Great Article, thank you for posting.
So much for the Wehrmacht apologists. The Wehrmacht was neck deep in such atrocities. There was no in trouble finding plenty of willing Wehrmacht volunteers to do such things.
BABI YAR
By Yevgeni Yevtushenko
Translated by Benjamin Okopnik, 10/96
No monument stands over Babi Yar.
A steep cliff only, like the rudest headstone.
I am afraid.
Today, I am as old
As the entire Jewish race itself.
I see myself an ancient Israelite.
I wander o’er the roads of ancient Egypt
And here, upon the cross, I perish, tortured
And even now, I bear the marks of nails.
It seems to me that Dreyfus is myself. *1*
The Philistines betrayed me – and now judge.
I’m in a cage. Surrounded and trapped,
I’m persecuted, spat on, slandered, and
The dainty dollies in their Brussels frills
Squeal, as they stab umbrellas at my face.
I see myself a boy in Belostok *2*
Blood spills, and runs upon the floors,
The chiefs of bar and pub rage unimpeded
And reek of vodka and of onion, half and half.
I’m thrown back by a boot, I have no strength left,
In vain I beg the rabble of pogrom,
To jeers of “Kill the Jews, and save our Russia!”
My mother’s being beaten by a clerk.
O, Russia of my heart, I know that you
Are international, by inner nature.
But often those whose hands are steeped in filth
Abused your purest name, in name of hatred.
I know the kindness of my native land.
How vile, that without the slightest quiver
The antisemites have proclaimed themselves
The “Union of the Russian People!”
It seems to me that I am Anna Frank,
Transparent, as the thinnest branch in April,
And I’m in love, and have no need of phrases,
But only that we gaze into each other’s eyes.
How little one can see, or even sense!
Leaves are forbidden, so is sky,
But much is still allowed – very gently
In darkened rooms each other to embrace.
-“They come!”
-“No, fear not – those are sounds
Of spring itself. She’s coming soon.
Quickly, your lips!”
-“They break the door!”
-“No, river ice is breaking…”
Wild grasses rustle over Babi Yar,
The trees look sternly, as if passing judgement.
Here, silently, all screams, and, hat in hand,
I feel my hair changing shade to gray.
And I myself, like one long soundless scream
Above the thousands of thousands interred,
I’m every old man executed here,
As I am every child murdered here.
No fiber of my body will forget this.
May “Internationale” thunder and ring *3*
When, for all time, is buried and forgotten
The last of antisemites on this earth.
There is no Jewish blood that’s blood of mine,
But, hated with a passion that’s corrosive
Am I by antisemites like a Jew.
And that is why I call myself a Russian!
My stomach feels like I’m missing the bottom of it, now.
Thank you for posting.
Wow.
It was this very issue at Babi Yar that forced Reinhard Heydrich to convene the Wannsee Conference to develop a better way for the “Final Solution.” The result was systematic, industrialized genocide system of death camps in Germany and occupied Poland.
79 is not 8 decades, but a US Jew-Dem group is currently running ads equating the Trump era to the 1930s Nazis
In 1999, I visited Ukraine with a church group looking at churches which had hidden Jews during the war. We went to the Babi Yar monument and valley. The monument is the most emotionally painful thing I have ever seen in my life. It represent the people buried underground, focusing to push one mother and baby up above the ground. The back side of the monument is where you can see the other people writhing as they push upward.
Most of those who served with the Sixth Army did not return to Germany. In the words of Nikita Khrushchev, “they’re in the cold Soviet ground.”
It is a true mark of evil when you can compare someone to the destruction wrought by the Mongols of the 13th Century. In a century following Genghis Khan’s uniting of the Mongol Clans in 1206, they stormed and slaughtered from China to Poland, ruling from the Baltic to the Yellow Sea. In that time they are estimated to have killed up to 40 million people or 11% of World population.
For a regime that didn’t get to real killing until the mid 1930s, the Nazis and their willing countrymen did do in a decade what the Mongols took a lot longer to do. Of course that is machines , gas and guns versus horses, bows and swords!
Goethe was right when he said of his fellow Germans that they were ‘’noble in the individual and wretched in the collective’’.
The article takes a crack at the AfD and German WW1 veterans as well...How on earth is that relevant?
“Right wing’’ mein arse! The Nazis were Leftists!
Bump for reference
I read a book titled “Babi Yar” that details these events. It must be 40 years or older now.
Not for the squeamish
Babi Yar Scene - War and Remembrance
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sf-jqpVP9rY
Never forget.