-Caveat Lector- http://x10.dejanews.com/getdoc.xp?AN=316588730 Subject: Holocausts Unwritten-The Media Still Sleeps From: "N." <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Date: 1998/01/16 Message-ID: <69o508$8c2$[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Newsgroups: austin.politics,dfw.politics COMMUNISTS' CRIMES AGAINST HUMANITY Some historians note a curious absence of discussion of the crimes of communism since the Soviet Union's demise. For Nazi crimes, there were the Nuremberg trials. But there has been no such justice for the tens of millions of persons killed by communist regimes. A group of respected analysts and historians recently set off fierce debate in France with the publication of the 800-page "Black Book of Communism." While there are histories of communism's toll in the Soviet Union, Eastern Europe, China and Cambodia, this is believed to be the first time anyone has made a comprehensive study-complete with an estimated body count of between 85 million and 100 million victims. Here is a sampling of facts and issues from the book: o It argues that these deaths deserve the appellation "crimes against humanity"-a term most closely associated with Nazi genocide. o In most of Central and Eastern Europe, Stalinist prosecutors, jailers and torturers are living out a peaceful retirement on government pensions. o In Russia, the crimes of the past are rarely discussed in public-and in China the camps and tortures continue, if not at the same intensity as earlier. o As communist regimes gradually transformed, former communists often remained in power as newly democratic countries concentrated on solving immediate economic and political challenges. Marxist parties continue to exist and even thrive in Europe and attract some adherents in American universities. And one all too often still hears the cliché that "the ideas were right, but the people failed." In Europe, some intellectuals and politicians objected to the comparison of communism with Nazism. French Socialist Prime Minister Lionel Jospin stated that he was "proud" of the presence of communists in his government and shocked by a comparison to the Nazis. Source: Anne Applebaum (Sunday Telegraph), "Teflon Totalitarianism," Wall Street Journal, January 16, 1998. ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ The Black Book of Communism: http://www.tbwt.com/articles/global/global63.htm "Black Book of Communism" Sparks French Debate ------------------------------------------------------------------------ PARIS, Nov 7 (Reuters) - Just in time for the 80th anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, a team of French historians has estimated that communism has claimed between 85 and 100 million lives in this century. But, even before their 848-page "Black Book of Communism" was published this week, the 11 experts split up in bitter dispute over what their gruesome findings meant. Were Stalin's purges, Pol Pot's genocide and the millions of other deaths under the hammer and sickle central to the communist system? Were they crimes against humanity on the same par as Nazi atrocities? The 11 historians, many of them Maoists, Trotskyites or communists in their rebellious younger years, examined the history of the former Soviet Union, China, Vietnam, Eastern Europe and non-governing communist movements to produce their detailed estimates of victims. Reviewers hailed the "Black Book" as a first global study of the victims of one of the two totalitarianisms that have marked the 20th century. Work on the book, timed to coincide with Friday's anniversary of the Bolshevik Revolution, progressed smoothly until a few months ago when some authors balked at the planned title "The Book of Communist Crimes." The final break came last month when project leader Stephane Courtois produced the preface openly branding terror as a central characteristic of communism. Several authors accused Courtois of twisting their research and some cancelled other projects planned with him. Like any good intellectual feud in France, the story made headlines in the Paris press. "The debate...risks overshadowing the enormous contribution the Black Book makes to knowledge about the crimes, terror and repression the immense majority of communist leaders were responsible for," the left-wing Paris daily Liberation wrote. "The polemics are all the more regrettable because this book breaks with the strange speechlessness that has stricken most of our historians." The book estimates communists claimed 65 million lives in China, 20 million in the former Soviet Union, two million in Cambodia and North Korea each, 1.7 million in Africa, one million in Vietnam and Eastern Europe respectively and 150,000 in Latin America. "The facts are stubborn and they show the communist regimes committed crimes against about 100 million people, against about 25 million for the Nazis," Courtois wrote in the disputed preface. "The methods introduced by Lenin and perfected by Stalin and their like not only recall the Nazi methods, they often predate them." Two of the authors, Jean-Louis Margolin and Nicolas Werth, accused Courtois of being obsessed with arriving at a total of 100 million victims. They also contested his thesis that communist regimes practised a class-based genocide equivalent to racially-based mass murder. Werth, whose detailed descriptions of Lenin's terror regime were rated by reviewers as some of the best parts of the book, said there was still a qualitative difference between Nazism and communism. "Death camps did not exist in the Soviet Union," he told Le Monde. Georges Marchais, the former hardline leader of the French Communist Party, entered the debate in a statement in the party daily L'Humanite. "It's certainly necessary to have serious historical research on all that happened," wrote Marchais, who kept the party firmly in the Soviet camp during his 22 years as its leader. "But it is something else to support the thesis that communism was actually nothing but a giant genocide instead of a liberation for people. "And it is only a short step from there to conclude that communism, and particularly the French Communist Party, was obsolete." The conservative daily Le Figaro had fewer problems over the "Black Book," which was published by Robert Laffont. "The question this book poses is crucial. Today, we know about nazism, gas chambers, the extermination of the Jews, the three camps at Auschwitz, the industrial atrocity," it said. "So why should we still deny the record of a century of communism? Why would one want to save it?" ~~~~~~~~ END ~~~~~~~~ Related Material on Communist Atrocities: The GULAG http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/soviet.exhibit/gulag.html The Soviet system of forced labor camps was first established in 1919 under the Cheka, but it was not until the early 1930s that the camp population reached significant numbers. By 1934 the GULAG, or Main Directorate for Corrective Labor Camps, then under the Cheka's successor organization the NKVD, had several million inmates. Prisoners included murderers, thieves, and other common criminals-along with political and religious dissenters. The GULAG, whose camps were located mainly in remote regions of Siberia and the Far North, made significant contributions to the Soviet economy in the period of Joseph Stalin. GULAG prisoners constructed the White Sea-Baltic Canal, the Moscow-Volga Canal, the Baikal-Amur main railroad line, numerous hydroelectric stations, and strategic roads and industrial enterprises in remote regions. GULAG manpower was also used for much of the country's lumbering and for the mining of coal, copper, and gold. Stalin constantly increased the number of projects assigned to the NKVD, which led to an increasing reliance on its labor. The GULAG also served as a source of workers for economic projects independent of the NKVD, which contracted its prisoners out to various economic enterprises. Conditions in the camps were extremely harsh. Prisoners received inadequate food rations and insufficient clothing, which made it difficult to endure the severe weatherand the long working hours; sometimes the inmates were physically abused by camp guards. As a result, the death rate from exhaustion and disease in the camps was high. After Stalin died in 1953, the GULAG population was reduced significantly, and conditions for inmates somewhat improved. Forced labor camps continued to exist, although on a small scale, into the Gorbachev period, and the government even opened some camps to scrutiny by journalists and human rights activists. With the advance of democratization, political prisoners and prisoners of conscience all but disappeared from the camps. <NOTE: The commies had their concentration camps in service since 1919 all the way up to and including the Gorbachev period!> The conditions of the Gulags: http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/soviet.exhibit/d2presid.html To the Presidium of the Central Executive Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolshevik) We appeal to you, asking you to pay a minimum of attention to our request. We are prisoners who are returning from the Solovetsky concentration camp because of our poor health. We went there full of energy and good health, and now we are returning as invalids, broken and crippled emotionally and physically. We are asking you to draw your attention to the arbitrary use of power and the violence that reign at the Solovetsky concentration camp in Kemi and in all sections of the concentration camp. It is difficult for a human being even to imagine such terror, tyranny, violence, and lawlessness. When we went there, we could not conceive of such a horror, and now we, crippled ourselves, together with several thousands who are still there, appeal to the ruling center of the Soviet state to curb the terror that reigns there. As though it weren't enough that the Unified State Political Directorate [OGPU] without oversight and due process sends workers and peasants there who are by and large innocent (we are not talking about criminals who deserve to be punished), the former tsarist penal servitude system in comparison to Solovky had 99% more humanity, fairness, and legality. [...] People die like flies, i.e., they die a slow and painful death; we repeat that all this torment and suffering is placed only on the shoulders of the proletariat without money, i.e., on workers who, we repeat, were unfortunate to find themselves in the period of hunger and destruction accompanying the events of the October Revolution, and who committed crimes only to save themselves and their families from death by starvation; they have already borne the punishment for these crimes, and the vast majority of them subsequently chose the path of honest labor. Now because of their past, for whose crime they have already paid, they are fired from their jobs. Yet, the main thing is that the entire weight of this scandalous abuse of power, brute violence, and lawlessness that reign at Solovky and other sections of the OGPU concentration camp is placed on the shoulders of workers and peasants; others, such as counterrevolutionaries, profiteers and so on, have full wallets and have set themselves up and live in clover in the Soviet State, while next to them, in the literal meaning of the word, the penniless proletariat dies from hunger, cold, and back- breaking 14-16 hour days under the tyranny and lawlessness of inmates who are the agents and collaborators of the State Political Directorate [GPU]. If you complain or write anything ("Heaven forbid"), they will frame you for an attempted escape or for something else, and they will shoot you like a dog. They line us up naked and barefoot at 22 degrees below zero and keep us outside for up to an hour. It is difficult to describe all the chaos and terror that is going on in Kemi, Solovky, and the other sections of the concentrations camp. All annual inspections uncover a lot of abuses. But what they discover in comparison to what actually exists is only a part of the horror and abuse of power, which the inspection accidently uncovers. (One example is the following fact, one of a thousand, which is registered in GPU and for which the guilty have been punished: THEY FORCED THE INMATES TO EAT THEIR OWN FECES. "Comrades," if we dare to use this phrase, verify that this is a fact from reality, about which, we repeat, OGPU has the official evidence, and judge for yourself the full extent of effrontery and humiliation in the supervision by those who want to make a career for themselves. [...] We are sure and we hope that in the All-Union Communist Party there are people, as we have been told, who are humane and sympathetic; it is possible, that you might think that it is our imagination, but we swear to you all, by everything that is sacred to us, that this is only one small part of the nightmarish truth, because it makes no sense to make this up. We repeat, and will repeat 100 times, that yes, indeed there are some guilty people, but the majority suffer innocently, as is described above. The word law, according to the law of the GPU concentration camps, does not exist; what does exist is only the autocratic power of petty tyrants, i.e., collaborators, serving time, who have power over life and death. Everything described above is the truth and we, ourselves, who are close to the grave after 3 years in Solovky and Kemi and other sections, are asking you to improve the pathetic, tortured existence of those who are there who languish under the yoke of the OGPU's tyranny, violence, and complete lawlessness.... To this we subscribe: G. Zheleznov, Vinogradov, F. Belinskii. Dec. 14, 1926 True copy ______________________ TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS: The letter is written in very poor Russian. For the sake of clarity, the translator corrected the grammar and substituted a few words. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ -- More on Jewish Antifacist Committee: http://sunsite.unc.edu/expo/soviet.exhibit/m2antfac.html JEWISH ANTIFASCIST COMMITTEE IN THE USSR Moscow, ulitsa Kropotkina, 10, Telephone: G-6-71-00, G-6-47-07 [letterhead also in Russian and Yiddish] ^^^^^ 21 June 1946 TO COMRADE M. A. SUSLOV, DIRECTOR OF THE SECTION FOR FOREIGN POLICY OF THE CENTRAL COMMITTEE OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY Pursuant to the inquiry of Comrade Shumeiko, we are providing some information about the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR and its activity. ... The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR was formed soon after the first antifascist radio broadcast political rally of representatives of the Jewish people, which was held in Moscow in August 1941. The Committee consists of 70 members (a list of Committee members is attached), and its executive committee has 19 members (a list of executive committee members is attached). The working staff of the Committee consists of: 1.Secretary of the Committee, whose duties (following the death of Comrade Shakhno Epshtein) are carried out by the writer I. Fefer, member of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) [VKP(b)] since 1919. 2.Deputy Secretary of the Committee, Comrade S.M. Shpigel'glias, VKP(b) member since 1919 and formerly a party worker. 3.Senior editors: N. IA. Levin, VKP(b) member since 1944 and veteran of World War II; L. A. Goldberg, not a party member, former director of the publishing house Der Emes; editor S.O. Berman, VKP(b) member since 1940, veteran of World War II; and three translators and several technical workers. In the course of the last two years, representatives of a series of foreign Jewish antifascist organizations have visited the Committee: Deputy Chairman of the Jewish Antifascist Committee of Bulgaria, Mr. Zhak Vradzhali; one of the leaders of the Union of Jews of Czechoslovakia, Mr. Rozenberg; representatives of Jewish organizations of France, Poland, et al. Recently Mr. Ben Zion Goldberg (Waife), the son-in-law of Sholem Aleichem, visited the Soviet Union. He is a prominent public figure in the United States, a member of the executive committee of the Soviet-American Friendship Society (headed by Lamont), chairman of the Committee of Jewish Scientists, Writers, and Artists of the United States (Albert Einstein is president of the Committee), vice-president of Ambidjan, the All-American Society for Aid to Birobidzhan (president of Ambidzhan-Steffenson). Mr. Goldberg is also a major American journalist, a contributor to the newspapers Toronto Star, Saint Louis Dispatch, New York Post, and Today, and to the magazine New Republic. Mr. Goldberg stayed in the Soviet Union from January 11 to June 8, excluding one month when he traveled to Finland, Sweden, and Denmark. During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg was received in Moscow by M. I. Kalinin and S. A. Lozovskii; he attended all meetings of the Supreme Soviet of the Soviet Union; and he had a series of meetings with Soviet writers (including a banquet at the Union of Writers), with representatives of the Soviet Jewish community (at the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR headquarters), with leaders of the State Jewish Theater, with the chief rabbi of the Moscow Jewish congregation, Shliffer, and with leaders of the Red Cross, among others. Mr. Goldberg visited Riga, Tallin, Leningrad, Minsk, Vilnius, Kaunas, Kiev, Odessa, Lvov, Uzhgorod, Mukachevo, Brody, and Stalingrad. He was received by the leading workers and writers in the capitals of the union republics. During his stay in the Soviet Union, Mr. Goldberg dispatched via the Soviet Information Bureau 33 articles to the American, Canadian, English, Palestinian, Polish, and Yiddish press. The articles were extremely friendly toward the Soviet Union. Before his departure, Mr. Goldberg began to write a book in English entitled England, the Opponent of Peace, and a book in Yiddish entitled Jewish Culture in the Soviet Union. Recently the Committee has received a series of requests from prominent Jewish public figures from several countries seeking assistance in visiting the Soviet Union. Such requests were received from: N. Goldman, the chairman of the executive committee of the World Jewish Congress; Dr. Stephen Wise, chairman of the American Jewish Congress; Louis Levine, chairman of the Jewish Union for Soviet Aid under Russian War Relief; Mr. Raiskii, the editor-in-chief of the newspaper Presse Nouvelle in Paris; et al. The Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR has sent during its entire existence one delegation, composed of Comrades Mikhoels and Fefer, to the United States, England, Canada, and Mexico. This delegations's trip report has been published in the book The Jewish People against Fascism (attached; see pp. 91- 129). [signed] Chairman of the Jewish Anfifascist Committee in the USSR: S. Mikhoels Member of the Executive Committee of the Jewish Antifascist Committee in the USSR: I. Fefer _____________________ TRANSLATOR'S COMMENTS: [Stamps at upper right:] Removed from the register; to the dossier of [blank] sector; date: 9 Jan. 1947. [Secretariat OMI], Central Committee of the Communist Party No. 2074 1 July 1946 [Handwritten marginalia at left margin of p. 1:] To the archive [illegible notations and signature] The book stays. [signed] G. Shumeiko 25/1948 ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~ All material above is from a Library of Congress Web Site as stated on its main page: Soviet Archives Exhibit Welcome to the Library of Congress's Soviet Archives exhibit. ++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ ++++++++++++ Declaration from the Ukrainian Insurgent Army Warning- Communism still lives! In the past century, communist govts. have murdered over 143,000,000 people for reasons such as protesting, disagreeing with, or fleeing communism. Some examples of communist work: 1. Russia, 1917- Here began the first revolution. After taking power, communists (at that times known as Bolsheviks) such as Lenin, Trotsky, and you guessed it, Stalin, Machines-gunned to death the ruling family of Russia, the Romanovs. Besides murdering them, they wiped out opposition to the communist party. 2. Russia, Ukraine, 1920s-30s- Since the revolution, Stalin has already killed, arrested, or exiled all of the 1917 Bolsheviks who shared power with him. They were put before "juries" and told to "confess" their "crimes", which were "being a Trotskyite" or being against the communist system. For resisting communist rule, Stalin ordered collectivization of all food in Ukraine to be conducted by his henchman, Nikita Khrushchev. By doing this he murdered between 7,000,000 and 15,000,000 men, women, and children. All together Stalin killed 23,000,000 Ukrainians in various ways. He even considered sending the whole Ukrainian population of 40,000,000 to Siberia. The only thing that prevented him was that he knew that the Ukrainian Insurgent Army would be flooded with new recruits eager to protect Ukraine. In his entire time as supreme ruler, Stalin murdered 50,000,000 people. Hitler murdered nowhere near the number that Stalin did. Yet little is known about Stalin throughout America and the rest of world because Hitler was defeated and his regime was carefully documented and his crimes were revealed to all unlike Stalin. 3. China, 1949- Shortly after World War 2, Chinese communists took power and chased the Nationalist govt. of Chiang Kai-Shek onto the nearby island Taiwan. Mao Zedong was the first dictator. Mao probably killed as many as Stalin, maybe even more. In the economic program known as the Great Leap Forward, 30,000,000 Chinese died. Since then the communist govt. has violated human rights many times and has assisted enemies of the US in building missiles and bombs. When Clinton went to China, he actually had the audacity to sign a bill that stated that Taiwan is a part of China. But Clinton's communist life and work is another story. 4. Tibet, 1950- Chinese troops stormed this peaceful nation, took over and outlawed religion. They have murdered 1,000,000 people and destroyed 6,000 monasteries To new movies, Seven Years in Tibet and Kundun, both have a part about China taking over Tibet. Unsurprisingly, China has condemned those two movies because they speak the truth. 5. Korea, 1950-53- Communist North Korea invaded South Korea in an all-out attempt to unite Korea into one communist country. For three bloody years the UN fought the communist and saved South Korea. The Korean who ruled North Korea for almost 50 years, Kim Il Jong, was a Stalinist who ruled Korea with an iron fist. He just died a few years ago. Ironically, Jong is revered as a god, even though it is an atheist country. In fact, the title "president" is reserved permanently for Kim Il Jong. (So I guess that the current leader is just vice-president.) Recently, North Korea has been testing ballistic missiles, with one actually flying over Japan. The US has stated that it will not lift economic sanctions until North Korea stops these tests. 6. Vietnam, 1960s- 70s- Communists led by Ho Chi Minh took over in North Vietnam and forced the US to send troops to South Vietnam when the north attacked. The US lost 58,000 men, but they did not die in vain. After the public forced the US to pull out, Communists united Vietnam and murdered 2,000,000 people. We can thank draft-dodgers and antiwar protesters like Clinton for this defeat, but as I said, this is a different story. 7. Cambodia 1975-79- This extremely cruel communist govt., led by Pol Pot and called the Khmer-Rouge, slaughtered 3,000,000 people put of a population of 9,000,000. Intellectuals were murdered because they knew the truth; even people who looked smart or wore glasses were not spared. Every single person in Cambodia lost at least one relative or friend to Pol Pot. 8. Cuba, 1959- After overthrowing President Batista, Fidel Castro proclaimed that he was a communist, and accepted aid from the USSR. Batista's govt. helped the economy, but Castro destroyed it. The Cuban missile crisis was very serious because the missiles were only 90 miles south of Florida. For two weeks the world was on the brink of World War 3. Thousands have fled Cuba in rafts to the US. IN the 1960s, the CIA invaded Cuba at the Bay of Pigs, but failed because Kennedy didn't send in air support like he promised. Castro is still in power. 10. Russia, 1957- Russian dictator Khrushschev promised to "bury" the US and the West in a world war and establish a worldwide dictatorship. At the UN, Khrushchev took off his shoe and banged it on the table in protest. Fortunately, his dream never came true. 11. Beijing, China, 1989- In a now world-famous political demonstration at Tiananamen Square, Chinese troops used tanks and guns to drive off pro- democracy protesters. At least 800 people died. When Clinton reviewed Chinese troops in the same square, it showed that Clinton was willing to forget the massacre and in a way, forgive China. But Clinton is another story as I said before. 12. etc... The list of atrocities keeps going on. These are but a few. We must stop the spread of communism before it is too late. If we want to live in a free world we must fight for it. Now it is time for all freedom lovers to come to the aid of democracy. A good quote by Edward Lodge Curran from his book, Facts About Communism-- Communism is a theory of life. Communism is a world political party. Communism is an economic creed. As a theory of life it is false. As a political party it is tyrannical. As an economic creed it is a failure. *************************** Written by, Mark Hadzewycz CIC, Ukrainian Insurgent Army ([EMAIL PROTECTED] or [EMAIL PROTECTED]) Questions and comments are encouraged. DECLARATION & DISCLAIMER ========== CTRL is a discussion and informational exchange list. Proselyzting propagandic screeds are not allowed. Substance—not soapboxing! These are sordid matters and 'conspiracy theory', with its many half-truths, misdirections and outright frauds is used politically by different groups with major and minor effects spread throughout the spectrum of time and thought. That being said, CTRL gives no endorsement to the validity of posts, and always suggests to readers; be wary of what you read. CTRL gives no credeence to Holocaust denial and nazi's need not apply. Let us please be civil and as always, Caveat Lector. ======================================================================== Archives Available at: http://home.ease.lsoft.com/archives/CTRL.html http:[EMAIL PROTECTED]/ ======================================================================== To subscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SUBSCRIBE CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] To UNsubscribe to Conspiracy Theory Research List[CTRL] send email: SIGNOFF CTRL [to:] [EMAIL PROTECTED] Om
