Talk:Alfred-Maurice de Zayas: Difference between revisions
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History is presented here as a kind of Olympic games. Germany wasn't the best in the number of dead victims, the ratio of victims, the subject to the biggest extermination, the biggest expulsion. So some Germans invented a new category ''the biggest ethnic expulsion in Europe in the 20 century''. There is even the category - the biggest expulsion after the expulsion of Jews in Romania. If we forget a dozen European nations the Germans were the main victims of WWII they started. What do you expect? A special prize for the best propaganda?[[User:Xx236|Xx236]] 10:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC) |
History is presented here as a kind of Olympic games. Germany wasn't the best in the number of dead victims, the ratio of victims, the subject to the biggest extermination, the biggest expulsion. So some Germans invented a new category ''the biggest ethnic expulsion in Europe in the 20 century''. There is even the category - the biggest expulsion after the expulsion of Jews in Romania. If we forget a dozen European nations the Germans were the main victims of WWII they started. What do you expect? A special prize for the best propaganda?[[User:Xx236|Xx236]] 10:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC) |
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Dear Xx236 I think it is revenge that you want not answers |
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This is not about who started the war is is about moral values, if they are relevant for all nations and peoples ore only for the one who lost a war. If the westen nations and Russia just would have made a division of Germany and whent on in history nobody would ask anymore about the victims of this war, not about theirs ore owers. But there where the Nürnberg trials witch gave a nessesary new standard of human values in wartimes, and they outspoke this standard for every nation and for every man, witch is right. But if this standrads are existing, one must look on history with this new standards. That is all. Not who started the war whos guilt it was ore who murdered whom, just facts about what happend and teaching of human values for both sides. |
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This is not about who started the war is about moral values, if they are relevant for all nations and peoples ore only for the one who lost a war. |
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If the western nations and Russia just would have divided Germany and went on in history, nobody would ask anymore about the victims of this war, not about theirs ore ours. |
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But there where the Nurnberg trials witch gave a necessary new standard of human values in wartimes, and they out spoke this standard for every nation and for every man, witch is right. |
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But if these standards are existing one must look on history with these new standards. |
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Only professional scientists like Mr de Zayas can do this for us and we must respect their findings, because they study years and we, we have just a little knowledge about the things. |
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Johann |
Johann |
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Revision as of 10:01, 27 April 2007
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Please stop idle chats
All previous talk has been archived. Article talk pages are intended for discussing article's content. If you want to add, delete or change something in the article, please write here. Otherwise please go somewhere elese. Internet has plenty of discussion forums, and wikipedia is not one of them.
Once again, this page is not for discussion of wikpedia editors or de Zayas or Nazi regime or famine in Uganda or partitions of Poland. This page is for discussion of the content of the article about de Zayas using verifiable information from reliable sources. `'mikka 22:08, 3 April 2007 (UTC)
After 3 weeks of discussions in the talk page and the creation of separate pages on the author's books, maybe the neutratily test has been sufficiently satisfied. JvA
I wish to refer Polish readers to the thoughtful chapter by Alfred de Zayas on the UN Human Rights Committee, published together with Professor Roman Wieruszewski in the handbook "Ochrona Praw Czelowicka w Swiecie", published by Ofiecyna Wydawnicza Branta, Poznan, 2000. Prof. de Zayas personally gave this book to Lech Walesa at an international conference held in Yerevan, Armenia in April 2005. JvA
Academic opinions
favourable:
"His is a lucid, scholarly and compassionate study. Most pertinently he insists that we deny what the lesser histories conspire with us to invent--that there are stopping places in history." Tony Howarth, Times Educational Supplement
"The lesson from this well-organized and moving historical record is not merely that retribution which penalizes innocent human beings becomes injustice, but that acceptance of political realities may be a better road to human fulfilment than the path of violence. Alfred de Zayas has written a persuasive commentary on the suffering which becomes inevitable when humanitarianism is subordinated to nationalism" Benjamin Ferencz, American Journal of International Law
"Books such as this ... deserve a respectful welcome. There can be no dispute that the eviction and resettlement of some 16 million people which occurred in Eastern Europe at the end of the war caused enormous suffering. It is important that authors such as Mr. de Zayas should form time to time remind us of man's inhumanity to man." Michael Balfour in International Affairs
"L'ouvrage est édifiant et sera pour beaucoup une révélation. M. de Zayas n'est pas tendre pour les Alliés, qui ont fermé les yeux sur l'une des entreprises les plus inhumaines de l'histoire de la civilisation occidentale, la responsabilité des démocraties anglo-saxonnes étant a cet egard primordiale." Revue Générale de Droit International Public
In minuziöser Quellenarbeit zeigt de Zayas, dass in Polen und der Tschechoslowakei schon lange vor dem Krieg die Absicht gehegt wurde, die dort wohnhaften Deutschen aus ihrer rund 700-jährigen Heimat zu vertreiben. Beide Staaten missachteten ihre völkerrechtlichen Verpflichtungen zum Schutz von Minderheiten ... De Zayas erkennt darin einem Präzedenzfall fuer spätere Vertreibungen in Palästina, Zypern, Bosnien oder Kosovo. Sein engagiertes Wirken gegen solche 'Kriegsstrategien' hat bedeutdenden Anteil daran, dass sich das Recht auf die Heimat in den letzten Jahren als fundamentales Menschenrecht etablieren konnte. Patrick Sutter in der Neuen Zürcher Zeitung, 2006.
"De Zayas is undoubtedly one of the world's leading legal scholars addressing forced population transfers ... [his] work provides massive confirmation of the truism that atrocities are committed in war by all sides, that many go unpunished, and some are part of national policy....the possibility that truth might be misused in argument by the devil is not a reason to suppress truth. I have no personal doubt that this book is a useful attempt to preserve an important truth. By writing it, the author -- whose own humanitarian sympathies are beyond question, as is Levie's scholarly detachment --has done a service to scholarship." Alfred Rubin in The Fletcher Forum
"Every victim of inhumanity, regardless of nationality, race or creed, should be inteitled to the equal protection of the law. The stated primary purpose of this interesing and well-written work is to hlep minimize the vicolations of international law in any future armed conflicts. if that goal is to be achieved, it is not enough merely to know that the rules are often broken by all sides. Americans learned that leasson at My Lai. There must be continuous improvement in the codes in order to meet the changing modes of warfare. There must be inculcation and acceptance of humanitarian values, even in time of war. Most important, there must be a more certain, objective, and effective judicial machinery, national and international, to improve the enforcement of international law and the rules of war. The de Zayas book sheds light on a problem that has not yet been resolved." Benjamin B. Ferencz, American Journal of International Law.
"The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1495 is a fascinating book. It is well-organized and elegantly written ... a sobering new look at the Second World War and ourselves .. With the appearance of this new book ... our innocence comes to an official end." Arnold Krammer, Journal of Soviet Military Studies
"The facts were painstakingly resarched by the author. Archives were consulted and cross-checked and survivors interviewed. It is an academic job well done, and a must for students of small islands of sanity in the ocean of madness called war" Lt.-Gen. G.C. Berkhof, Netherlands International Law Review
"This well-written book, which is based on thorough research of original sources... triggered a broad discussion... It is timely and necessary to discuss the legal, sociological and psychological problems involved in the investigation of war crimes during and after armed conflicts." Dieter Fleck, in Archiv des Völkerrechts
"a well-founded book" Professor Norman Stone in the Sunday Times, London
"an excellent book" Professor Christopher Greenwood in The Cambridge Law Journal
"an important book" Professor L.F.E. Goldie in the American Journal of International Law
"Fast ein Klassiker" Dr. habil. Matthias Stickler in the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, 2006
"The central thesis of this unique and timely book is that the right to one's homeland belongs to the most fundamental human rights, since its observance by state and non-state actors is a prerequisite for the enjoyment of most other human rights. Indeed, human rights are not exercised in a vacuum, but in a concrete geographical and temporal context, which is most frequently the place where one was born, where one's historical and cultural links lie. The denial of the right to live in one's homneland by mass expulsion or ethnic cleansing entails not only the obvious violation of the right to self-determination, which is considered by many international legal experts as jus cogens, but a breach of most civil, political, economic, social and cultural rights." Netherlands International Law Review
Excerpts of review of: Rainer Maria Rilke: "Larenopfer" (bilingual commented edition, translated by A. de Zayas)
"Ebenfalls ganz neu und frisch ist die erste Übersetzung von Rilkes zum Jahresende 1895 erschienenem Gedichtband Larenopfer ins Englische. Die Übersetzung stammt von Alfred de Zayas (einem Mitglied der Rilke-Gesellschaft wie Frau Ada Brodsky), und sie liegt vor als eine »Bilingual Edition«. Selbst für deutschsprachige Leser ist ein solches Unternehmen eine große Hilfe. Das Nebeneinander der Texte, des Originals und seiner Übersetzung, bringt einen Dialog in Gang, der sehr zum Gewinn auch für den muttersprachlichen Lesers werden kann. Gelegentlich entdeckt man erst im Vergleich die besondere, von der Regel abweichende Wortwahl, die syntaktischen Figuren, die Ausklammerungen, und auch dies: die spezielle Bildlichkeit, die sich im anderen Medium nicht wiederholen läßt. Die im Namen der Brunnenromantik (»holde Brunnenpoesie«) formulierte Kritik an der modernen Wasserversorgung im Gedicht Brunnen (S. 46) macht besonders die Übertragung ins Englische deutlich. Und schon der bestimmte Artikel in der Übersetzung des Titels (Brunnen -- The Fountain) macht auf die Besonderheit aufmerksam, verweist auf die Identität in der Differenz. Was Alfred de Zayas mit seiner Übersetzung erreicht, eine erneute und intensive Beschäftigung mit dem Rilkeschen Text, das erreicht auf einem ganz anderen Weg der Altmeister der Rilke-Philologie..." Professor August Stahl in the Blätter der Rilke Gesellschaft, 2005, page 275
critical: http://www.h-net.org/reviews/showrev.cgi?path=1720863819285 Xx236 14:57, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
- These are opinions about the books, not about the author. `'mikka 23:09, 4 April 2007 (UTC)
This from Xx236 named link is in German but to comment it it is done a Barns and Noble Book revision of De Zayas work called by a Habsburg net.
Comment to the Link:
Well written but not just. One problem with the link is that it says about De Zaysa that he is looking to much in the outcome of the Versailles Treaty. But that is the turning point for all German Minorities. The Author "Habsburg" is writing like the German minorities have been living since hundreds and hundreds of years in a Polish and Czechoslovakian state. Not one word he writes about the not just actions from polish state and the czech state against the Germans between the wars. You can make an own page about this Legal and phyical attacs against the minorities. He writes like the National Sozialists alone would have radicalist the German minorities and not the fact that they where suppressed. Several Hundred thousand Germans left Poland before 1939 and not of economical reasons. This he does not tell. Like a lot of the historians of our days, history is written one-sided talled and a lot of things are just not said, with gives the impression that it is a real critic and not a political statement, witch anyway is clear, when you call a history forum. Habsburg NET.
Johann
Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau
I created the The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945. Please provide necessary references that discuss the book, per wikipedia's WP:CITE policy. `'mikka 20:55, 11 April 2007 (UTC)
Academic criticism
Alfred de Zayas deserves praise for not having adopted the politically correct attitute of most post-World War II historians who turned a blind eye to the sufferings of the losers of World War II. Rightfully, he points to the Nazi-like barbarism to which Germans were exposed by the victors. In his writings he condemns crimes against humanity no matter who committed what to whom. Thus he points to a path of reconciliation that, regrettably, is still waiting to be followed more than 60 years after the disaster. I admire de Zayas for his knowledge and wisdom, and I salute him for his courage to disseminate a politically incorrect truth. Rudolf Pueschel.
http://etd.gsu.edu/theses/available/etd-04262006-071805/unrestricted/larson_kevin_m_200605_ma.pdf GERMANS AS VICTIMS? THE DISCOURSE ON THE VERTRIEBENE DIASPORA
Of particular interest in respect to de Zayas’s book is that it was originally published in German in 1986—two years before Maier’s work detailing the Historikerstreit was published—under the title Anmerkungen zur Vertreibung der Deutschen aus dem Osten. Whereas Maier was reacting to the reemergence of a conservative Germany that was seeking to make less of the Holocaust while raising support for its own victims, de Zayas saw an opportunity to profit from the political situation and published a book with an agenda that closely matched the CDU’s agenda. While the book did address Germans as victims and was among the first to do so, it did not approach the topic from a constructive tangent. Rather, it sought to assign blame heavy-handedly toward the Russians and others who “persecuted” Germans during World War II. This argument’s appearance in print suggests that a change in the political leadership of a nation can influence scholarly discourse. It is also interesting to note that the original German title translates to “Commentary about the Expulsion of Germans Out of the East.” Over time, as the Streit over culpability for all versus innocence for some began to sway toward innocence, de Zayas capitalized on the shift in the historiography. He published the book in the United States in 1993 under the title The German Expellees: Victims in War and Peace. The 1994 paperback edition trumpets the title A Terrible Revenge: The Ethnic Cleansing of the East European Germans, 1944-1950. Instances like these make it difficult for some Germans to lay legitimate claims to being victims. The words “ethnic cleansing” applied to the German Vertriebene ring hollow and lead to unfair and unsettling comparisons to the Holocaust. At no time does the fate of twelve million people who were forced to relocate equal the deaths of six million people at the hands of a ruthless government. This kind of historic discourse draws readers to make comparisons between two linked events that should not be compared. Furthermore, in his discussion of Operation Barbarossa, De Zayas only briefly mentions that “special squads of German Security Service (SS) troops murdered hundreds of thousands of Soviet citizens, primarily Jews.” When he addresses the Russian response to German atrocities, De Zayas writes of the “hate-mongering pamphlets and fliers” that were distributed to Russians, calling upon them to kill as many Germans as possible. De Zayas even quotes from one of the pamphlets, highlighting the Russian prose that calls upon Russians to create a “heap of German corpses.” This type of comparison that De Zayas uses is heavy-handed and unfair. What De Zayas is doing is vilifying the Soviets by quoting from one of their pamphlets, showing that they had documents that called for the deaths of Germans. It is as though De Zayas is desperately pointing to a well-organized effort to kill Germans and thus hoping to make German victimhood more attainable. De Zayas does a disservice to Germans and the legitimacy of German victimhood with his analysis. By not quoting from a German document that called for the deaths of the Russians—Operation Barbarossa was well organized and these documents do exist—De Zayas makes his bias painfully obvious. He tries too blatantly to pin atrocities on the Russians and hide the crimes of the Germans behind a single sentence. This is irresponsible use of source material and makes it more difficult for Germans who are victims to lay claim to that status. De Zayas analysis is one-sided and does not promote a victimhood claim that embraces all who were affected by the war. Instead, it creates controversy in a historiography that is already controversial enough. —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Aurelism (talk • contribs) 00:20, 22 April 2007 (UTC).
Dear Mr Aurelia !
VICTIMS ARE VICTIMS. THERE IS NO DEFFINITION IF THEY ARE GOOD OR BAD VICTIMS. GENERALY OLD MEN, WOMEN AND CHILDRENS ARE SEEN AS VICTIMS EVEN by THE WORST ENEMY.
=====~ Unfortunately the majority of Germans ignored this truth before the expulsion. So the lesson did work? Are you aware what Germans did in Poland? Probably not.Xx236 12:41, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Xx236 -- de Zayas did write about Nazi crimes in Poland in "Nemesis at Potsdam", in "A Terrible Revenge" and in "Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau". that's why the books are called "Nemesis" (goddess of revenge) and a Terrible Revenge -- meaning, the Nazis had started it. But the whole point is that one crime does not justify another. You should try to hate the Germans a bit less and try to put yourself in the concrete situation of the common folk in the 1930s -- in Germany, Austria, Czechoslovakia, Poland --
People who kill old men, children and women too, are seen as barbaric. I think that needs no further comment, you should think about your ideas. On a moral point of view, your comment is inhuman, and shows only too well, why we have the problems that we have in our world now.
Johann
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Johann, this is a Wikipedia. People cooperate here writing articles. It's not your personal forum.Xx236 12:38, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
"Aurelism" writes that the "relocation" of 12 million people does not equate with 6 million people murdered, and of course it does not, and nor does Prof de Zayas claim it does. However, these "relocations" were carried out as brutally as possible; in the words of one eye-witness, "not just with an absence of kindness, but with the maximum brutality. 2 million of the 12 million were MURDERED during the expulsions, so it hardly deserves the name "relocation" as if they were simply moving house. The Potsdam Declaration authorised the expulsions and stipulated they must be conducted in "a manner as orderly and humane as possible." This was nonsense; there was never any likelihood of it happening in that way, and the drafters of the Declaration knew it. However we try to dress them up or justify them, the expulsions were a crime on a massive scale. If they'd been carried out by Nazi leaders, they would have earned a well-deserved seat in the dock at Nuremberg.
Proud Angle.
Hey, we are not talking about transferring a hundred people by bus from Breslau to Berlin. We are talking about brutally expelling 15 million people from areas of Eastern Europe settled by Germans 700 years ago, and killing two million human beings in the process. This is much worse than the 'ethnic cleansing' we saw in the former Yugoslavia in the 1990's. De Zayas has done a monumental piece of original research in the archives, coupled with interviews of American, British, French, German diplomats and politicians, and interviews with the victims. If the books were not very solid, US Ambassadord Robert Murhpy, a participant at the Potsdam Conference, would not have delivered a foreword for the de Zayas book.
Johann
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Johann, respect the rules, don't shout on the readers. I have much more reasons to shout on you.Xx236 12:35, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Revenons à nos moutons! Let's discuss here the biographical aspects -- and relegate discussion of the books "Nemesis at Potsdam" "Terrible Revenge" and "Wehrmacht" to their respective wiki articles. Questions to be asked here could be what impact has de Zayas had on the jurisprudence of the UN Human Rights Committee, Committee against Torture, Committee on the Elimination of Racial Discrimination -- much of which he shaped for 22 years at the UN. What impact have his frequently quoted articles on minority rights, ethnic cleansing, peacekeeping had? In the long run his human rights work may be more sigificant than what he has done as an historian of Germany. True, he opened the debate on the issue of Germans as victims -- not just as perpetrators of crimes -- but this may be of transitory importance. However, in his inter-disciplinary approach to German history, he evaluates the legal issues on the basis of solid historical knowledge and proper methodology, as he examines the relevant historical events with the eye of the experienced human rights lawyer. In a way he represents the symbiosis of the Harvard lawyer and the methodical Ranke historian. Perhaps more interesting than his German publications is his work on Guantanamo. He not only condemns the torture and indefinite detention there -- others do that too -- but he convincingly shows that the US is illegally occupying Cuban sovereign territory, that Guantanamo Bay was militarily occupied by the US in 1898, that the "lease" agreement of 1903 was imposed by force, that the U.S. has materially breached the agreement, that Cuba has officially terminated the lease in 1959, but that the U.S. has refused to leave. Even more interesting and creative is his work of literary criticism in P.E.N. congresses. No one before de Zayas dared to see the cosmopolitan Rilke also from the perspective of homeland poetry -- not universal, but locally focused. Jeff
With all due respect - quite many of the 12 million were evacuted by German authorities and expelled by not allowning to return or keeping them in US or Soviet camps. Learn before you teach.
With all due respect, the 2 million of dead victims is pure propaganda, which doesn't deserve any comment. Xx236 12:33, 24 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Xx236 Yes they where evacuated, but they could not go back and actually some thousand ( the number is not known) shortly after the war, where going back to Poland and where expelled immediately by the Polish authorities. With your logic the communist Dissidents, during the cold war, witch where not allowed to go back home where not expelled from the East they just where evacuated by western authorities. Johann
Dear Xx236 - you are beginning to sound a bit like the revisionist historians who deny the Holocaust or deny the Armenian genocide, or those who claim that it was not 6 million but "only" 3 million murdered Jews, or those who claim that it was not 1.5 million murdered Armenians but only 700.000. There really is no difference from the moral standpoint -- not even from the legal standpoint, since genocide and crimes against humanity are the worst crimes imaginable, and anyone complicit in them out to be brought before an international criminal tribunal. Now, as far as the statistics on the German expulsions, the most reliable (and conservative) statistics are those published by the Statistisches Bundesamt in Wiesbaden. These are the figures used by de Zayas. There are higher estimates by the Bundesministerium für Vertriebene and by German authors like Dr. Heinz Nawratil and Dr. Gerhard Reichling. In any event, there used to be some 17.5 million Germans in the Eastern Provinces and in countries of Eastern Europe before WWII, of whom one million died in the war, two million stayed behind (in Poland, Russia, Romania, Hungary etc.), 12 million made it alive to what was left of Germany and Austria after WWII and two million died in the course of the evacuation, the flight, the wild expulsions and the "transfer" at the end of WWII. It was by far the largest "ethnic cleansing" of the twentieth century. You may wish to read Victor Gollancz "Our Threatened Values", or his "In Darkest Germany", or Alexander Solzhenitsyn's "Prussian Nights". Jeff.
I'm for describing facts in this Wikipedia, about any crimes - German, Soviet, Polish. If facts are revisionistic, I'm proud to be revisionistic. Unfortuantely many historians prefer to rewrite fantastic numbers of victims rather than do research.
The expulsion of Germans was decided outside Poland. Poles were victims of the WWII and post-war expulsions more than Germans, so don't tell me about moralty. Prisoners of Auschwitz or Gulag don't have any moralty when liberated. Germans enslaved millions of Poles, killed clergy and other leaders. It's nasty when someone (Germans) produces a mob and later claims to be victim of the mob. Communist Poland, as bad as it was, didn't exterminate German leaders.
You know hat you can do with your Nawratil? Get some reading, before you start to teach. Xx236 08:41, 25 April 2007 (UTC)
The book "Die Nemesis von Potsdam" has 47 pages of bibliography -- archives, demographic studies, official publications of the U.S., Great Britain, France, Switzerland, Poland, etc. besides secondary literature. These sources are tken into account in some 1000 footnotes in the book, and brought up to date in the 14th revised and enlarged edition, which you can borrow from any library. As far as German statistics on the deaths that resulted from the evacuation/flight/expulsion of the Germans, the figure of 2 million deaths is considered to be on the low side of the spectrum. As you may know, the German Red Cross, "Statistisches Bundesamt", "Heimatortskarteien", "Gesamterhebung" and other professional, not amateur institutions carried out careful demographic studies, especially in connection with the search for missing persons. This work was carried out over many years, and the results were always the same -- between 2 and 3 million missing and dead. The fact that Poland was a victim of aggression and war crimes by both Germany and the Soviet Union does not justify or legalize the crimes committed against East Prussian farmers, Silesian coal miners, factory workers --and their families. JvA
LIVE INTERVIEW OF ALFRED DE ZAYAS ON CNN WORLD NEWS BY LOU WATERS ON 16 APRIL 1990 AT 17:15 (recorded at New York CNN Studios)
WATERS: "On 13 April 1990 Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbatchov formally apologized to the Polish nation, admitting Soviet responsibility for the NKVD massacre of Polish POWs at Katyn, near Smolensk, in 1940. Dr. Alfred de Zayas, an American historian, points out that Katyn represents only the tip of the iceberg, that the bulk of Soviet crimes are yet to be investigated -- the killings and deportations of the Baltic and Polish intelligentsia, the GULAGs the eenforced starvation, the Stalinist purges..."
After discussing Katyn, Waters asks de Zayas about his new book on the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau and its methodology. The book appears on the screen.
Waters: "Should the Soviet admission that it was Stalin's secret police, the NKVD, that murdered 15,000 Polish prisoners of war at Katyn and elsewhere in the Sviet Union now be followed by further admissions and investigations concerning other massacres of the Stalinist period?"
Zayas: "The Soviet Union is full of mass graves wehre the NkVD disposed of millions of Soviet citizens -- Ukrainians, Belorussians, Tatars, Lithuanians, Estonians, Latvians, Poles -- perceived to be political or religious opponents of the regime. During the Second World War the invading German Army discovered many mass graves, but no one believe them. Shortly before retreating from the Katyn area, the Germans also discovered pits containing an estimated 50,000 civilians, indicating that the Katyn forest had been a frequently used execution ground for the NKVD. At Vinnitsa the bodies of 10,000 civilians killed in 1938 had been found, at Lviv the victims of Stalin's terror were estimated at 12,000. Other massacres occurred at Dubno, Luck, Sarni, Brzerznaz, Tarnopol, Dorpat, etc."
Waters: de Zayas backs up his charges with abundant documentation and interview testimony in his new book, the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, published by the University of Nebraska Press in Lincoln, Nebraska.
Zayas: "The book is the result of the evaluation of 226 volumes of previously classified records of the Legal Division of the Wehrmacht, and further research into related military and diplomatic records in German, British, American and Swiss archives."
Book appears again on the screen
It was interesting to follow the discussion concerning Alfred-Maurice de Zayas and his books. It seems that some of the negative comments made about de Zayas are coming from participants of the discussion who have not yet read his books and are essentially reacting against his choice of topics. I have read his books and consider them impecable in methodology and balanced in judgment. As a Harvard lawyer with a German doctorate in history, de Zayas combines the best of both disciplines and takes the reader step by step through the facts and their logical conclusions. He provides the reader with hundreds of footnotes in which he meticulously documents the narrative and comments on the relevant literature from all sources, British, American, French, Swiss, German, Polish, Russian, etc.
I suggest that the critics are missing the point -- namely that history is a continuum that must be seen in context. It is not black and white, nor did it start in 1933 or in 1939. Similarly, international law must be applied equally to all nations and peoples. If ethnic cleansing was illegal in the former Yugoslavia, it was also illegal when 15 million Germans were thrown out of their 700-year old homelands. There can be no discrimination among victims of gross violations of human rights.
Critics are entitled to disagree with the author, but they should articulate where, in their opinion, de Zayas has made a methodological error, or where an important historical fact or legal norm has been neglected.
Dr. de Zayas is not pushing a certain version of history, but is publishing the results of extensive research in many international archives and thousands of interviews with politicians, diplomats, witnesses and victims. Dr. de Zayas is a defender of human rights and freedom of speech worldwide. His credentials are impressive including being a senior lawyer with the Office of the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, the Secretary of the Human Rights Committee and the Chief of Petitions, President of the Swiss P.E.N., and member of Amnesty International..
I believe that to make a contribution to a better world, we should all be prepared to dialogue and strive for harmony and understanding and above all for the truth.
E. Friedel
Guiness book of records mentality
History is presented here as a kind of Olympic games. Germany wasn't the best in the number of dead victims, the ratio of victims, the subject to the biggest extermination, the biggest expulsion. So some Germans invented a new category the biggest ethnic expulsion in Europe in the 20 century. There is even the category - the biggest expulsion after the expulsion of Jews in Romania. If we forget a dozen European nations the Germans were the main victims of WWII they started. What do you expect? A special prize for the best propaganda?Xx236 10:44, 26 April 2007 (UTC)
Dear Xx236 I think it is revenge that you want not answers
This is not about who started the war is about moral values, if they are relevant for all nations and peoples ore only for the one who lost a war. If the western nations and Russia just would have divided Germany and went on in history, nobody would ask anymore about the victims of this war, not about theirs ore ours. But there where the Nurnberg trials witch gave a necessary new standard of human values in wartimes, and they out spoke this standard for every nation and for every man, witch is right. But if these standards are existing one must look on history with these new standards. Only professional scientists like Mr de Zayas can do this for us and we must respect their findings, because they study years and we, we have just a little knowledge about the things.
Johann