistance to the enemy, some Red Army men
prefer to surrender, they shall be destroyed by all possible means, both
ground-based and from the air, whereas the families of the Red Army men who
have been taken prisoner shall be deprived of the state allowance [that is,
rations) and relief.“
The commanders and political officers... „who surrender to the enemy
shall be considered malicious deserters, whose families are liable to be
arrested [just] as the families of deserters who have violated the oath and
betrayed their Motherland.“
Just a few lines, but they stand for
the hundreds of thousands of children and old folks who died from hunger only
because their father or son happened to be taken prisoner.
Just a few lines, but they amount to
a verdict on those who never even thought of a crime, who were only waiting for
a letter from the front.
Having read these lines, I came to
understand the amount of grief they carried for absolutely innocent people,
just as I understood the secret sorrow of the words Private Nikolai Romanov
told me a quarter of a century ago: „Your own captivity spells trouble for
many.“
I understood why the most horrible
thing for our soldiers was not to be killed, but to be reported „missing in
action,“ and why before each battle, especially before the assault crossing of
rivers, they asked one another: „Buddy, if I get drowned, say that you saw me
die.“
Setting their feet on a shaky
pontoon and admitting, as it were, that they could be taken prisoner solely
through their own fault, they mentally glanced back not out of fear for their
own lives they were tormented and worried over the lives of those who had
stayed back at home.
Soviet prisoners of
war in a German POW camp. This photograph was found by Red Army troops among
the belongings of dead German soldiers.
But what was the fault of the
hundreds of thousands of soldiers encircled near Vyazma when Hitler launched
Operation Taifun – his advance on Moscow? „The most important thing is
not to surrender your positions,“ the General Headquarters of the Supreme
Commander-in-Chief ordered them. And the army was feverishly digging trenches
facing the west, when panzer wedges were already enveloping them from the east.
General Franz Halder, Chief of Staff
of the Wehrmacht’s ground forces, made the following entry in his diary on this
occasion: „October 4 – 105 days of the war. The enemy has continued everywhere
holding the unattacked sectors of the front, with the result that deep
envelopment of these enemy groups looms in the long term.“
Who was supposed to see these
wedges? A soldier from his tiny foxhole or Stalin from the GHQ? And what was
the result? Who was taken prisoner? Who betrayed the Motherland? The soldier
did.
In May 1942, as many as 207,047
officers and men (the latest figure) found themselves encircled at Kharkov.
When Khrushchev held power, it was Stalin who was considered to be guilty of
this. When Brezhnev took over, the blame was again put on Khrushchev who,
incidentally, had been merely warned by Stalin for that defeat which opened the
road for the Germans to the Volga. But who then betrayed the Motherland, who
was taken prisoner?
The soldier.
May 19, 1942, is the date ofour army’s
catastrophe in the Crimea. „The Kerch Operation may be considered finished:
150,000 POWs and a large quantity of captured equipment.“ This is a document
from the German side. And here is a document from the Soviet side cited by
Konstantin Simonov: „I happened to be on the Kerch Peninsula in 1942. The
reason for the humiliating defeat is clear to me. Complete mistrust of the army
and front commanders, Mekhlis’ stupid willfulness and arbitrary actions. He
ordered that no trenches be dug, so as not to sap the soldiers’ offensive
spirit.“
Stalin’s closest aide and then Chief
of the Main Political Administration (GPU), Lev Mekhlis, the first Commissar of
the Army and Navy, returned to Moscow after that defeat. And what did the
soldier do? The soldier stayed in captivity.
There is no denying that no war can
do without treachery and traitors. They could also be found among POWs. But if
compared with the millions of their brothers in captivity, they amounted to no
more than a drop in the ocean. Yet this drop existed. There is no escaping
this. Some were convinced by leaflets like this one:
The Murderous Balance of Bolshevism:
Killed during the years of the Revolution and Civil War – 2,200,000
persons.
Died from famine and epidemics in 1918-1921 and in 1932-1933 –
14,500,000 persons.
Perished in forced labor camps – 10,000,000 persons.
Some even put it this way: I am not
going into action against my people, I am going into action against Stalin. But
the majority joined fascist armed formations with only one hope: as soon as the
first fighting starts, I’ll cross the line to join friendly troops. Not
everyone managed to do this, although the following fact is also well-known. On
September 14, 1943, when the results of the Kursk Battle were summed up, Hitler
explained the defeat by the „treachery of auxiliary units“: indeed, at that
time 1,300 men – practically a whole regiment deserted to the Red Army’s side
on the southern sector. „But now I am fed up with this,“ Hitler said. „I order
these units to be disarmed immediately and this whole gang to be sent to the
mines in France.“
It has to be admitted that it was
Hitler who rejected longer than all others the proposals to form military units
from among Soviet POWs, although as early as September 1941 Colonel von
Tresckow had drawn up a plan for building up a 200,000-strong Russian anti-Soviet
army. It was only on the eve of the Stalingrad Battle, when prisoners of war
already numbered millions, that the Führer gave his consent at last.
All in all, it became possible to
form more than 180 units. Among them the number of Russian formations was 75;
those formed from among Kuban, Don and Terek Cossacks – 216; Turkistan and
Tatar (from Tataria and the Crimean Tatars) – 42; Georgian – 11; peoples of the
Northern Caucasus – 12; Azerbaijani – 13; Armenian – 8.
The numerical strength of these battalions
by their national affiliation (data as of January 24, 1945) was the following:
Latvians – 104,000; Tatars (Tataria) – 12,500, Crimean Tatars 10,000; Estonians
– 10,000; Armenians – 7,000; Kalmyks – 5,000. And the Russians? According to
the official figures of Admiral Karl Dönitz’s „government,“ as of May 20, 1945,
there were the 599th Russian Brigade – 13,000, the 600th – 12,000, and the
650th – 18,000 men.
If all of this is put together (as
we are doing now), it would seem that there were many who served on the other
side. But if we remember that only 20 percent of these forces took part in
hostilities, that they were recruited from among millions of POWs, that
thousands upon thousands crossed the front line to return to friendly troops,
the brilliance of the figures will clearly fade.
One detail – the Reich’s special
services displayed special concern over forming non-Russian battalions as if
they knew that they would be required, especially after the war when whole
peoples, from babies to senile old men, came to be accused of treachery. And it
made no difference whether you were kept in a prison camp or served in the army
– all the same you were an enemy.
But the POWs themselves were not yet
aware of this – everything still lay ahead. The hangover after liberation would
set in a little later. Both for those who themselves escaped from the camps
(500,000 in 1944, according to the estimate of Germany’s Armaments Minister
Speer) and for those who after liberation by Red Army units (more than a
million officers and men) again fought in its ranks.
For too long a time we used to judge
the spring of 1945 solely by the humane instructions issued by our formidable
marshals – allot milk for Berlin’s children, feed women and old men. It was
strange reading those documents, and at the same time chewing steamed rye
instead of bread, and eating soup made of dog meat (only shortly before her
death did my grandmother confess she had slaughtered dogs to save us from
hunger). Reading those orders, I was prepared to cry from tender emotions: how
noble it was to think that way and to show such concern for the German people.
And who of us knew that at the same
time the marshals received different orders from the Kremlin with respect to
their own people?
[To the] Commanders of the troops of the First and Second Byelorussian
Fronts [Army Groups], and the First, Second, Third and Fourth Ukrainian
Fronts...
The Military Councils of the Fronts shall form camps in [rear-zone]
service areas for the accommodation and maintenance of former prisoners of war
and repatriated Soviet citizens – each camp for 10,000 persons. All in all,
there shall be formed: at the Second Byelorussian Front – 15 [camps]; at the
First Byelorussian Front – 30; at the First Ukrainian Front – 30; at the Fourth
Ukrainian Front – 5; at the Sec ond Ukrainian Front – 10; at the Third
Ukrainian Front – 10 camps ...
The check-up [of the former prisoners of war and repatriated citizens]
shall be entrusted as follows: former Red Army servicemen – to the bodies of
SMERSH counter-intelligence; civilians – to the commissions of the NKVD, NKGB,
SMERSH ...
J. ‘Stalin
I phoned Col.-Gen. Dmitri
Volkogonov, Chief of the Institute of Military History under the USSR Ministry
of Defense [and author of Stalin: Triumph and Tragedy]: „Where did you
find that order? Both at the State Security Committee and at the USSR Ministry
of Internal Affairs they told me that they had nothing of the kind.“
„This one is from Stalin’s personal
archives. The camps existed, which means that there are also papers from which
it is possible to learn everything: who, where, what they were fed, what they
thought about. Most likely, the documents are in the system of the Ministry of
Internal Affairs. The convoy troops were subordinate to this government
department. It included the Administration for the Affairs of Former Prisoners
of War. Make a search.“
And search I did. Maj.-Gen. Pyotr
Mishchenkov, First Deputy Chief of the present-day Main Administration for
Corrective Affairs (GUID) at the USSR Ministry of Internal Affairs, was
sincerely surprised: „This is the first I heard about this. I would be glad to
help, but there is nothing I can do about it. I know that there was a colony in
the Chunsky district of the Irkutsk Region. People got there after being
checked up at the filtering camps mentioned in Stalin’s order. They were all
convicted under Article 58 – high treason.“
One colony... Where are the others,
what happened to their inmates? After all, as many as 100 camps were at work.
The only thing I managed to find out – by October 1, 1945, they had „filtered“
5,200,000 Soviet citizens; 2,034,000 were turned over by the Allies – 98
percent of those who stayed in Germany’s western occupation zones, mostly POWs.
How many of them returned home? And how many went, in accordance with Order No.
270, into Soviet concentration camps? I don’t yet have any authentic documents
in my possession. Again only Western estimates and some eyewitness accounts.
Many of the Soviet soldiers taken prisoner by the Germans during the
1941-1945 war volunteered to serve with the Germans in an ill-fated effort to
liberate their homeland from Soviet tyranny. Altogether about a million Soviets
volunteered to aid the Germans in overthrowing the regime that ruled their country
– an act of disloyalty by a people toward its rulers without precedent in
history.
In this photograph,
Lt.-General Andrei A. Vlasov reviews troops of the German-sponsored „Russian
Liberation Army.“ By the end of the war about 300,000 RLA soldiers were under
Vlasov’s command. Hundreds of thousands of other former Soviet soldiers of
non-Russian nationality served in other German-sponsored anti-Communist
military units. Vlasov was also chairman of the German-backed „Committee for
the Liberation of the Peoples of Russia,“ which was proclaimed at a conference
in Prague in 1944.
Before his capture by
the Germans in July 1942, Vlasov was regarded as one of the most brilliant Red
Army commanders. At the end of the war he surrendered to the Americans, who
turned him over the Soviets. He was put to death in Moscow in 1946.
I spoke to one such eyewitness on
the Kolyma. A former „traitor to the Motherland,“ but then the accountant
general of the Srednekan gold field, Viktor Masol, told me how in June 1942 in
the Don steppes after the Kharkov catastrophe they – unarmed, hungry, ragged
Red Army men – were herded like sheep by German tanks into crowds of many
thousands. Freight cars took them to Germany, where he mixed concrete for the
Reich, and three years later they were sent in freight cars from Germany across
the whole Soviet Union – as far as the Pacific Ocean. In the port of Vanino
they were loaded into the holds of the Felix Dzerzhinsky steamship
[named after the founder of the Soviet secret police], which had previously
borne the name of Nikolai Yezhov, [a former] People’s Commissar of
Internal Affairs [that is, the NKVD or secret police], bound for Magadan.
During the week they were on their way, they were given food only once –
barrels with gray flour, covered with boiling water, were lowered through the
hatch. And they, burning their hands and crushing one another, snatched this
mess and stuffed it, choking, into their mouths: most often people go crazy
with hunger. Those who died on the way were thrown overboard in the Nagayev
Bay, the survivors marched into the taiga, again behind the barbed wire of –
now – their native prison camps.
Just a few survived and returned.
But even they were like lepers. Outcasts. How many times they heard: „Better a
bullet through your head...“
Many former POWs thought about a
bullet in the 1940s-1950s. Both when they were reminded from the militia office
– „you are two days overdue“ (all the POWs were kept on a special register with
mandatory reports on strictly definite days), and when people told them: „Keep
silent. You whiled away your time in captivity on fascist grub...“
And they did keep silent.
In 1956, after Khrushchev’s report,
it became possible to speak about Stalin. Former POWs were no longer automatically
enemies of the people, but not quite yet defenders of the Motherland. Something
in between. On paper it was one way, but in life everything was different.
Two years ago, on the eve of V-Day,
I interviewed Col.-Gen. Alexei Zheltov, Chairman of the Soviet War Veterans’
Committee. As befits the occasion, he was telling me with tears in his eyes
about the holiday, about a Soviet soldier, an accordion in his hands, in the
streets of spring-time Vienna. And I don’t know what made me ask him, well, and
former prisoners of war, are they war veterans?
„No, they are not veterans. Don’t
you have anything else to write about? Look how many real soldiers we have...“
If Alexei Zheltov, the tried and
tested veteran commissar, were the only one to think that way, that wouldn’t be
so bad. The trouble is that this philosophy is preached by the majority of the
top brass. Both those who have long retired on pensions and who still hold
command positions. For nearly 40 years we have been „orphaned,“ have lived
without „the father of the peoples,“ but we sacredly revere his behests,
sometimes not even noticing this ourselves.
Human blood is not water. But is has
also proved to be a perfect conserving agent for Stalin’s morality. It has
become even thicker. It has not disappeared even after several generations. It
lives on. And not infrequently it triumphs. Try and raise the problem of
prisoners of war (even before me this theme was taken up on more than one
occasion, so I’m no discoverer here) – the reaction is always the same: better
talk about something else. And if you fail to heed a „piece of good advice,“
they may even start to threaten: „Don’t you dare!“
To whom should one address his
requests? To the government or the Supreme Soviet? What beautiful walls of the
Kremlin should one knock on to demand that soldierly dignity be returned to
former POW s, that their good name be restored?
Suppose your knocking has been
heard. They will ask: what are you complaining about? What resolution do you
take exception to? Oh, not a resolution. You are only worried over the past?
How strange...
But it’s even more strange that we
still have real soldiers, real heros and real people, meaning that there are
also those who are not real. To this day our life is still like a battle front:
by force of habit, we continue putting people in slots – these on this side,
others over there. There seems to be neither law nor Order No. 270 any longer,
like there is no one and nothing to fight against, but all the same whatever
was once called black may at best become only gray. But by no means white.
... May 9: the whole country cries
and rejoices. Veterans don their medals and pour out wine, remembering their
buddies. But even in this circle a former POW is the last to hold out his glass
and the last to take the floor.
What then is to be done? What should
we do to squeeze the Stalinoid slave out of ourselves?
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