Kai,
My nickname at my work (RTV-Arnhem; Radio and Television Arnhem) is '
Pieter Precies',
Pete the perfectionist. That is in the same time my strength and my bottle neck. I can't stand fast, superficial, populistic, trendy, hyped news, advertisment and messages. But a lot of today's news is just like that. Quantity is norm and quality not the first priority anymore. The competition is huge. Even some documentaries are made that way. Lately Jaga posted a message that today every message or historical review or subject has to be made in a few minutes.
You can do that with a news flash or news interview, which are maximum three, 2 and a half minutus maximum. A good thorough documentary needs 1 and a half hour minimum, or at least thirty minutes depending on the subject. The documentary maker has to be very accurate in historical research, sociological and psychological correct portrayal of the historical characters, having knowledge of the financial-economical, social-cultural, political, military, geopolitical, diplomatic, fashion (different kind of uniforms, units, departments, ranks and etc. - and I am not a military expert-), and the press/media, literature, poetry, cinema, autobiographies, eye witnesses and places that were relevant of that time.
In my opinion he had to travel to
Poland,
the Russian Federation (the places in
Siberia where the camps were) and to the older Polish people who survived
the Gulag Camps in
Siberia and to interview them. You have to see, to feel, to stand at the spot of historical developments to understand them. I understand a tiny little bit of
the Second World War, only a tiny, tiny little bit, because I heard my Polish grandmother, Polish relatives, Dutch relatives (my father, my Dutch aunt and uncles and my Dutch grandmother) talking about the war (which was very different in both countries. I may and you may never compare the suffering, the losses and the circumstances in both countries.), and I heard the stories of Dutch jews, Gypsies, resistance fighters and others. I know the trauma's of the population of Arnhem during the war, I know the trauma's of my Dutch and Polish families of
Rotterdam and
Warsaw. I also know about the trauma's of the German citizens of
Dresden,
Berlin,
Hannover and
Hamburg who lost familymembers, loved ones, colleages, neighbours, classmates, fellow students and etc.
Not all Germans were nazi. And some of the victims of the allied bombers were forced labourers from Poland, the Netherlands or France. Some victims were German jews who were hidden by fellow Germans. A tiny minority, but they were there. I know a tiny little bit about the Second World War, because I saw the marks of the war in the Netherlands (Living in Arnhem is in fact being remembered about the war, due to the combination of post war modern buildings and what was left of the old buildings. As a cameraman and editor I have edited a lot of tv programs in which the history of
Arnhem comes by. That history was simply the total destruction of
the Arnhem city center during the second world war, and the total pillaging of the houses of the Arnhem civilians during the forced
evacuation of Arnhem. I know that many Arnhem individuals and families were traumatized due to the circumstances, the destruction, the loss of everything they had and the many dead allied and German soldiers they saw along the road during
Market Garden. -War is brutal, also in
Arnhem-, the German bunkers of
the Atlantic wall in
Vlissingen at the Dutch North Sea Coast, where I played in and on a little boy,
the bunkers were also in the country and in the park of my highschool in
Middelburg, where the German Wehrmacht headquarters of
Walcheren-Zeeland were;
New Rotterdam -because Old-Rotterdam was erased by the bombardments of
May 1940; and the
Anne Frank House in
Amsterdam, the
Hollandse Schouwburg in
Amsterdam -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hollandsche_Schouwburg -, the Jewish Historical Museum in Amsterdam ),
Belgium (
The Bastogne War Museum and the stories of our Wallon neighbour lady, who was a nurse from
Liège during the war, and participated in a Dutch Belgian resistance circle, which smuggled British Allied bomber pilots from the Netherlands, via Belgium and France to Spain -allied pilots who had been shot down in the Netherlands-.),
France (
the Oradour-sur-Glane massacre -
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oradour-sur-Glane_massacre -) ,
Germany (
Berlin,
Düsseldorf,
Cologne,
Frankfurt and etc.),
Poland (
Warsaw -The Warsaw rising museum,
Mokotow Prison and
Pawiak prison-
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pawiak -,
Poznan -
the Citadel-,
Krakow,
Auschwitz concentration camp). Having been in
Prague and
Budapest also connected me to the history of these cities in their
Habsburgian (Austrian), Second World War and Cold War heritage.
Stalinism and
Sovjet communism also caused victims there in the Post war terror of the Stalinist Czechoslovakian and Hungarian regimes and the Sovjet occupations of
1956 and
1968.
There was a difference between the part of
Poland which was occupied by
Nazi Germany in the period of
September 1939 and
July 1941 and the
Poland which was occupied by
the SovjetUnion in the same period. For two years
Western-Poland was occupied by Nazi Germany and
Eastern-Poland by the SovjetUnion. Where the Nazi's targeted the Jewish minority of Polish jews and the Polish intelligentsia in
the Intelligenzaktion (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intelligenzaktion ), the Sovjets (consisting of Russian, Ukrainian, Belarussian and Jewish
NKVD officers and soldiers) targeted the Polish population of Eastern-Poland deporting about three million of them to
Siberia and
Kazakhstan. Polish stalinists (with Polish Slavic workers and peasent roots and some Polish jews) cooperated with the Sovjet
Red army,
NKVD and
police. People with a Polish
Szlachta (low nobility),
Magnats (high nobility, aristocracy), highclass, middle class, farmer or even a working class background were victims of the Sovjet ethnic cleansing policies. Both Polish Roman-Catholics and Polish jews were victims of this Sovjet terror. (Two most eminent Bund leaders,
Wiktor Alter and
Henryk Erlich were executed in
December 1941 in
Moscow on Stalin's orders under accusations of being agents of Nazi Germany. Also Polish jewish officers were executed by the
NKVD in
Katyn next to the Polish Roman-Catholic officers there). I want to write this, because in history the situation is often painted as black and white, in the sense that polish anti-semitic ultra-nationalists paint the Polish jews black as collective Stalin supporters. Just like anti-Polonist American jews and Israeli's painted the Poles black as anti-semitic people. You had bad people on both sides and good people on both sides, like there were good Germans, Austrians and Russians too. (unfortunately the latter were a minority of their populations, because the dominant force were bad Germans and Russians who supported Nazi Germany and the SovjetUnion which created the Stalinist terror against the Poles in Eastern-Poland).
During these two years (1939-1941) the Sovjet
NKVD and Nazi
Gestapo collaborated in suppressing dissident voices, resistance (Underground activities) and minorities in
Western-Poland and
Eastern-Poland. (
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gestapo%E2%80%93NKVD_Conferences ) It is good that
Greg Archer wites about his families past and the fate of the deported
Poles of
Eastern-Poland during the Second World War.
Greg Archer listened to countless tales of survival of his Polish family’s story over the decades. He conducted numerous interviews about the events that unraveled in their lives between 1940 and 1950, as well as researching Stalin’s mass deportation of the Poles.
Cheers,
Pieter
