So I read something interesting early this morning - and, no, it was not an exchange in this or the gas vans thread. It was in one of these things
http://www.amazon.com/Harvest-Despa...7183/ref=sr_1_3?ie=UTF8&qid=1337722962&sr=8-3, things that can also be found in this form
http://books.google.com/books?id=nd...d=0CDsQ6AEwAA#v=onepage&q=Ostrovetska&f=false. Anyone - except apparently deniers - can read these things. They are most informative.
In this case, I was reading about what
Harvest of Despair's author, Karel Berkhoff, calls a deliberate policy of a wing of the Ukrainian nationalists, the Banderites, to exterminate Poles and other "enemy" nationalities living in the region between the Bug River and the pre-1939 border. Berkhoff describes the extermination actions of the UPA and other Ukrainian groups as occurring on account of a leadership decision taken in early 1943 and implemented, according to a typical pattern, between March and July 1943. Berkhoff cites eyewitness victim testimony, memoirs, documents from German and Soviet observers, and Banderite sources. He discusses the background to the killings in nationalist ideology, a series of incidents and clashes involving Poles and Ukrainians, political struggle, brutalization ensuring from war and genocide, and the aims of the Ukrainian nationalists. Berkhoff says that at least 15,000 Poles were murdered and a number of Polish villages razed in the 1943 extermination campaign conducted by the Banderites.
Rather than summarize a somewhat complex and not-too-well-known extermination campaign, I want to share an aspect of these murders that is pertinent to some of the "discussion" in this thread. Berkhoff writes that "At first many Poles in Volhynia remained passive" (p 293). Why? In the beginning the peasants didn't believe they faced harm, despite warnings and rumors. Then, when the danger became clear, "many fell into a state of apathy. 'We wanted an easy death,' Leon Zur recalls. 'People said it would be easier to die from German hands, for those had something to shoot with, whereas a Ukrainian bandit cut off the head with an axe or stabbed with a pitchfork.'" In short, after years of war, occupation, and cross-fire (Soviets, Germans, Ukrainians), many peasants moved from disbelief to fatalism. According to Berkhoff, Soviet partisans were among those commenting on this passivity of the doomed Polish peasants. Eventually, however, help came from, on the one hand, Soviet partisan units and, on the other, Germans, who took threatened Poles into Schuma units in return for intelligence about the UPA. Poles began trying to escape, and some even joined partisan bands or police units to save themselves.
This sounds quite a lot like a condensed version of the experience of another group targeted for genocide, the Jews of eastern Europe.
Here is another version, then, of Clayton's mythical "peasant in the street" who, whenever threatened or treated unjustly or harshly, Clayton alleges, would not cooperate in any manner and would fight back at all costs. No matter the odds. Cue more nonsense from Clayton: labor unions and so on. Except, of course, we have three cases where Clayton is simply wrong and has nothing to say except to repeat his fallacy like a mantra: these three cases are the Jews, Soviet POWs, and now Polish peasants. Does Clayton want us to look around a bit and find some comparative material on the Roma?
Another point worth stating about Berkhoff's coverage of the murders of Poles by Ukrainian nationalists is this: According to Taras Bulba, the nationalist campaign was "to exterminate Ukraine's national minorities" with a focus on the Poles (p 286). Erich Koch, Reichskommissar for Ukraine, explained to Alfred Rosenberg that during the killing campaign the Ukrainian nationalists were taking advantage of "the opportunity to kill, often in a most brutal way, the Poles, Czechs, and ethnic Germans living in the countryside" (p 287). A German military intelligence report for July 1943 likewise stated that the Banderites were carrying out "the extermination of Polish settlers in Volhynia" (p 287). What German word do you think was in the German intelligence report, for "extermination"? That's right. For "extermination," the German report used the word
Ausrottung. And why that word? Because it means extermination - and because that is what the report was trying to convey, the extermination of Poles by Ukrainians.