Romanian & Hungarian war-crimes

If this is how it looks like I completely agree with you… It’s not only sad but also immoral. But in what I’m concerned I never meant something like that. And I also think that denying the facts of the past, because they could (and often they do) inflate the spirits in the present is no less sad and immoral. And interfering in the process of reconstituting the historical realities (because this is a site of military history after all) with arguments from the sphere of modern ethnic prejudice is not useful and it's incorrect.

Example: two communities, a conflict in the past, one of the parts did the majority of the killing, and brutal ones - but we should keep quiet about that because from today’s point of view it seems incorrect and prejudiced that there’s mainly one to blame, and this could be harmful for the present relations between them. Oh, and it is also embarrassing for some…

For the sake of constructive discussion, avoid getting personal.

The new Forum Guidelines on personal issues:

From what I saw, Denes started this personal attack business, accusing some posters of extremist, xenofobic and chauvinistic views, and even asked for harsher enforcement of the forum rules for them, in other words warning or banning the offenders.

Dragos03 asked for the right thing (I never insulted anyone on this forum. My posts were always based on facts. And now i am insulted by a moderator and the other moderators seem to think it's ok. I will not tolerate this situation. So, unless Denes gets a clear, public warning or he apologises for what he said about me, i will quit this forum soon.) and the administrators should take a better look in their homegarden. I know that the new rules forbid us from being harsh on the admins, but this is one of those situations when they shouldn't stick together, for the sake of leadership...

I see a blatant contradiction here.
Try at least to be consistent and not to scream 'thief'...

Gen. Dénes

Even without getting into the details of this book (I don't have it handy anyway), it's enough to observe that it was published by Editura Politica (not even by Editura Militara - a much more appropriate publishing forum for such a work that pretends to be a history book), in 1985, at the height of Ceausescu's national-communist regime. This detail alone would classify the book as a politically loaded one, published under strict supervision of Communist apparatchicks, thus clearly having a political goal, so it could be dismissed as a historically reliable secondary source by anyone genuinely interested in history.

Gen. Dénes

This post has been edited by Dénes on June 19, 2005 02:35 am

Divide et impera, Imperialist?
Nice try...

Gen. Dénes

P.S. I'll return to the Secicar incident later on, when I'll find some more time.

The dismissal of a book because of the Editura that published it is completely unfair and unacademical. Its the same with attacking an idea because of the person that issues it. Editura Political published dozens of serious books, does it mean they are unreliable and secondary sources? Just like that, en masse? Wow. Years of reading blown away in just a sentence.
And if you dont have the book at hand, why did you intervene in such a radical fashion? If you want to disprove this info you have to go into the details of the book, not dismiss it for the Editura that published it.
I wouldnt have intervened any more, were it not for this attack on Editura Politica. Many of the books I have are from that publishing house, and many did I use in my papers. I sure wouldnt like for someone to come and argue my papers are useless because their sources are corrupted by their publisher or by the time period they were published in.

take care

Hoi Alexandru H.,

A small apology. Having re-read your first two posts on Flamanzi, I think I may have been a bit over critical.

I was reacting to the part in your first post where you wrote "The village is now destroyed" and your clarification in your second post where you wrote "By destroyed I don't mean that the village doesn't exist any more (it very much exists)."

My point about coming away from the first post with a different impression from the second still stands, but you were absolutely right to clarify your original post and I was wrong to say anything that might discourage you from doing so.

My apologies.

Sid.

Hi Agarici,

I also owe you an apology. You did, indeed, not bring up the Flamanzi episode. I can only plead confusion as a consequence of trying to hold three or four conversations simultaneously.

Are your seconds still coming round? If so, I chose Cricket to the death, on the grounds that nobody can learn the rules overnight and be ready by dawn the next morning, which should give me a significant advantage.

Cheers,

Sid.

Sid made a joke

Thank you, Sid! Apologies accepted... By "destroyed" I merely meant the spirit of the village not the burning of everything in sight...

Hi Agarici,

Having got the pleasanteries out the way, to business.

If there is something about skinning in "Horthyist-Fascis Terror.......", please stop implying that there is and give me the reference so I can check it. By making the insinuation without any evidence you are displaying precisely the sort of sloppily vague insinuation that I am questioning.

Of course I read the rest. Do you not realise that if one accusation is found to be false, it throws doubt on all the others? It shouldn't, because they should each stand on their own evidence. But that is not how the general reader will view it.

So, a straight answer to a straight question would be appreciated: Is there a reference to skinning in Horthyist-Fascist Terror....." or not? If so, where?

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Dragos03,

It is not hard to believe that most of us are capable of dreadful things, but if a direct accusation is made I want to see the evidence. Is this wrong?

"Horthyist-Fascist Terror......" is full of sourced acusations that are far more plausible than the supposed skinning episode because they have analogies elsewhere. Not only that, but none of them are as contrived as skinning. Skinning is not an act of spontaneous or mob violence like all the other acusations of murder, rape, beatings, etc. It requires calculation and expertise, so it is unlikely to occur in isolation. Human skin cannot be detached from the living human body in the way leather can from a dead animal. It is a skill specific to itself.

This particular accusation of skinning is so unique to the situation (unless of course Agarici can come up with his implied reference in "Horthyist-Fascis Terror.....") that it must be questioned, especially as it remains without supporting evidence, or even circumstantial evidence.

It is vitally important in such situations to stick to the established facts. The only people who benefit from turning rumour into facts in the public mind are the sort of people who seek to benefit from inter-ethnic hatred. There is already quite enough evidence of other atrocities. Why this eagerness to manufacture more by lowering our standards of evidence?

I have simply asked for evidence of this particular incident. So far all we have is hear-say.

Cheers,

Sid.

Hi Guys,

We all have an equal right to offer an opinion, but not all opinions are equally valid. It is therefore perfectly reasonable to ask for sources. How else can one differentiate between informed and uninformed opinion?

It is also perfectly reasonable for the moderators to require us to "play the ball, not the man".

Cheers.

Sid.

I assume that's your personal opinion.

My approach is that one should select the sources for a serious historical study appropriately if he/she doesn't want to be mislead. To me, a publishing house stricktly supervised by the Communist Party in the 1980s, at the height of Ceausescu's reign, is unreliable, as historical facts might be manipulated for the sake of a certain political goal.
This is my personal approach, of course.

Yes, correct. I would not quote ever certain persons who discredited themselves in a serious study I author. Would you quote, for example, Ceausescu on matters of history? Or Funar on matters of inter-ethnic relations and how to solve the existing problems? I wouldn't.

Because I've read it at the time when it was published, so I do know what's inside the covers.

Yes, again. I would not use for my studies history books issued by this publishing house in the 1980s.

Please list works related to the history of Rumania, between 1930-1980, published by Editura Politica in the 1980s, that you have found reliable, so we can see your study methods.

One of the first things I do when opening a history book for the first time is to check out the bibliography. The sources listed denote a lot about the book I am about to read.
But that's only my approach, of course.

Gen. Dénes

On your 1st point.
Following that logic, the entire academical history of Romania in the last 50 years is thrown at the garbage because you think the times were stinky.
I dont agree with such generalisations and simplifications.

On your 2nd point.
Well, the question is hypothetical, depends on what the paper is about. But:
Yes, I think I would. So as to get as many points of view as possible on a historical event.
The reader will make his mind of what point of view is right.
Thus, even if I do say in different places what the current consensus is about those events, the reader can choose the interpretation closest to his mind. This was a common practice in controversial books that needed to go through censorship in the communist era.
As a sidenote, Ceausescu's opinions on things are hard to find these days. I searched a book with his speeches for one of my researches and found none. (apart from a lot of books with small introductive speeches). Where did all those books go?

On the 3rd point.
Doing that is one thing, dismissing the whole paper/book because you have a certain view on a publisher, thats totally different and worring.

Let me give you just a few example of books published at Editura Politica. I have them at hand:

Dwight D. Eisenhower "Cruciada in Europa"; 1975
Charles de Gaulle "Memorii de Razboi"; 1969
Marcel Jullian "Batalia Angliei"; 1968
Walter Lord "Pearl Harbour"; 1970

And several others I dont have at hand right now, but among which also books written by Alvin Toffler and published by Ed.Pol.!

I guess these books were seriously hampered with by the Party and are probably full of politically driven "corrections" in them.
Too bad universities still list them on their compulsory course bibliography.
Besides, one wonders why in the "grand" days of capitalism we have to rely on crappy old communist books. Really wonder now...