Announcement

Collapse

Forum Rules (Everyone Must Read!!!)

1] What you CAN NOT post.

You agree, through your use of this service, that you will not use this forum to post any material which is:
- abusive
- vulgar
- hateful
- harassing
- personal attacks
- obscene

You also may not:
- post images that are too large (max is 500*500px)
- post any copyrighted material unless the copyright is owned by you or cited properly.
- post in UPPER CASE, which is considered yelling
- post messages which insult the Armenians, Armenian culture, traditions, etc
- post racist or other intentionally insensitive material that insults or attacks another culture (including Turks)

The Ankap thread is excluded from the strict rules because that place is more relaxed and you can vent and engage in light insults and humor. Notice it's not a blank ticket, but just a place to vent. If you go into the Ankap thread, you enter at your own risk of being clowned on.
What you PROBABLY SHOULD NOT post...
Do not post information that you will regret putting out in public. This site comes up on Google, is cached, and all of that, so be aware of that as you post. Do not ask the staff to go through and delete things that you regret making available on the web for all to see because we will not do it. Think before you post!


2] Use descriptive subject lines & research your post. This means use the SEARCH.

This reduces the chances of double-posting and it also makes it easier for people to see what they do/don't want to read. Using the search function will identify existing threads on the topic so we do not have multiple threads on the same topic.

3] Keep the focus.

Each forum has a focus on a certain topic. Questions outside the scope of a certain forum will either be moved to the appropriate forum, closed, or simply be deleted. Please post your topic in the most appropriate forum. Users that keep doing this will be warned, then banned.

4] Behave as you would in a public location.

This forum is no different than a public place. Behave yourself and act like a decent human being (i.e. be respectful). If you're unable to do so, you're not welcome here and will be made to leave.

5] Respect the authority of moderators/admins.

Public discussions of moderator/admin actions are not allowed on the forum. It is also prohibited to protest moderator actions in titles, avatars, and signatures. If you don't like something that a moderator did, PM or email the moderator and try your best to resolve the problem or difference in private.

6] Promotion of sites or products is not permitted.

Advertisements are not allowed in this venue. No blatant advertising or solicitations of or for business is prohibited.
This includes, but not limited to, personal resumes and links to products or
services with which the poster is affiliated, whether or not a fee is charged
for the product or service. Spamming, in which a user posts the same message repeatedly, is also prohibited.

7] We retain the right to remove any posts and/or Members for any reason, without prior notice.


- PLEASE READ -

Members are welcome to read posts and though we encourage your active participation in the forum, it is not required. If you do participate by posting, however, we expect that on the whole you contribute something to the forum. This means that the bulk of your posts should not be in "fun" threads (e.g. Ankap, Keep & Kill, This or That, etc.). Further, while occasionally it is appropriate to simply voice your agreement or approval, not all of your posts should be of this variety: "LOL Member213!" "I agree."
If it is evident that a member is simply posting for the sake of posting, they will be removed.


8] These Rules & Guidelines may be amended at any time. (last update September 17, 2009)

If you believe an individual is repeatedly breaking the rules, please report to admin/moderator.
See more
See less

Prague's World War II commemorations, as usual, all but left out a

Collapse
X
 
  • Filter
  • Time
  • Show
Clear All
new posts

  • Prague's World War II commemorations, as usual, all but left out a

    Rewriting history

    Prague's World War II commemorations, as usual, all but left out a
    band of heroes who saved the city


    By Stephen Weeks

    For The Prague Post
    May 19, 2005


    "Good progress, this year" said a colleague at Czech TV who had been
    monitoring the Czech press and TV coverage of the V-E Day celebrations
    -- also 60 years after the fall of Nazi Prague -- for references to
    the Russian Liberation Army, the ROA, aka "Vlasov's army" after its
    leader, the renegade former Soviet general whose troops turned on
    their Nazi sponsors and made possible the liberation of Prague without
    the massive bloodbath and destruction that would have undoubtedly
    happened otherwise.

    Vlasov was a controversial figure and his army a dangerous political
    tightrope-walking act. His role in May 1945 got a few mentions this
    year -- the first time ever, but not one paper had the courage to
    print the full unvarnished story, suppressed by the communists and thus
    virtually unknown in the West too. The communist way of maintaining a
    secret was simply to eradicate it. People disappeared from photographs
    and historical facts were simply rewritten. If one looks at the current
    Web site of the Communist Party of Bohemia and Moravia, for example,
    not only are Vlasov and the ROA not mentioned, but neither are the
    Americans. ... Czechoslovakia was liberated solely by the Red Army.

    Now the actual Soviet contribution to liberating the country is being
    rewritten, too. Two weeks ago Prague was awash with reenactments
    that paraded U.S. jeeps and the Stars and Stripes. It was a case of
    retrospective wishful thinking. Apart from a handful of sorties by
    U.S. reconnaissance personnel and chancers, the U.S. Army remained
    firmly behind their demarcation line at Plzen 60 years ago.

    Historians maintain that it was not part of the deal struck with
    Stalin at the Yalta conference earlier in 1945 for the other allies
    to let the Soviets take Prague -- that instead it was Eisenhower's
    decision alone for separate political considerations. But then other
    facts have mysteriously disappeared into history's greedy quicksand:
    Why did Churchill stop the airdrop of arms to the Prague insurgents
    just two days before the uprising was due to start? British transport
    planes were already loaded at Bari in Italy for the job.

    This cannot have had anything to do with letting Stalin take Prague
    -- unless Stalin had admitted that he wanted a Prague where all
    the finest patriots (who might later object to totalitarianism)
    had been killed in a Nazi shootout. Stalin had performed this trick
    already by waiting outside Warsaw and later in Slovakia. Churchill's
    voluminous memoirs are silent on this. He must have known the likely
    consequences of starving the uprising of its means of fighting. His
    reputation would in the end be unsullied due to the timely arrival
    of the unlikely figure of General A. A. Vlasov.

    The Churchill memoirs are also pretty quiet on the matter of the
    British loading the 25,000 men of Vlasov's 2nd Division onto rail
    wagons at Judenberg in Austria, knowing that these men would be
    murdered by the Soviets. (The excuse was that Yalta demanded the
    repatriation of all citizens to their home countries. Never mind
    that Stalin had earlier stripped all ROA members of their Soviet
    citizenship!)

    At several of the key Prague celebrations over V-E Day this year,
    not only did Vlasov and the ROA not get a mention -- but neither did
    the Soviets. Can we expect a Hollywood movie soon about the Americans
    (led by Tom Cruise) liberating Prague? After all, in a recent U.S.
    movie the British navy's important capture of the Enigma coding
    machine from a sinking U-boat was simply turned into an American
    exploit that just happened to have changed the course of the war --
    as well as warping history. How are young people supposed to deal
    with this distortion of the facts when they don't know the truth first?

    Another way of rewriting history is to acknowledge yet belittle
    events. This May we have heard from a Czech historian that indeed the
    ROA existed but its contribution to the Liberation didn't add up to
    much -- that statement in face of the facts that the Prague insurgents
    numbered about 30,000 badly or even unarmed (thanks to whatever
    demon was driving Churchill) men and women. Vlasov's ROA had 22,000
    well-trained, fully armed and equipped men with armor and artillery
    and under excellent tactical leadership. But even if some historians
    reluctantly accept this truth, Vlasov's men are then condemned as
    "traitors" -- the old communist word for them. The modern word for
    these anti-Soviet activists -- who succeeded in bluffing the Nazis
    as well as readying themselves to fight communism -- is dissidents
    ... far more history-friendly.

    The commemorations took place at Olšanská Cemetery this year May
    7 at the national military memorials -- those of the British and
    Americans, the Soviet Russians, the Romanians. The bands, the stiffly
    marching wreath-bearers and the grateful passed in sight of the only
    memorial to the ROA but did not stop there -- choosing to ignore
    it. Still the ROA does not exist. Under two wooden Russian crosses,
    right by the orthodox chapel, lie at least 184 of Vlasov's men --
    buried secretly by well-wishers in May 1945. A memorial stone was
    erected in recent years bearing the insignia of the ROA -- the blue
    and white cross. It also lists two of its generals buried there who
    had been killed surprisingly enough by Czech partisans, already firmly
    under communist influence before the end of the uprising. Even the very
    first editions (May 9, 1945) of the Czech newspapers Mladá fronta and
    Rudé Pravo, printed on presses captured the day before from their
    German predecessors on the very day of the arrival of the Red Army,
    make absolutely no mention of Vlasov and the ROA. The fiction thus
    started before the bodies of Vlasov's men were even cold.

    By diverting their course to liberate Prague, almost all the 22,000
    soldiers of the ROA's 1st Division were to lose their lives. Those
    injured in the battle who had been left behind in Prague at the U
    Apolináre Hospital in the care of the International Red Cross were
    shot in their beds by Soviet troops. Those who managed to get to the
    American zone found the demarcation line mysteriously moved -- and,
    unarmed, they were left to be dealt with by Stalin's murderous wrath.

    Rewriting history goes on and on. It will never end. On May 9 this
    year President Putin claimed the Soviets had won the war as it had
    captured "80 percent of the German army." Eighty percent? Does that
    mean that only 20 percent fought across France, Belgium and Holland
    and defended Germany's western front? And what about those troops
    in Italy and Greece? But if you take the Wehrmacht as it existed at
    ceasefire in 1945, there were only those remnants defending Berlin and
    the odd pocket of diehards in Bohemia. Perhaps he means 80 percent of
    that? One can, of course, make facts fit whatever scenario one needs.

    And if rewriting won't work, you can keep history down by punishing
    anyone disseminating the truth. Several weeks ago Turkey (soon to
    be an EU partner?!) strengthened its law governing "acts against
    fundamental national interests" to give jail sentences to anyone, not
    just Turks, who describe the 1915 mass execution of Ottoman Armenians
    as genocide. So if go for a holiday in Turkey and repeat that term,
    your stay may be longer than you expect.

    As for Vlasov and his men, there is no official memorial, only
    the graves at Olšanská. There's no veterans' parade, there are
    no plaques and no wreaths in the streets where they fell. Around
    Beroun however, where the army was first encamped, they are still
    remembered. A gray-haired woman remembers -- as a little toddler --
    being bounced on the knee of the young Russian soldier billeted in
    her family's house. Now he -- and the rest of his lost army -- is
    simply one of history's ghosts.


    Stephen Weeks is a writer and conservationist. He can be reached
    at [email protected]

  • #2
    Bratislava to Mark Anniversary of Resolution Censuring Armenian Genocide

    08.12.2005 21:33 GMT+04:00
    /PanARMENIAN.Net/ An event marking the first anniversary of Slovakia's National Council adopting a resolution censuring the Armenian Genocide will be held in Bratislava December 8. Slovakia is the first Eastern European country, which on November 30, 2004recognized and denounced the Armenian Genocide, resisting to Turkey's pressure and disregarding Turkish Government's threats. Slovakia also demanded that Ankara recognition of the Armenian Genocide be a precondition for Turkey's accession to the EU. As a sign of gratitude Armenia presented Slovakia with a khachkar (cross stone), ordered by Nig-Aparan union. The khachkar was established in the center of Bratislava on the right bank of the Danube. The event will start with a ceremony of laying wreaths to the khachkar. Chairman of the National Council of Slovakia Pavol Hrusovsky, MPs, who promoted passage of the resolution, representatives of diplomatic missions accredited in Slovakia, famous political figures. UN advisor Arshaluys Chgnavoryan from Austria, Chairperson of the European Armenian Federation Hilda Tchoboian from Paris, Urartu Armenian-Czech Company President Alexander Sargsyan and other representatives of the Diaspora will be present at the ceremony.
    "All truth passes through three stages:
    First, it is ridiculed;
    Second, it is violently opposed; and
    Third, it is accepted as self-evident."

    Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860)

    Comment

    Working...
    X