Some rabid anti-communist told be to read this book as proof of a Soviet genocide in Ukraine.

I did a quick search and saw it being passed around and referenced in anti-communists circles like /r/ENOUGHCOMMIESPAM, but I haven't seen any leftist evaluations of this book or this author. So is anyone familiar with this, and how seriously should I take it?

  • ferristriangle [he/him]
    hexagon
    ·
    4 years ago

    The guy who linked it posted a few pages, it's all hand drawn pictures of soviet soldiers disposing of people in mass graves.

    If someone's pencil drawings are supposed to be the damning evidence of a brutal genocide carried out by Soviet soldiers, then I was hoping that someone who has studied more history than I have could give some context on this book and author and how legitimate their first hand account is.

    I don't want to just dismiss it out of hand, but I'm suspicious because I know enough history from that time period to know that there was a significant number of far right Ukrainian nationalists who openly and covertly collaborated with Nazi Germany, and many of them welcomed the Nazis in as liberators when they invaded the Ukraine, and that both Ukrainian nationalists and the occupying Nazi army carried out various pogroms against both Ukrainian and Russian Jews, specifically in Crimea which had a great number of Russians.

    So I suspect this is more Nazi and Nazi sympathizer propaganda that is intended to "both sides" the Holocaust. But I never came across this particular author before, so I was hoping someone could shed some more light on it.

    • blobjim [he/him]
      ·
      4 years ago

      The little I read about the author from Wikipedia or whatever it seems like they were a soviet camp guard that was tasked by the government with documenting life in the camps, but they were only tasked with that because they were already doing it on their own... it could really go either way on whether they're a fascist sympathizer or not without more info.