https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0042FZXZ6/ref=kinw_myk_ro_title
Bloodlands documents the many layers of terrible suffering for the societies in the band of the Baltic south to the Caspian and between Poland the the Ukraine. First was Stalin's extermination of rivals, then famine, then Nazis. For most people of North America who consider themselves educated and well informed, these many lives and events are practically unknown, yet amount to something much much worse than is normally included under the Holocaust rubric.
Here are a few extracts.
...policy of collectivization had required the shooting of tens of thousands of citizens and the deportations of hundreds of thousands, and had brought millions more to the brink of death by starvation—as Jones would see and report. Later in the 1930s, Stalin would order the shooting of hundreds of thousands more Soviet citizens, in campaigns organized by social class and ethnic nation. All of this was well beyond Hitler's capabilities in the 1930s, and probably beyond his intentions.
...the kulak operation. The ratio of shootings to other sentences was especially high in Soviet Ukraine during the year 1938. Between January and August, some 35,563 people were shot, as against only 830 sent to camps. The troika for the Stalino district, for example, met seven times between July and September 1938, and sentenced to death every single one of the 1,102 people accused.
...On any given day in the second half of 1941, the Germans shot more Jews than had been killed by pogroms in the entire history of the Russian Empire.
...In practice, the Germans generally killed people who were not Germans, whereas the Soviets usually killed people who were Soviet citizens.
...Does the Jewish girl who scratched a note to her mother on the wall of the Kovel synagogue belong to Polish, or Soviet, or Israeli, or Ukrainian history? She wrote in Polish; other Jews in that synagogue on that day wrote in Yiddish.
...This is a book about deliberate mass murder more than a book about abuse. It is a book about civilians (and prisoners of war) rather than a book about soldiers on active duty. By all of these distinctions and exclusions I do not mean to suggest that such people were not victims, direct or indirect, of the Nazi and Soviet systems.
Bloodlands documents the many layers of terrible suffering for the societies in the band of the Baltic south to the Caspian and between Poland the the Ukraine. First was Stalin's extermination of rivals, then famine, then Nazis. For most people of North America who consider themselves educated and well informed, these many lives and events are practically unknown, yet amount to something much much worse than is normally included under the Holocaust rubric.
Here are a few extracts.
...policy of collectivization had required the shooting of tens of thousands of citizens and the deportations of hundreds of thousands, and had brought millions more to the brink of death by starvation—as Jones would see and report. Later in the 1930s, Stalin would order the shooting of hundreds of thousands more Soviet citizens, in campaigns organized by social class and ethnic nation. All of this was well beyond Hitler's capabilities in the 1930s, and probably beyond his intentions.
...the kulak operation. The ratio of shootings to other sentences was especially high in Soviet Ukraine during the year 1938. Between January and August, some 35,563 people were shot, as against only 830 sent to camps. The troika for the Stalino district, for example, met seven times between July and September 1938, and sentenced to death every single one of the 1,102 people accused.
...On any given day in the second half of 1941, the Germans shot more Jews than had been killed by pogroms in the entire history of the Russian Empire.
...In practice, the Germans generally killed people who were not Germans, whereas the Soviets usually killed people who were Soviet citizens.
...Does the Jewish girl who scratched a note to her mother on the wall of the Kovel synagogue belong to Polish, or Soviet, or Israeli, or Ukrainian history? She wrote in Polish; other Jews in that synagogue on that day wrote in Yiddish.
...This is a book about deliberate mass murder more than a book about abuse. It is a book about civilians (and prisoners of war) rather than a book about soldiers on active duty. By all of these distinctions and exclusions I do not mean to suggest that such people were not victims, direct or indirect, of the Nazi and Soviet systems.
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