A day in the death camp

Joe Lowry spends a harrowing last day in Belarus, at the site of the Maly Trostinets extermination camp

Partizansky Prospect, Minsk 2004.

“Over there is a wonderful bread factory”, said the octogenarian chairlady of the city Red Cross branch. “And there’s the tractor factory” (its ornate entrance recalling more a Mogul palace). “That was the tank factory, and there’s where they made rifles.”

Will she ever say anything bad about her city, I wonder.

“And over there, in those trees, was an extermination camp where a quarter of a million people died”. The words hit me like a stone.

Partizansky Prospect, Minsk 2010

Six years pass. Six years connected to Minsk through my wife and her family, who, like every family in Belarus shrank by 25 per cent during the war, the great patriotic war, which was neither great nor patriotic for many. The same partisans for whom the long, dull prospekt was named, hated by many, worse than the Nazis for their brutality, their oppression of peasant families.

But I read (present tense) more about the war. I read a massive tome on Stalin and another on the Nazis and on Hitler. The war, I begin to realise, may have spared Ireland’s soil but it splashed Belarus’ in blood. Every inch of the fertile land bubbled and oozed with rotting entrails, brain material, and bright red blood of soldiers and civilians. It soaked into the land, forever permeating it, befouling it, cursing it with a greater poison than even the millions of tons of radioactive waste dusted onto it in 1986 when nearby Chernobyl spilt its guts on the jinxed land.

And I move to Minsk. I know all about Babyan Yar in Kiev, where I have spent many years, how the Nazis threw sweets to the children they had machine-gunned, how the voices under the bulldozed dirt cried “Mummy, the sand is in my eyes”. I saw and gasped – really, my breath left my body in a whoosh - at the doll monument, whose limbs, akimbo, are welded on at unnatural angles. A broken doll, tricking the eyes.

The Holocaust is alive and well in Kiev. Well chronicled. Unforgettable. With a Jewish lobby noisily keeping the memory, even with the Holodymyr, the great Stalin-created famine of the 30s arguably claiming more lives.

But in Minsk, poor Minsk, where not a wall seems to have survived the neither great nor patriotic war, only clues remain. An internet site shows some horrors, and reveals that the pretty, re-antiquated main square in the old town was once Adolf Hitler square. That the Nazis brained Jewish babies against street corners in the Minsk ghetto (right).

But no memory seems to remain of that abysmal place, buried now under hotels, tower blocks, malls. (No Polanski films, no anniversaries a la Warsaw). Where people were allocated two square metres each, not including children. Which was cleared in a massive mass murder.

And I realise, that the smiling faces, or the strife-worn faces, the pretty faces and ugly ones I see every day on the Metro, at work, in the local shop, are the same – two generations on - as the ones that had the foulest, scariest, most repugnant jobs of all. When the Nazis left Minsk, civilians and prisoners, were used to find and burn up to 100,000 bodies.

Maly Trostinets. As fell and as foul Belsen, as grim as Auschwitz, this was the last generation of concentration camps. A death camp. While some sites pronounced “Arbeit Macht Frei”, there was no need for such an illusion in Maly Trostinets. A train went into the forest, disgorged its human cargo (many of whom were already dead) and the work of extermination began. (The condemned were transported from the “General Governorate” directly, or via a spell in the squalid Minsk Ghetto).

From holocaustactionreseachproject.org: “The killing process was conducted as follows: most of the victims were lined up in front of pits, 50 meters long and 3 metres deep and shot to death. After the executions the pits containing the victims were levelled by tractors. The operation was conducted by a unit of thirty to one hundred SS men commanded by an officer named Rider.

“Beginning on the 10 May 1942 and continuing every Tuesday and Friday Jews were brought to Minsk from the Protectorate of Bohemia and Moravia, Austria, Germany and driven by truck towards Maly Trostinets. Some of the trucks were gas vans, and after they had been gassed a sonderkommando took them out of the gas vans and threw them into deep pits.

“One such transport destined for Maly Trostinets was from Theresienstadt in Bohemia Moravia. On the 4 August 1942 a train with a thousand Jews left the Theresienstadt camp. Six days later it reached Maly Trostinets where it stopped in open country.

“Forty “experts” were removed from the train at Minsk. The remaining 960 deportees were ordered out of the train and into vans for the next stage of their journey, and were driven off towards the Blagovschchina forest. The vans were gas vans, once they reached the forest the doors were unlocked and the bodies of the gassed deportees were thrown into open graves.

“Of a thousand Jews sent from Theresienstadt to Maly Trostinets in a further deportation on the 25 August 1942 only twenty-two of the younger men were taken to work at an SS farm. The rest entered the gas vans and were murdered.” (photo above called "Tormenting Jews in Minsk" from the Holocaust research project archive).

My time in Minsk passes, and I vow, before I leave, to see Maly Trostinets, or what is left of it. We set out on an early autumn day, the leaves still green at the edge of the city. Jouncing over the unkept asphalt we get lost several times before stopping at the end of the road. In eyesight are the 70s apartments that ring every former Soviet city, almost overlooking these anonymous scruffy few fields, lanes, hedges.

And then I see it. A simple concrete structure, that from a distance looks almost plastic. “Dedicated to the Soviet citizens that perished here”. There are flowers, someone still cares. (I am glad to have had my phone to take a picture; there is nothing on Google.)

It’s one of those moments. The sun is warm, a light breeze stirs some dust, a rangy dog mooches around. There’s plastic bottles scattered hither and yon, and the poplars sway gently. The sort of day when I first saw the World War One graveyards as a teenager, the sort of day “The Green Fields of France” was written for:

“But young Willie MacBride it all happened again, and again and again and again and again.”

No drums beat, no fife plays. The silent soundtrack in my head a poignant reminder that genocide, or ethnic slaughter surrounds us all, marking the worst our species is capable of. Defining us. From Ireland to Armenia, from Ukraine to Belarus, Poland to Rwanda, to the countless flashpoints – Kashmir, Casamance, Palestine, Darfur, the Niger Delta, Kyrgyzstan.

And the horrible, sickening thought – if the gun was in my hand and it was them or my family…

I mutter a prayer. No tears come. This place is not for the living.

/JL

Moldovans riot against 'fraudulent' elections

What is happening in Moldova now has resonances of what happened in neighbouring Ukraine five years ago. I happened to be based in Kiev at the time and got a call from Sky News Ireland to do a live piece to camera. I was told to look for a white satellite truck on the main square, where a Polish TV crew would sort me out. Halfway to the Maidan (man square) in Kiev I realised I'd left the Polish mobile number back at the flat, but carried on as I was going to be breaking my live TV cherry and I wanted to be fresh.

So I get to the main square, where about half a million people are packed in listening to president-to-be Yushchenko and PM-to-be Timoshenko on stage. Noise deafening, crowds gridlocked, and at least a dozen white satellite vans. None of which were Polish. I racked and racked my brains and suddenly it came to me: the 12-digit number I'd been given earlier that day, and had not committed, consciously to memory.

After half an hour of fruitless ringing an engaged number, and knocking on doors of Turkish, Spanish and many other TV crews I decided the only thing for it, on the cold evening, was to give up and head to O'Briens pub (where we had our wedding reception a year or so later) for a hot half one.

I pressed "redial" one more time and a little Polish voice answered.

"Do you speak English?"

"No, no, only polski".

Somehow we communicated in bits of Russian and English and he told me he was under the main screen. At the front of the square, heavily guarded, was the stage, with massive TV screens on either side. Waving my diplomatic card I pushed through security and found myself standing under Yushchenko's feet. My phone rings. My Polish friend. And he's shouting "Rainsford Rainsford" And I see it... across the square, through a throng of thousands, an advertising screen, with the word Rainsford under it.

Against the tide I pushed and squeezed and finally wriggled up a snowy slope, strangers hands pushing my arse and him reaching down and pulling me up. "Joe Lowry?" "Yes yes, that's me". "OK, put in ear". The wire is put in my ear and I hear a whirr of white noise and then a calm South Dublin accent. "Joe Lowry? You're on in 5-4-3-2-1...."

And I was so pumped, so up for it, so busting with adrenaline that I got through my first live TV spot without an "aaah" or an "uuuuh" or a "welllllll". Job done I hugged the little bearded Pole, thanked him for taking my virginity and high-tailed it through the melee to O'Briens, where I started to shake with the unspent adrenaline pooled in my blood. But the whisky stopped the shakes and started the songs. Quite a night was had, if I remember aright.

But back to Moldova. Here's hoping there's no bloodshed, and the result will be fair and transparent. The country has too many woes, too much bad stuff happening. Let this lovely little corner of Europe be spared violence.

Joe Lowry is our man in Moldova

Still living with the fall out

“That explains the hairstyle.” The almost inevitable response when I tell people outside of Belarus, Ukraine or parts of Russia that I’ve been to Chernobyl four times. (I’m bald as the proverbial coot… although I never understood why a coot got picked on. The Russian, bald as a knee is a lot more accurate. But I digress).

Four times I’ve stood next to “it”, the remains of Reactor number 4, which exploded with the force of a hundred Hiroshimas 23 years ago this month. Last week I was rattling the collection box/banging the drum for the Red Cross Chernobyl programmes (yes, there are still many needs) when I found myself saying that Chernobyl is an icon, the explosion (or the first cognizance of it) a generation-defining moment, like the Kennedy assassination for my older pals, or 9-11 for my younger ones.

The fact is, 23 years ago hundreds of tons of radioactive material was spewed into the atmosphere (I tried to write “puked”, and “vomited” but it looks too gross. “wet-farted” would be le mot juste, but let it be spewed).

Radioactive iodine, with its half-life of eight days, did it’s work and then literally faded away. In those eight days, millions of thyroid glands in the affected region – no one knows exactly how big that region is, but we work across half of Belarus, much of west Ukraine, and the bordering region in Russia, covering seven million people – sucked in an invisible time bomb.

Years went by and then the thyroid woke up, and started doing thyroidy things, like announcing puberty. And then the radioactivity ingested (sucked, gobbled, imposed) in the week beginning 26 April 1986 did its thing and started to show up as nodules and cancers.

Now, 19 years after we started screening, using mobile labs that can boldly go where no other endocrinologist goes, we are finding 200 cancers a year (that’s one every day the teams go out to work) and the science suggests we are entering a peak. If one case of cancer a day doesn’t sound like much, consider this: there were NO thyroid cancer specialists in the region before 1986 and thyroid cancer was rare as rocking-horse droppings. It was almost never seen in young people – now it’s cutting a scourge through a cohort aged from 23 to 60.

And that’s one cancer, from one radionuclide. Let’s not even talk about the hundreds of tons of strontium cesium or plutonium which will be with us for the next… oooh… 23,000 years. No, let’s not talk about that, especially if we are “the international community” which aims to “minimize” the effects of the Chernobyl disaster. Don't forget that nuclear power is big big business, and Chernobyl ("couldn't happen today", "safe clean and cheap don't you know") is an inconvenient reminder of what happens when the fuel rods hit the fan.

Now, can someone explain to me how nuclear weapons – clean or dirty - can be developed without nuclear power as we currently know it?

Joe Lowry blogging from Chernobyl for 'Head Down Eyes Open'

The photo above shows a young boy being screened for unusual nodules or thyroid activity. One of the most positive features of the International Red Cross's Chernobyl Humanitarian and Relief Programme is that it reaches places where the local authorities have few facilities. As such, it provides vital moral support. In the picture above the Mobile Diagnostic Laboratory (MDL) has come to the tiny Russian hamlet of village of Medvedovo, some 140 kilometres from Chernobyl but right in the middle of the path taken by the radiation cloud. The previous photo is of Chernobyl's nuclear power plant as it looks today and the first photo at the top of the post is of an abandoned school inside the 'dead zone'.

A chill wind blows Eastward

The photo (left) I borrowed from another blog. It depicts the Ukranian national currency, the hryvna, plummeting, amid a run on banks and soaring demand for foreign exchange.

Back in the heart of Europe, I am still reeling a bit from the economic doom and gloom that is all pervasive Stateside. I am haunted by all those sincere Americans who warned with certainty that Europeans had not fully woken up to the extent of the global financial crisis. It could be that the indulgent and reckless excesses of the US financial system are clear and solid indicators of the tough times ahead, but is there as much known or understood or shared at the European level about similar reckless behavior.

A number of leading European banks, mainly from Switzerland, Sweden, Greece, Belgium, Italy and Austria are dangerously exposed to the faltering economies of central and eastern Europe. Austria for instance is owed a whopping euro 230 billion by ex-Soviet bloc banks; that amounts to 70% of its GDP.

Stephen Jen, currency chief at Morgan Stanley, said Eastern Europe has borrowed $1.7 trillion abroad, much on short-term maturities. It must repay – or roll over – $400bn this year, equal to a third of the region's GDP. Hardly an option now that the credit window has slammed shut.

In Poland, 60pc of mortgages are in Swiss francs. The zloty has just halved against the franc. Hungary, the Balkans, the Baltics, and Ukraine are all suffering variants of this story. Foreign production has all but ceased in Romania and Bulgaria and industrial production as ceased in the Czech Republic. As an act of collective folly – by lenders and borrowers – it matches America's sub-prime debacle except that European banks are on the hook for both and US banks are not.

Almost all East bloc debts are owed to West Europe, especially Austrian, Swedish, Greek, Italian, and Belgian banks. In total, Europeans account for an astonishing 74pc of the entire $4.9 trillion portfolio of loans to emerging markets. They are five times more exposed to this latest bust than American or Japanese banks, and they are 50pc more leveraged (IMF data).

Spain is up to its neck in Latin America, which has belatedly joined the slump (Mexico's car output fell 51pc in January, and Brazil lost 650,000 jobs in one month). Britain and Switzerland are both heavily indebted in Asia.

"There are accidents waiting to happen across the region, but the EU institutions don't have any framework for dealing with this. The day they decide not to save one of these countries will be the trigger for a massive crisis with contagion spreading into the EU" according to Lars Christensen, at Danske Bank

The sums needed are beyond the limits of the IMF, which has already bailed out Hungary, Ukraine, Latvia, Belarus, Iceland, and Pakistan – and Turkey next – and is fast exhausting its own $200bn (€155bn) reserve. We are nearing the point where the IMF may have to print money for the world, using arcane powers to issue Special Drawing Rights.

And meanwhile, Ukraine's travails appear to be snowballing out of control after the central bank said the economy contracted 20pc in January year-on-year, with a dramatic 34pc slide in industrial production. Valery Lytvytsky, the bank's top adviser, said the collapse is the worst in recorded Ukrainian history, exceeding the darkest days after the Bolshevik revolution.

The currency has fallen 40pc since the crisis began, a crippling blow to companies with large debts in dollars or euros. Three banks have failed.

So we watch and wait as the lethal brush fires move closer.

Much of this article is based on reports from the telegraph, the Guardian's economic editor, Larry Elliot and from oil economist F William Engdahl.

/PC