Subject:  #457966-Babi Yar - Msg Number: 458384
   From:  George Minde 70550,623
     To:  Manfred Koch 73743,130
  Forum:  MILFORUM   Sec: -1-
   Date:  19-Feb-96  17:14:43

Manfred,

  <>

  You need to check your sources more carefully. The specific statement of Mr.
Lawrence, the correspondent, is "it is impossible for this correspondent to
judge the truth _or_falsity_ of the story told to us."

  Mr. Lawrence did see something, despite the German precautions:

  "...the Germans, with characteristic thoroughness, not only burned the
bodies and clothing, but also crumbled the bones, and shot and burned the
bodies of all prisoners of war participating in the burning, except for a
handful who escaped, so that the evidence for their atrocity could not be
available for the outside world.
  "If this was the Germans intent, they succeeded well, for their is little
evidence in the ravine to prove _or_disprove_ the story. We did see a few
isolated bones, including a skull and some matted hair, a shouldr bone and an
arm....There were spectacle cases, handbags,  and other evidence of things
left in Babi yar. Freshly excavated earth in the floor of the ravine left no
doubt that _something_ had happened there."

  Lawrence then goes on to describe accounts by three witnesses to the
destruction of the corpses, prisonders who escaped. And oh, by the way, Mr.
Lawrence was not <>, but rather went there as part
of a group of British, American and Russian reporters brought to Kiev shortly
after its recapture.

  So even this one single report you mention is not as excuplatory as you
claim. But since you seem to place so much stock in the "newspaper of record,'
here are two reports a couple of days after the one you cite:

  "NAZIS IN ITALY START DRIVE GAINST JEWS - Many Rounded Up as Nuremberg Laws
Are Invoked

  "Fascist Republican persecution of the Jews in Italy under the Nuremberg
Laws  resumed today on orders from the "government" to regional authorities.
  "An official German statement tonight said that large numbers of Jews had
been rounded up and placed in special detention camps pending 'eventual
distribution.'
  "Simultaneously, prefects throughout 'Republican' Italy were ordered to
collaborate with the Wehrmacht in the application of three measures: First,
all Italian and foreign Jews are to be assembled in special concentration
camps; second, all their goods and properties are to be siezed and held 'in
trust'; third, sons of mixed marriages may have temporary liberty provided
they are prepared to work in the war effort...." (NYT, 1 Dec. 1943, p6)


  "REICH ADMITS MASSACRE - Germans Razed 2 Villages and Slew 1,200 Poles in
Reprisals

  "The Germans have acknowledged that two entire Polish villages were wiped
out and more than 1,200 other Poles were illed in retaliation for sixteen
assassinations in the Bialystok province of Poland last July, the Polish
telegraph Agency reported today.
  "The agency released photographs of handbills that, it said, German
authorities had posted in the province, detailing the offenses of Polish
patriots and the revenge taken against persons who, it was admitted, were not
connected with the specific assassinations. These massacres were in no way
unusual, except that this was the first time the Germans had admitted publicly
such brutality.
"The first handbill listed fourteen Germans or Quisling Poles killed and then
said that the village of Szaulicze, 'suspected of harboring bandits, was
burned to the ground. All the inhabitants were shot.'
  "Another handbill said that the village of Kniacowodce had been similarly
wiped out and 100 more Poles had been killed in retaliation for the deaths of
two policemen in a patrol attacked by guerillas." (NYT, 1 Dec. 1943, p10)

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