Comments on: History’s Ghosts

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:24:18 +0000

A great many Americans are first generation here. My grandfather was a prisoner of war in the UK. Mom (Italian) saw the Germans march through and take everything, then the Italians, then the Yugoslavians. Adolescent boys went running when they came because they were afraid they’d be conscripted, adolescent girls hid to keep from being raped. They didn’t have any food either, but they kept their humanity for the most part. The Soviets lost theirs.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:09:26 +0000

The old wallpaper is all gone because they were reduced to eating the paste under the wallpaper….well, a great many gave it to their children and died of starvation themselves. Horrific time.

By: Liz

Liz — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 21:06:47 +0000

For some reason words from the movie Luther come to mind when I look at those photos. “Have a care, Martin. You may need these butchers”.

By: olga

olga — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:17:10 +0000

No, Flit, the health care in the USSR/Russia is NOT better than what we have here. While I did not have to pay directly for my ability to go to the doctor or have a surgery done, if I wanted to have a real specialist to examine me, I needed to pay either directly to the doctor (some were holding private practice, at least in Leningrad and Moscow) or under the table to the administrators or doctor in the state owned polyclinic/institute. If I wanted to survive the surgery, I had to pay under the table to the surgeon, the surgical nurse, the ICU nurse and bring my own sheets and pay to the floor nurse to launder those sheets at least once a week. If you went to a regular “free” dentist, you would have the drilling for your root canal done live and most tooth extractions were done live, too. If you wanted to have a shot before the drilling and extractions, you had to go to the “Paid” dentist clinic (there were 1 for every 3 boroughs) and pay for it. When I left in 1993, there were only 2 CAT scans in Leningrad. The wait list was 4 years or you had to pay 200,000 roubles to get ahead of the line.

By: olga

olga — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 17:03:18 +0000

Max, unfortunately, after 1985 it came to public light that during the siege the NKVD (now KGB) “worked,” too, and the city party “leaders” had full supply of food…
And no, you cannot import those folks because Leningrad was a literal ghost town after the end of the Siege and WWII and was re-populated mostly by the people from other areas of the country… Both Hitler AND Stalin hated the city and wanted to destroy it, one physically, another spiritually… While one did not succeed, the other almost got his wish come true…

By: Mongo

Mongo — Thu, 24 Dec 2009 16:34:22 +0000

Flit-
Maybe ‘our fights’ don’t come close to the carnage of the Eastern Front, but, then, why would they need to? We still suffered and learned a tremendous amount from those times, and established ourselves in a way that such carnage would never take place here; 9/11 notwithstanding. Your comparing numbers of dead is like one individual saying to another “My thirty years of military service compared to your sixteen years leaves you with a deficit.” IMO, to say that not having had the exact experience of another is to lack an understanding of it is obtuse.

There are millions in our midst who lived those experiences, and have shared them with us. In my case it was my mother and her family. We have hundreds of thousands who have served in those climes and places, and who have shared their experiences with us. Those shared experiences have had a profound effect on the American people, and have, to a large extent, shaped our foreign and domestic policies. Empathy and compassion are not the least of our traits.

As for the photos, I daresay you presume much to know my perception of them. You are not in my mind, you do not know my thoughts, let alone the thoughts of others. Let each speak for himself/herself.