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crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

crimes committed by totalitarian regimes - Ministrstvo za pravosodje

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Crimes <strong>committed</strong> <strong>by</strong> <strong>totalitarian</strong> <strong>regimes</strong><br />

Another easily provided counter-reaction is the preventive demand of transparency: what killer do<br />

you have in mind? Rich or poor, big or little? We pragmatic politicians will consider the <strong>crimes</strong> only<br />

after clarification. See, we do not want more problems.<br />

Then dual standards kill all the standards. We are against all forms of discrimination; therefore<br />

discrimination of innocent victims should be an especially outrageous stance. Anyway, it happens. Some<br />

victims of war <strong>crimes</strong> are calling for justice loudly while some others are lying buried in silence.<br />

Discrimination of victims is completed <strong>by</strong> that of killers. Perpetrators of <strong>crimes</strong> against humanity<br />

are treated discriminatingly alongside their nationality and ideology. Some think that a shot across the<br />

skull <strong>by</strong> a Nagan-gun in the hand of an NKVD–KGB executioner was less painful for the victim than<br />

that exercised <strong>by</strong> a Walter-gun in the hand of an SS man. The same wrong tradition of discriminatory<br />

valuation and judiciary is exercised concerning the techniques used <strong>by</strong> the terminators.<br />

Gas chambers to kill thousands and tens of thousands of human beings were a diabolic invention<br />

of the German Nazis, from engineers to political leadership. Another industry of extermination was<br />

built and used <strong>by</strong> Soviet Bolsheviks, also from well-managing executioners of the Gulags to political<br />

leadership. The main machinery there, besides shooting, was a combination of Arctic cold and organized<br />

starvation exercised <strong>by</strong> bosses of that entirely exhausting slavery and most often senseless labour.<br />

Millions were killed in enormously vast chambers of helplessness, from horizon to horizon, where<br />

deadly torture lasted a bit longer than gas. From over 130,000 civilians brutally taken from their occupied<br />

country Lithuania to distant and hostile areas of the occupying USSR, only some 30 percent survived to<br />

return home. Who killed the remaining? Who killed millions of Ukrainians during the artificial famine<br />

called Holodomor, which was intended to break down the vitality of national peasantry and clear the<br />

area for future resettlements? Similarly, the area around today’s Kaliningrad was cleansed in a military<br />

and administrative action before and after the Potsdam Conference. Chechnya was cleansed even a bit<br />

earlier, in 1944, during Stalin’s action, which was recently condemned <strong>by</strong> the European Parliament as<br />

genocide.<br />

The aim of this first hearing, starting today as the initial step in a process, should be to overcome<br />

hypocrisy and help Europe to have a more true and moral judgement of the greatest criminal tragedies<br />

of the 20 th century.<br />

For what sake, gentlemen? To this I have just responded. Europe must live in respect to itself.<br />

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