European Horrors

It must be exceedingly difficult to write a book on the genocides perpetrated by Hitler and Stalin, genocides in which the Holocaust has a part, but genocides which are different and independent from it. The historian- writer must honour the Holocaust, but must include or exclude its importance as the material demands. A tough job for even the best.

James Kirchuk has reviewed a book that he believes has done this successfully. In "The Butchery of Hitler and Stalin," Kirchuk reviews Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin by Timothy Snyder. 

Snyder’s aim is to place the Holocaust within the context of this era of mass killing. He does so by focusing on the region he terms the “bloodlands,” the territories that fell under both German and Soviet occupation between 1933 and 1945 and were the main theaters of those regimes’ policies of non-combat-related mass murder. The era of the bloodlands commences with the Ukrainian famine, is followed by Stalin’s Great Terror of 1937–1938, continues with the combined German and Soviet mass murder of Poles during the short-lived period of the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact and the German starvation of Soviet citizens across present-day Belarus, Ukraine and Russia, and ends with the German “reprisal” killings of Belarusians and Poles. All told, some fourteen million people are estimated to have died as a result of these atrocities...

This map is earlier than the time in question, but shows clearly the "bloodlands" encompassing Poland and the Ukraine.

According to Kirchuk, Snyder avoids rhetorical moves that writers, politicians, revisionists, and Holocaust "diminishers" have and do employ.

First, is the argument people use when they want to diminish the severity, occurrence, and seriousness of a problem. It goes something like this: Women should not campaign for an end to domestic abuse, because some husbands are abused as well; Canadian-Japanese should forget about apology and reparation because homeless men in Saskatchewan were conscripted and sent overseas during WWII and no one is asking for the same for them (this is almost verbatim as I heard it). With the Holocaust, the argument is often similar: other peoples were massacred in huge numbers, so the Holocaust doesn't deserve so much discussion. But severe social problems and atrocities don't cancel each other out; they are all deserving of humanity's attention.

The other rhetorical move is much more widespread and subtle (and much harder to argue against!).
Kirchick quotes Snyder:

Without diminishing the enormity of the Holocaust, Snyder dissents from those writers who argue that it is its very enormity that renders it inexplicable. “To dismiss the Nazis or the Soviets as beyond human concern or historical understanding is to fall into their moral trap,” he writes.

As I read this, I am reminded of other tragic, albeit far less enormous, events that humanity has dealt with and processed. The Montreal Massacre in1989; the shootings at Virginia Tech in 2007, and the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, - in addition to all the serial killings, child kidnappings, and anything else that seems beyond what we can endure.

At the time of the Montreal Massacre, there was much debate about the nature of such killers and woman-haters as Marc Lepine. Some saw him as a monster and mutant, a crazy person who had no relation to other normal human beings. Some saw him as extreme, but still on the continuum of human behaviour, a product of misogynistic attitudes in the general population.

As much as we may not like it, to see these people as monsters beyond humanity is to push away scrutiny of deep social problems and hatred of the other. I believe that when we put the perpetrators of such enormous and awful deeds "beyond human concern or historical understanding," we extinguish any hope for an explanation that will help us to understand and possibly avoid such events in the future.

Of course, it's true that most of us would not do such things, and we rightly wonder how anyone could. Our investigations and questions would be well placed if we asked what there is in our human nature and our human societies that creates such extreme, but human, actions.


I don't know whether I will read Snyder's book or not: Kirchuk says that he had to shut the book at times to avoid the overload of so much human misery. I am glad that he read it though, and that he wrote such a detailed and good review.

Happy Father's Day

Of the many lasting gifts my parents have given to me, my love of reading and literature is the most satisfying, intellectually stimulating, and even lucrative, as it led to my profession. My parents raised a reader long before it was a popular campaign with big name advocates.

My Dad was the major reader when I was very young, but both my parents shared the effort - and I'm sure the sessions of Doctor Dan or "The White Bed That Ran Away" became somewhat of an effort after the first six hundred or so repetitions!

So Happy Father's Day to my Dad. And thanks to both my parents for raising a reader.

Hockey Fever, Hatred, and Violence

Perhaps because my favourite hockey team has not been in the NHL Stanley Cup final since 1994, I was not paying attention to the level of illogical hatred that passes for sports rivalry, especially at this the very top level.

I have been surprised and chagrined by the vitriol in the press from sports writers, commenters, and even the NHL players themselves. One of my family members, opinionated but usually not so extreme, has fallen into a kind of bitter hatred for the Vancouver Canucks that doesn't make any sense.

There have been violent incidents; the Boston Swat team was out for last night's game; some Boston restaurants wouldn't serve the Canucks. Fans, generally, of professional sports have been beaten and "befouled," and worse by other teams' fans over many years. The list in Wikipedia of incidents shows an enormous increase in violent events in the last ten years (although this could be a matter of reporting, definition, or both and not an actual increase).

The crazier arguments I have heard are that 1) British Columbia isn't really part of Canada - this generally from writers and commenters east of Winnipeg. I was truly surprised to hear this, as my passport clearly is a Canadian one, issued by the Canadian government. Maybe British Columbians don't "do" Canadian in a way acceptable to eastern sports writers and their fans, but that hardly makes the argument true. I suspect this comes largely from long held disappointment about the dismal record of the Toronto Maple Leafs.

2) The "not Canadian" argument often is accompanied by the claim that the Boston Bruins are more Canadian than the Canucks because of the high percentage of Canadians on the team. Without knowing the facts, I suspect this is true for many NHL teams. The Vancouver Canucks are, of course, a Canadian franchise based in Canada. The Boston Bruins are an American franchise based in the United States - that this needs stating defies logic!

NHL players are professional; they play for the glory of the team they work for, not for the glory of the country of their citizenship. People who find this disturbing should confine themselves to watching Olympic hockey, where players play only for their own nation.

3) Another argument I have heard is about the terrible violence perpetrated by the Canuck players. There are incidents in any professional hockey game of what can be called "violence." Canucks included. But isolated incidents do not a history make. The Canucks have one of the cleanest records in the league, preferring to score goals against the other team after the opponent's goons make a questionable hit, rather than retaliate in kind.

4) Some claim that the Canucks are simply not such a good team, yet they won the 2011 President's Cup!

I have not really paid much attention to the physical or verbal violence in sports surrounding the various finals and series for title of the best in the game. Now that it is close to home, I am appalled by the hatred and the kinds of comments that people are actually willing to make in public.

I'll be glad when the Stanley Cup final is over, regardless who wins it. Boston is a good team. I just happen to be a Canucks' fan.

Go Canucks!

Backlit Glory

One of the few literary arguments my husband and I have is about the poems of Gerard Manley Hopkins. I love Hopkins' "sprung rhythm" and the powerful language that recalls Anglo-Saxon poetry. My husband jokes that teaching Hopkins (which I do often) should be grounds for dismissal, such is his dislike.

As I drove in the driveway this morning, some tulips in my garden were wonderfully backlit. I just had to take these photos. When I put them up on the computer, lines from Hopkins came to me unbidden from his poem "God's Grandeur":


The world is charged with the grandeur of God.
It will flame out, like the shining from shook foil...

For me, any poet's words that come to mind in the face of such natural spectacle must not be so bad.