Talk:Ilya Ehrenburg

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Contents 1 Revert 2 Funny comment in the external link "Brief page on The Thaw" 3 The Ehrenburg article 4 More on the Ehrenburg article 5 controversy

[edit] Revert

This material was removed and reworded:

'Ilya Grigoriewich Ehrenburg (January 27, 1891 - August 31, 1967) was a Russian writer and journalist. Ehrenburg was best known as the top war propagandist for the Soviet Union under Joseph Stalin during World War II. During this time, he exhorted Soviet troops to kill and rape Germans that they encountered in the war effort. Ehrenburg authored an especially vitriolic leaflet entitled "Kill," which was circulated among the soldiers on the Eastern Front: "The Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use the most terrible oath. From now on the word German strikes us to the quick. We shall not speak any more. We shall not get excited. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day ... If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another -- there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number of Germans killed by you. Kill the German -- that is your grandmother's request. Kill the German -- that is your child's prayer. Kill the German -- that is your motherland's loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through. Kill." [1] Many historians attribute Ehrenburg's hate-filled incitements as a motivating factor for the mass murder and rape of German civilians that took place as Soviet troops advanced through Nazi occupied territory toward the end of the war. On his passing in 1967, he was interred in Novodevichy Cemetery in Moscow. References [1] Alfred de Zayas, Nemesis at Potsdam (London: Roudedge & Kegan Paul, 2nd edition, 1979), pp. 6546, 201; and, Erich Kern (ed.), Verheimlichte Dokumente (Munich: FZ- Verlag, 1988), pp. 260-61, 353-55.'(from the Institute for Historical Review http://www.ihr.org/jhr/v08/v08p507_Weber.html)

It is not untrue that Ehrenburg was one of the most important propagandists, but to start the article as saying his propaganda is what he is "best known for", and to follow up with up with something controversial he said, is inserting POV material by 1) ignoring everything else Ehrenburg did, and 2) emphasizing what he did wrong. He was an interesting character who defended a variety of causes in his lifetime, some of them highly questionable, some of them undoubtably correct, and he is very well known in the Russian literary world for some of his writing and his memoirs, rather than all the garbage he uttered during the war (to make a simple analogy, it is bit like writing a stubbed article on Clinton that says "Clinton is best known for lying about the Monica Lewinsky scandal" and including a quote of a lie he spoke - as you can see it may not be totally incorrect, but it would be insufficient and highly POV). I think the quote should be re-introduced at a later stage in the article, when it has been sufficiently de-stubbed, but to keep the article as it is above, with its bulk taken up by one quote, is quite unacceptable. -- Simonides 19:54, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

First off, don't remove valid content just because the present article doesn't cover other aspects of his career. It does tend to inaccurately represent him, but that can't be helped, it's part of the wiki process of building articles. Make whatever edits you can to fix the problem. However, I have problems with your replacement content as well:

"Ilya Ehrenburg played many roles in his life, and was never fully understood by his contemporaries. A revolutionary as a teenager, a disenchanted poet in his youth, writing Catholic poems despite his Jewish background, a follwer of Lenin on arrival in Paris who became an anti-Bolshevik, truthful and sensitive journalist, turning again in later years to writing crude Communist and war propaganda, while occasionally defending his views with boldness against Stalin or government mouthpieces, Ehrenburg was a public figure who at times made severe compromises to survive under the inescapable paradoxes of Soviet totalitarianism, and at others took foolhardy risks that he survived perhaps only by chance."

Everything that is bolded is obviously POV. Everyking 20:07, 17 Jul 2004 (UTC)

I think the part about 'breaking the racial pride' of the German women should be removed. It is stated in Berlin: The Downfall 1945(Beevor), Chapter 3 (Fire and Sword and 'Noble Fury'):

"Yet while Ehrenburg never shrank from the most bloodthirsty harangues, the most notorious statement, which is still attributed to him by western historians, was a Nazi invention. He is accused of having urged Red Army soldiers to take German women as their 'lawful booty' and to 'break their racial pride'. 'There was a time', Ehrenburg retorted in Krasnaya Zvezda, 'when Germans used to fake important documents of the state. Now they have fallen so low as to fake my articles.' Mikko Luukkonen 23:10, Apr 3, 2005 (UTC)

[edit] Funny comment in the external link "Brief page on The Thaw"

"Honor of the first crack in the ice signaling the Thaw belongs to a young film student, Olga Shmarova, who in May 1953, three months after Stalin's death, complained about the absence of love interests in films and noted ironically that in Soviet films, lovers talk about bulldozers and tractors."

Shmara in Russian means "slut." -Rako

[edit] The Ehrenburg article

I am not going to spoil your good Encyclopedia and edit the text with my broken English... Just 2 kopecks from a Russian:

Krasnaya Zvezda (Red Star) 24 July 1942 (№173 [5236])

Kill him.

Here are excerpts from 3 letters found on the body of German soldiers:

Administer Raingardt writes to lieutenant Otto Von Shirak:

"They have withdrewed Frenchmen from us to the plant. I has chosen six Russians from the Minsk district. They are much more hardy than Frenchmen. Only one of them died, the rest continue to work in the field and on the farm. They costs nothing and we shouldh't suffer that these beasts (their children may be kill our soldier) eat German bread. Yesterday I put to the flogging two Russian beasts who surreptitiously have devoured a skim milk intended for pigs..."

Mateas Zimlih writes to his brother, lance bombardier Henrih Zimlih:

"In the Laiden there is an encampment for Russians. It's possible to see them there. They do not afraid of weapons, but we talk with them with a good lash..."

Otto Essman writes to lieutenant Helmut Vagand:

"There is Russian POWs here. These blokes devour the rain worms on the aerodrome, they snap at slop-pail. I saw, as they eat weeds. Just fancy that these ... are people..."

The slaveowners, they want to turn our people into slaves. They export Russians to Germany, torment them, drive them mad with hunger so much so that the dying people eat herbs, worms. And a dratted German with a rotten cigar in the teeths philosophizes: "Are they people?.."

We know all. We remember all. We have understood: the Germans are not human beings. From now on the word German means to use the most terrible oath. From now on the word German discharges a rifle. We shall not speak any more. We shall not be indignant. We shall kill. If you have not killed at least one German a day, you have wasted that day. If you think that instead of you your comrade will kill a German, you do not realize the threat. If you will not kill a German, the German will kill you. He will capture your relatives and will torment them in his cursed Germany. If you cannot kill your German with a bullet, kill him with your bayonet. If there is calm on your part of the front, or if you are waiting for the fighting, kill a German in the meantime. If you leave a German alive, the German will hang a Russian and rape a Russian woman. If you kill one German, kill another -- there is nothing more amusing for us than a heap of German corpses. Do not count days, do not count kilometers. Count only the number of Germans killed by you. Kill the German -- that is your grandmother's request. Kill the German -- that is your child's prayer. Kill the German -- that is your motherland's loud request. Do not miss. Do not let through. Kill

http://www.sscadm.nsu.ru/deps/hum/reader/ehrenburg/004.html - original in Russian.

A necessary coment to the article: In this article the word German (in Russian - "nemec") means German male i.e soldier. In original Russian text the word "nemec" (German) is a masculine noun. He called to kill German soldiers not civilians. Ehrenburg wrote the article in 1942 when there were no any other Germans on the Soviet soil but soldiers.

The Soviet Command and Soviet Authorities and Soviet Media never order or call for raping and pillage or something. Just the contrary, Soviet Command issued special orders against revenge, and thousands of Soviet soldiers were punished. During first months of 1945 only number of officers prosecuted for violence towards German population exceeded 4000. Nekto

I wish also to clarify this paragraph in the wiki-article:

Other historians challenge Ehrenburg's authorship of the infamous "Kill"-leaflet. Their arguments are based on the absence of known original Soviet copies of the leaflet from archives and an article by the alleged author in the Krasnaya Zvezda dated November 24, 1944 in which Ehrenburg explicitly denies his authorship of the "Kill" leaflet. [2] (German) A few historians even claim the "Kill" leaflet to be a fabrication of the Nazi Propagandaministerium, invented to strengthen the German resistance during the final months of the war.

There is a confusion. The leaflet mention there was a Nazi fake. It also called “Kill” but has another words:

"Kill! Kill! In the German race there is nothing but evil; not one among the living, not one among the yet unborn but is evil! Follow the precepts of Comrade Stalin. Stamp out the fascist beast once and for all in its lair! Use force and break the racial pride of these Germanic women. Take them as your lawful booty. Kill! As you storm onward, kill, you gallant soldiers of the Red Army."

http://www.natvan.com/free-speech/fs983a.html

These words never were written by Ehrenburg. And in his article “Blonde witch” (title hints to Blonde beast = ubermensh) in the Krasnaya Zvezda dated November 25, 1944 Ehrenburg wrote:

"There was a time, when Germans used to fake important documents of state. Now they have fallen so low as to fake my articles. The quotes that German general ascribed to me betrayed their’s author: only the German is able to make up this dirty"

Nekto 19:49, 26 October 2005 (UTC)

---

The article in its present state seems very good but for one phrase. Calling Ehrenburg "a Soviet Jewish writer and journalist" seems strange. Despite the fact he was concsious of his origin, he never, as far as I know, wrote a single line in Hebrew of Jiddish, and wrote not often about Jewish life. Besides, he was not a Soviet writer till his forty years.

                                              D.E.

[edit] More on the Ehrenburg article

There is a detailed analysis and discussion (in Russian) on this very subject on the following web pages:
http://labas.livejournal.com/301205.html
http://labas.livejournal.com/301410.html
http://labas.livejournal.com/301740.html

One particular bit I have translated here:

London weekly "Soviet War News" for the most part printed translations from Soviet Informbureau and articles from leading Soviet papers, including articles of Ehrenburg. On December 7, 1944 it printed the following text: "We need none of these flaxen-haired hyenas. We are coming to Germany for something else - for Germany. And these particular flaxen-haired witches will not easily escape us."

This article gives reason for modern English-speaking readers to accuse Ehrenburg of racism for the phrase "flaxen-haired" and to ask a rhethorical question, "Finally, the words "will not easily escape us" could be construed as an incitement to violence against German women. What is it that Erenburg thought German women could not escape?"

The problem is, however, that in the original article published in the "Red Star" 25 of November 1994 there are no "witches" in plural. It says, "We need none of these flaxen-haired hyenas. We are coming to Germany for something else - for Germany. And this particular flaxen-haired witch will not easily escape us."

75.84.102.227 05:56, 23 December 2006 (UTC)

[edit] controversy

KILL! KILL! In the German race there is nothing but evil. Stamp out the fascist beast once and for all in its lair! Use force and break the racial pride of these German women. Take them as your lawful booty. Kill! As you storm onward, kill! You gallant soldiers of the Red army

that is a quote I got from James Charles Roy's The Vanished Kingdom: Travels Through the history of Prussia but I don't know how to cite it. it clearly states what the other one is attempted to be debunked of. I think the other one should be deleted, as the other one does not state what is being claimed by the adversary of it. and now the section can be cited

--Jadger 00:26, 20 February 2007 (UTC)

Jadger, it was explained above by Nekto (on 26 October 2005) that Ehrenburg is not an author of this leaflet, and apparently all the thing is a fake. It is just a popular myth that you can sometimes meet in bagrain books on 1945 events but never in serious study. --Mgar 18:12, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Nekto doesn't cite a source that says it is fake though, he cites a source that also states that he wrote it. he cites the man himself saying he didn't write it, but how trustworthy is that? I'm pretty sure if any of us wrote it, that we would also deny it later. and I can definitely say this wasn't some bargain book, it has been properly peer reviewed. it was reviewed by Steven Ozment, Mclean Professor of Ancient and Modern History, Harvard University for one.

--Jadger 18:51, 28 February 2007 (UTC)

Source was cited by Mikko Luukkonen (see [1]. He has quoted Anthony Beavor's "Berlin: The Downfall 1945". Also, there are references in this anonymous comment: [2].

As I said, this leaflet is a popular myth, and occasionally one can find it in some books (especially in German) but usually not in serious studies. The most comprehensive biography of Ehernburg, "Tangled Loyalties" by american Joshua Rubenstein, also says nothing about this leaflet - and Rubinstein's book is far from apologethic!

Below are referencies to some of German scholars that have found this story is a myth:

• Fisch, Bernhard , Ubej! Toete! Zur Rolle von Ilja Ehrenburgs Flugblaettern in den Jahren 1944/45. In: Geschichte, Erziehung, Politik, 8 (1997) 1, S. 22-27
• Urban, Thomas: Als Held der Roten Armee gefeiert, als "Deutschenhasser" dämonisiert. Ilja Ehrenburg zwischen den politischen Fronten, in: Süddeutsche Zeitung 14.04.05, S. 10.
• Carola Tischler: Die Vereinfachungen des Genossen Erenburg. Eine Endkriegs- und eine Nachkriegskontroverse, in: Elke Scherstjanoi (Hrsg.) Rotarmisten schreiben aus Deutschland. Briefe von der Front (1945) und historische Analysen. Texte und Materialien zur Zeitgeschichte, Bd. 14. K.G. Saur Verlag, München 2004; S. 326-339

The latter author cites the expert examination of Instituts fuer Zeitgeschichte (in Munchen) from May 15, 1966. The Institute claims it has no evidence of neither Ehrenburg's authorship nor existence of this leaflet in Rissian.

--Mgar 09:39, 2 March 2007 (UTC)

Why so many sources remaind here and aren't included into the article. At the same time source [2] isn't available.Xx236 17:16, 14 March 2007 (UTC)