Read Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin Online

Authors: Timothy Snyder

Tags: #History, #General, #Biography & Autobiography, #European History, #Europe; Eastern - History - 1918-1945, #Political, #Holocaust; Jewish (1939-1945), #World War; 1939-1945 - Atrocities, #Europe, #Eastern, #Soviet Union - History - 1917-1936, #Germany, #Soviet Union, #Genocide - Europe; Eastern - History - 20th century, #Russia & the Former Soviet Union, #Holocaust, #Massacres, #Genocide, #Military, #Europe; Eastern, #World War II, #Hitler; Adolf, #Presidents & Heads of State, #Massacres - Europe; Eastern - History - 20th century, #World War; 1939-1945, #20th Century, #Germany - History - 1933-1945, #Stalin; Joseph

Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin (97 page)

21
Quotation: Naimark,
Fires
, 109. On Aleksander Zawadzki, the Silesian governor, see Urban,
Verlust
, 115; and Nitschke,
Wysiedlenie
, 144. On Olsztyn, see Nitschke,
Wysiedlenie
, 158.

22
On Public Security, see Borodziej,
Niemcy
, 80. Quotation: Stankowski,
Obozy
, 261.

23
For the 6,488 Germans who died at the Łambinowice camp, see Stankowski,
Obozy
, 280. Urban (
Verlust
, 129) estimates that, of the two hundred thousand Germans in Polish camps, sixty thousand died; the latter number seems high in light of the figures for individual camps. Stankowski gives a range of 27,847-60,000; see
Obozy
, 281. On Gęborski and Cedrowski, see Stankowski,
Obozy
, 255-256. On the forty prisoners murdered on 4 October 1945, see Borodziej,
Niemcy
, 87.

24
On the freight trains, see Nitschke,
Wysiedlenie
, 154.

25
On the robberies, see Urban,
Verlust
, 123; and Borodziej,
Niemcy
, 109. Nitschke (
Wysiedlenie
, 161) estimates that 594,000 Germans crossed the border at this time; Ahonen (
People
, 93) gives the figure 600,000.

26
On the November plan, see Ahonen,
People
, 93. For the figures cited, see Nitschke,
Wysiedlenie
, 182, 230. Compare Jankowiak, who gives 2,189,286 as a total for 1946 and 1947 (including only those in registered transports); see
Wysiedlenie
, 501. Death tolls in transports to the British sector are given in Frank,
Expelling
, 258-259; and Ahonen,
People
, 141.

27
Regarding the four hundred thousand Germans who died, see the original estimate in
Vertreibung
, 40-41; the agreement in Nitschke,
Wysiedlenie
, 231, and Borodziej,
Niemcy
, 11; the discussion and implicit endorsement in Overmans, “Personelle Verluste,” 52, 59, 60; and the critique of exaggeration in Haar, “Entstehensgeschichte,” 262-270. Ahonen estimates six hundred thousand deaths; see
People
, 140.

28
See the discussion of the difference between policies of deliberate murder and other forms of mortality in the Introduction and the Conclusion.

29
Simons in
Eastern Europe
introduces the geoethnic issues well.

30
On the relationship between the war and the communist takeovers generally, see Abrams, “Second World War”; Gross, “Social Consequences”; and Simons,
Eastern Europe.

31
Secretary of State James Byrnes and the shifting US position are discussed in Ahonen,
After the Expulsion
, 26-27. See also Borodziej,
Niemcy
, 70.

32
Quotation: Brandes,
Weg
, 437. See also Kersten, “Forced,” 81; Sobór-Świderska,
Berman
, 202; and Torańska,
Oni
, 273.

33
See Snyder,
Reconstruction.

34
Documentation of the UPA’s plans for and actions toward Poles can be found in TsDAVO 3833/1/86/6a; 3833/1/131/13-14; 3833/1/86/19-20; and 3933/3/1/60. Of related interest are DAR 30/1/16=USHMM RG-31.017M-1; DAR 301/1/5=USHMM RG-31.017M-1; and DAR 30/1/4=USHMM RG-31.017M-1. These OUN-B and UPA wartime declarations coincide with postwar interrogations (see GARF, R-9478/1/398) and recollections of Polish survivors (on the massacre of 12-13 July 1943, for example, see OKAW, II/737, II/1144, II/2099, II/2650, II/953, and II/775) and Jewish survivors (for example, ŻIH 301/2519; and Adini,
Dubno: sefer zikaron
, 717-718). The fundamental study is now Motyka,
Ukraińska partyzantka.
See also Il’iushyn,
OUN-UPA
, and Armstrong,
Ukrainian Nationalism.
I sought to explain this conflict in “Causes,”
Reconstruction
, “Life and Death,” and
Sketches.

35
On the 780,000 Poles shipped to communist Poland, see Slivka,
Deportatsiï
, 25. On the 483,099 dispatched from communist Poland to Soviet Ukraine, see Cariewskaja,
Teczka specjalna
, 544. On the one hundred thousand Jews, see Szajnok,
Polska a Izrael
, 40. For a discussion of Operation Vistula, see Snyder,
Reconstruction;
and Snyder, “To Resolve.”

36
On the 182,543 Ukrainians deported from Soviet Ukraine to the Gulag, see Weiner, “Nature,” 1137. On the 148,079 Red Army veterans, see Polian, “Violence,” 129. See also, generally, Applebaum,
Gulag
, 463.

37
For further details regarding the 140,660 people resettled by force, see Snyder,
Reconstruction
; or Snyder, “To Resolve.”

38
Snyder,
Reconstruction
; and Snyder, “To Resolve”; Motyka,
Ukraińska partyzantka
, 535. See also Burds, “Agentura.”

39
Polian,
Against Their Will
, 166-168. In Operation South some 35,796 people were deported, on the night of 5 July 1949, from territories that the Soviets had annexed from Romania.

40
Polian,
Against Their Will
, 134.

41
See Polian,
Against Their Will
, 134-155, for all of the cited figures. See also Naimark,
Fires
, 96; Lieberman,
Terrible Fate
, 206-207; and Burleigh,
Third Reich
, 749.

42
On the eight million people returned to the Soviet Union, see Polian, “Violence,” 127. On the twelve million Ukrainians, Belarusians, and Poles, see Gerlach (
Kalkulierte Morde
, 1160), who has examined these matters closely and estimates a minimum of three million displacements in Belarus alone.

43
Weiner (“Nature,” 1137) notes that the Soviets reported killing 110,825 people as Ukrainian nationalists between February 1944 and May 1946. The NKVD estimated that 144,705 Chechens, Ingush, Balkars, and Karachai died as a result of deportation or shortly after resettlement (by 1948); see Lieberman,
Terrible Fate
, 207.

44
Survivors of the famine mention this in their memoirs. See Potichnij, “1946-1947 Famine,” 185.

45
See Mastny,
Cold War
, 30. On Zhdanov’s heart attack, see Sebag Montefiore,
Court
, 506.

CHAPTER 11: STALINIST ANTI-SEMITISM

1
On the murder, see Rubenstein,
Pogrom
, 1. On Tsanava, see Mavrogordato, “Lowlands,” 527; and Smilovitsky, “Antisemitism,” 207.

2
On the
Black Book of Soviet Jewry
, see Kostyrchenko,
Shadows
, 68. On the stars, see Weiner, “Nature,” 1150; and Weiner,
Making Sense
, 382. On the synagogue used to store grain, see ŻIH/1644. On the ashes from Babi Yar, see Rubenstein,
Pogrom
, 38. See also, generally, Veidlinger,
Yiddish Theater
, 277.

3
Rubenstein,
Pogrom
, 35.

4
On Crimea, see Redlich,
War
, 267; and Redlich,
Propaganda
, 57. See also Lustiger,
Stalin
, 155, 192; Luks, “Brüche,” 28; and Veidlinger, “Soviet Jewry,” 9-10.

5
On the state secret, see Lustiger,
Stalin
, 108. On the decorations for bravery, see Weiner, “Nature,” 1151; and Lustiger,
Stalin
, 138.

6
These figures were discussed in earlier chapters and will be again in the Conclusion. Regarding Jewish deaths in the USSR, see Arad,
Soviet Union
, 521 and 524. Filimoshin (“Ob itogakh,” 124) gives an estimate of 1.8 million civilians deliberately killed under German occupation; to this I would add about a million starved prisoners of war and about four hundred thousand undercounted deaths from the siege of Leningrad. So, with both civilians and prisoners of war included, and very roughly, I would estimate 2.6 million Jews and 3.2 million inhabitants of Soviet Russia killed as civilians or prisoners of war. If prisoners of war are reckoned as military casualties, then the Jewish figure will exceed the Russian one.

7
Franklin D. Roosevelt, Winston Churchill, and Josif Stalin, “Declaration Concerning Atrocities Made at the Moscow Conference,” 30 October 1943. This was part of the Moscow Declaration.

8
On the “sons of the nation,” see Arad,
Soviet Union
, 539. On Khrushchev, see Salomini,
L’Union
, 242; and Weiner,
Making Sense
, 351.

9
Thoughtful introductions to postwar Soviet culture are Kozlov, “Soviet Literary Audiences”; and Kozlov, “Historical Turn.”

10
On the seventy thousand Jews permitted to leave Poland for Israel, see Szajnok,
Polska a Izrael
, 49. On Koestler, see Kostyrchenko,
Shadows
, 102.

11
On Rosh Hashanah and the synagogue, see Veidlinger, “Soviet Jewry,” 13-16; and Szajnok,
Polska a Izrael
, 159. On Zhemchuzhina, see Rubenstein,
Pogrom
, 46. On Gorbman, see Luks, “Brüche,” 34. On the policy turn generally, see Szajnok,
Polska a Izrael
, 40, 82, 106, 111-116.

12
On the
Pravda
article, see Kostyrchenko,
Shadows
, 152. On the decreased number of Jews in high party positions (thirteen percent to four percent from 1945 to 1952), see Kostyrchenko,
Gosudarstvennyi antisemitizm
, 352. The Grossman quotation is from Chandler’s translation of
Everything Flows.

13
On the dissolution of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, see Kostyrchenko,
Shadows
, 104. For the train quotation, see Der Nister,
Family Mashber
, 71. For the MGB report, see Kostyrchenko,
Gosudarstvennyi antisemitizm
, 327.

14
Molotov quotation: Gorlizki,
Cold Peace
, 76. See also Redlich,
War
, 149.

15
Redlich,
War
, 152; Rubenstein,
Pogrom
, 55-60.

16
On the one hundred thousand Jews from the Soviet Union, see Szajnok,
Polska a Izrael
, 40.

17
This was true of most of the postwar regimes, including the Czechoslovak, Romanian, and Hungarian.

18
Banac,
With Stalin Against Tito
, 117-142; Kramer,
Konsolidierung
, 81-84. See also Gaddis,
United States.

19
On Gomułka and Berman, see Sobór-Świderska,
Berman
, 219, 229, 240; Paczkowski,
Trzy twarze
, 109; and Torańska,
Oni
, 295-296.

20
On the exchange between Stalin and Gomułka, see Naimark, “Gomułka and Stalin,” 244. Quotation: Sobór-Świderska,
Berman
, 258.

21
For the Smolar quotation and generally, see Shore, “Język,” 56.

22
Shore, “Język,” 60. All of that said, there were Polish-Jewish historians who did much valuable research on the Holocaust in the postwar years, some of it indispensable for the present study.

23
This was part of the slogan of one of the more striking propaganda posters, executed by Włodzimierz Zakrzewski.

24
Consulte Torańska,
Oni
, 241, 248

25
Gniazdowski, “Ustalić liczbę,” 100-104 and passim.

26
On the Soviet ambassador, see Sobór-Świderska,
Berman
, 202; and Paczkowski,
Trzy twarze
, 114. For the percentage of high-ranking Ministry of Public Security officers who were Jewish by self-declaration or origin, see Eisler, “1968,” 41.

27
Proces z vedením
, 9 and passim; Lukes, “New Evidence,” 171.

28
Torańska,
Oni
, 322-323.

29
See Shore, “Children.”

30
This explanation of the absence of a communist blood purge in Poland can be found inter alia in Luks, “Brüche,” 47. One Polish communist leader apparently murdered another during the war; this too might have bred caution.

31
Paczkowski,
Trzy twarze
, 103.

32
The Soviet Union did annex the Kuril Islands.

Other books

Suspended Sentences by Brian Garfield
El compositor de tormentas by Andrés Pascual
Love Gone by Nelson, Elizabeth
Catch Rider (9780544034303) by Lyne, Jennifer H.
The Wind and the Spray by Joyce Dingwell
His Betrayal Her Lies by Angel de'Amor
A Turn of the Screwed by Tymber Dalton