Tapio Onnela kirjoitti:Jos siis Suomen pitäisi tuntea syllisyyttä siitä, että maa osallistui Natsi-Saksan rinnalla sotaan, eikö samaa voitaisi sitten odottaa myös liittoutuneilta, jotka osallistuivat sotaan etnisiä puhdistuksia tehneen diktatuurin kanssa.
Tätä samaa teemaa sivuaa kiinnostavalla tavalla myös
Anne Applebaum New York Rewiev of Booksin artikkelissa The Worst of the Madness (NYRB, November 11, 2010) Anne Applebaum käsittelee asiaa kahden kirjan pohjalta:
* Timothy Snyder:
Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin, Basic Books, 2010.
* Norman M. Naimark:
Stalin’s Genocides, Princeton University Press, 2010.
Applebaumin pointtina on, että liittoutuneiden kannattaisi muistaa, että taistelussa Hitlerin natsidiktatuuria vastaan he liittoutuivat toisen diktatuurin, Stalinin Neuvostoliiton kanssa. Applebaum ei suinkaan vähättele kummankaan diktatuurin aiheuttamia kärsimyksiä, ehkä pikemminkin kyse voisi olla siitä, että aika alkaa olla kypsä entistä analyyttisemmalle arviolle Euroopan historiasta 1930-luvulta 1950-luvulle.
Applebaum kuvaa mm. “
genocide” termin syntyä, joka aivan viime aikoihin asti on merkinnyt lähinnä holocaustia.
As not everybody now remembers, this word (from the Greek genos, tribe, and the French -cide) was coined in 1943 by a Polish lawyer of Jewish descent, Raphael Lemkin, who had long been trying to draw the attention of the international community to what he at first called “the crime of barbarity.” In 1933, inspired by news of the Armenian massacre, he had proposed that the League of Nations treat mass murder committed “out of hatred towards a racial, religious or social collectivity” as an international crime. After he fled Nazi-occupied Poland in 1940, Lemkin intensified his efforts.
As the Stanford historian Norman Naimark explains in Stalin’s Genocides, the UN’s definition of genocide was deliberately narrow: “Acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.” This was because Soviet diplomats had demanded the exclusion of any reference to social, economic, and political groups. Had they left these categories in, prosecution of the USSR for the murder of aristocrats (a social group), kulaks (an economic group), or Trotskyites (a political group) would have been possible.
Although Lemkin himself continued to advocate a broader definition of the term, the idea that the word “genocide” can refer only to the mass murder of an ethnic group has stuck. In fact, until recently the term was used almost exclusively to refer to the Holocaust, the one “genocide” that is recognized as such by almost everybody: the international community, the former Allies, even the former perpetrators.
Applebaum muistuttaa, että diktaattori kaadettiin toisen diktaatorin avulla ja, että oikeastaan vasta nyt Neuvostoliiton kaaduttua, esim sanaa genocide on alettu käyttää laajemassa merkityksessä.
As the story of Lemkin’s genocide campaign well illustrates, this discussion of the proper use of the word has also been dogged by politics from the beginning. The reluctance of intellectuals on the left to condemn communism; the fact that Stalin was allied with Roosevelt and Churchill; the existence of German historians who tried to downplay the significance of the Holocaust by comparing it to Soviet crimes; all of that meant that, until recently, it was politically incorrect in the West to admit that we defeated one genocidal dictator with the help of another. Only now, with the publication of so much material from Soviet and Central European archives, has the extent of the Soviet Union’s mass murders become better known in the West. In recent years, some in the former Soviet sphere of influence—most notably in the Baltic states and Ukraine—have begun to use the word “genocide” in legal documents to describe the Soviet Union’s mass killings too.
***
Kiinnostava on myös Applebaumin näkemys siitä, miten vaikeaa on hyväksyä Auschwitz ei vain saksalaiseksi erityispiirteeksi vaan osaksi eurooppalaista kulttuuria, ja miten paljon vaikeampaa sitä on tämän jälkeen selittää.
When considered in isolation, Auschwitz can be easily compartmentalized, characterized as belonging to a specific place and time, or explained away as the result of Germany’s unique history or particular culture. But if Auschwitz was not the only mass atrocity, if mass murder was simultaneously taking place across a multinational landscape and with the support of many different kinds of people, then it is not so easy to compartmentalize or explain away. The more we learn about the twentieth century, the harder it will be to draw easy lessons or make simple judgments about the people who lived through it—and the easier it will be to empathize with and understand them.
Ylen radio ykkösessä alkaa kiinnostava Puolan historiaa käsittelevä Martti Puukon toimittama historiasarja: Ryöväreiden keskelläkö?