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One wouldn’t call the relations between Bucharest and Moscow sunny, and it’s obvious that Romanian President Traian Băsescu played a major role in shaping the current situation. The Romanian leader has been memorable for his praise of Nazi criminals as well as his public statement that, in 1941, he would’ve given the order to attack the USSR. The actions and statements made by lower ranking officials seemed like “innocent mischief”, but they weren’t that innocent. Such positions of the Romanian leadership couldn’t go without political and economic consequences.
After the parliamentary opposition managed to form a majority and a coalition government, signs of an improvement in Romanian-Russian relations began to appear. Prime Minister Victor Ponta, unlike Băsescu, exhibits no signs of pathological Russophobia and even creates the impression of being a rational politician. However, some of the members in the new government still prefer to deal with Moscow by using derisory rhetoric. Titus Corlăţean, the Minister of Foreign Affairs, stands out in particular, having begun a tough and quite lengthy argument with Deputy Prime Minister Dmitri Rogozin. The Russian government’s desire to open a consulate on the territory of Transnistria served as the apple of discord.
In the context of the historically-complex relations between Moscow and Bucharest, the mere fact that a political faction won the parliamentary election with a huge majority of votes, and didn’t show aggressive Russophobia, can already be considered as a major step forward. Băsescu used all his power to give the domestic political struggle a geopolitical aspect; he used accusations that the opposition leaders were trying to push Romania from its pro-European and pro-American course as the basis of his party’s election campaign. It’s worth mentioning that, for the first time in the history of post-socialist Romania, the accused didn’t rush to make excuses regarding their alleged love for Russia, but counterattacked with a proposal to Romanian society to seriously consider the question, “Is it that bad to have good relations with Russia and China?”
Speaking on air on the most popular news TV channel, one of the leaders of the Social Liberal Union and the chairman of the Romanian parliament’s upper chamber, George-Crin-Laurenţiu Antonescu, stated that he wasn’t going to bring up the same arguments over and over to prove that he was a pro-European politician and that he found it necessary to once and for all end the rumours related to Romania’s geopolitical course, saying, “The USA has serious economic and political ties with Russia and China. Russia is Germany’s main economic and political partner. At the same time, Romania’s president wrote on Facebook, ‘Don’t vote for such and such because they will lead us towards Russia and China!’ The whole world is laughing at us! I don’t feel comfortable when I meet Russian and Chinese diplomats. We insult these countries by the mere fact of such public discussions”.
It’s possible that the economic crisis and the generational change in Romanian politics will lead to a more pragmatic attitude and less Russophobia in relations between Bucharest and Moscow. There’s a chance that the example given by the Western countries, which found ways to effectively cooperate with Russia, will encourage a new generation of Romanian politicians to search for ways to establish a mutually-beneficial dialogue by throwing aside the heavy-handed behaviour of their predecessors.
12 December 2012
Valentin Mândrăşescu
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2012_12_12/The-beginning-of-the-end-of-Romania-s-Russophobia/
Auschwitz… History to Remember… but Never Repeat
Tags: Auschwitz, Auschwitz concentration camp, Belgium, Czechia, France, Greece, history, Holocaust, Hungary, Italy, Jewish, Jewish history, Jews, Jews in Russia, Mass murder, Modern history, Nazi, Nazism, Oświęcim, Poland, Polish history, political commentary, politics, Red Army, RKKA, Roma, Romani people, Romania, Russia, Russian, Russian history, Slavic history, Slovakia, Soviet Union, SS, the Netherlands, the USSR, USSR, Workers and Peasants Red Army, World War II
Catholic St Maximilian Kolbe, who died in the Auschwitz extermination camp… not all of its victims were Jews…
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On January 27, a Russian exhibition will reopen in the museum devoted to the history of World War II in the Polish city of Oświęcim, better known under the German variant of its name… Auschwitz. During that war, during the Nazi occupation of Poland, one of the most terrible Nazi concentration camps was in Auschwitz. In 1947, the Polish government turned the former camp into a museum, with the aim of it to be a constant reminder of the Nazi horrors, so that we wouldn’t repeat them. The organisers chose 27 January for the Russian exhibition’s reopening because the Red Army liberated the Auschwitz camp on 27 January 1945.
In particular, the Nazis intended this camp for the killing of nationalities that, according to incoherent Nazi “theory”, were “underdeveloped” peoples. More than 1.1 million people died in the Auschwitz camp, including about 900,000 Jews, at least 140,000 Poles, and about 23,000 Roma. Every day, trains brought thousands of people, including many old people and underage children, to this camp from more than 30 countries… Romania, France, Czechia, Slovakia, Greece, Italy, Belgium, Hungary, the Netherlands, the USSR, Poland itself, and others. The Nazis immediately killed the majority of new arrivals comers in the gas chambers. Witnesses said that, every day, the camp’s crematoriums disposed of about 8,000 corpses.
Those not immediately killed had to perform debilitating work. The daily ration consisted of 300 grammes of bread and a cup of watery soup. After several months spent in such conditions, people turned into living skeletons. Besides, medical experiments… if one could call sophisticated torture medical experiments… were performed in Auschwitz. One of the doctors (if could call sadists doctors), Josef Mengele, dubbed the “Angel of Death”, was especially notorious for his cruelty. When the Red Army liberated the camp, they found only 7,000 people alive there.
The organisers of the Russian part of the Auschwitz museum’s exposition don’t hide the fact that they want it to upset visitors. Hard as it may be, such horror would help people to realise one thing… we must never allow Nazism to rise again. Olga Sokolova, One of the Russian organisers, said, “The visitors should realise that they’re witnessing a hideous occurrence. Of course, only the part of the exposition devoted to the camp’s liberation by the Red Army should produce positive feelings”. There are eight expositions in the Auschwitz museum, devoted to this-or-that particular country, from whence the prisoners who suffered in the camp came from… Poland, the Netherlands, Slovakia, Czechia, Austria, Hungary, France, and Belgium. A part of the exposition is devoted to the Roma people. For the last five years, the Russian section remained closed. Officially, it was under renovation, but the real reason was a cooling of relations between Russia and Poland.
Victor Skryabin Deputy Director of the Moscow Museum of World War II and one of the organisers of the Auschwitz exhibition, pointed up, “Russia and Poland might have certain disagreements concerning politics, but I believe that these disagreements shouldn’t affect the two nations’ need to commemorate World War II’s victims. After all, many Soviet people, including about 15,000 Red Army men, died in the Auschwitz camp. One of the aims of our exposition is to show the criminal nature of Nazism. We also wish to emphasise that the Red Army liberated the camp, and, of course, to commemorate the dead”.
The camp in Auschwitz was the largest, but it wasn’t the only extermination camp in Nazi-occupied Europe. There were ten such camps, four of which were in Poland. In total, about the Nazis killed 3 million people in extermination camps.
25 January 2013
Maria Dunayeva
Voice of Russia World Service
http://english.ruvr.ru/2013_01_25/Auschwitz-history-to-be-remembered-but-never-repeated/
Editor’s Note:
Horrid as it was, the Holocaust wasn’t unique. Mankind has indulged in mass murder throughout history, especially, when others lived on land coveted by this-or-that group… two prominent examples being the Israelite ethnic cleansing of Old Israel (the Biblical version of events) and the American campaign against the Native population (justified by the racist doctrine of Manifest Destiny). I’m four-square against anti-Semitism, but I’m equally-against the white-washing of the historical record to fit a convenient mythos. Never forget this… ordinary human beings carried out the Holocaust. Ordinary humans could do it again… and DID… in the Rwandan Genocide and the Cambodian Genocide. Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in Mankind; therefore, never send to know for whom the bell tolls; It tolls for thee…
One last thing… the agitation by some Jews against the Carmelite convent at Oświęcim was unjustified and hateful in the extreme. Edith Stein, a Carmelite nun, died there. St Maximilian Kolbe, a Franciscan monk, died there. They weren’t the only Catholic victims of this horrific place. In short, some Jews were upset that the Carmelite nuns were praying for the soul of Edith Stein… a convert from Judaism to Christianity. I hate religious bigotry of all sorts… I despise anti-Semitism and Jewish anti-Christianity equally. Thank God, only a small minority of Christians and Jews actually engage in such filth… but it should be a warning to all of us… the urge to evil exists in all groups. Never forget… just as there wasn’t ever a “pure” human group, there’s never been a totally-evil one. We should keep a watch over our hearts… Solzhenitsyn reminded us that there’s a bridgehead of evil in every soul… we forget that at our peril…
BMD