On the article; "Stalin Handed Hundreds of Communists Over to Hitler" By Alex De Jong , Jacobinmag
Yes, but we must add: "Seek the facts from evidence."
This is what Alex de Jong fails to do.
“German Political Refugees” Handed Over To The Nazis?
Kotkin writes:
Stalin also had Beria extradite 4,000 German political refugees sought by the Nazis. Many were Jewish, and at least 1,000 were Communists. They and their family members would be handed over in ceremonies at the frontier bridge at Brest-Litovsk. Let Hitler expend the bullets. (695)
Kotkin’s paragraph here is false in every detail.
Kotkin cites no evidence – not even phony evidence – for this claim. This anticommunist fairy-tale comes from Margarete BuberNeumann, whose husband Hans Neumann had been arrested, convicted, and executed for participating in an anti-Soviet conspiracy. She survived World War II and wrote bitterly anticommunist books during the post-war period.
Buber-Neumann had quit the communist party before being extradited to Germany. So she was not a communist when the Soviets deported her.
One of those deported with Buber-Neumann was Betti Ol’berg, whose husband, Valentin Ol’berg, had been a defendant in the August 1936 First Moscow Trial, where he had admitted to plotting to assassinate Stalin. We now have much more evidence about him, and one confession by Betti Ol’berg herself, where she makes it clear that she knew what her husband had been planning.(9) It is interesting that she was not executed, possibly because she had cooperated with the investigation in 1936.
Wilhelm Mensing, an anticommunist German historian, has thoroughly researched this issue. I have put his German-language article online.(10) Here are a few sentences from Mensing’s conclusion (translation by me, GF):
“No ‘500 bitter opponents of Hitler’ were deported to Germany … a little over 300 [persons were deported] …”“The Nazi regime did not punish most of those deported.” “The deportations of 1939-1941 were not aimed at communists.” “There is no indication that the [Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression] Pact was the motivation for the deportations.”“There is no evidence that those deported from the USSR to Germany in 1939-1941 were persecuted there. On the contrary, there is evidence that some of them, including former communists, were not molested.”
Kotkin claims that 4000 “German political refugees” were deported. The real number? 300! All those checked by Mensing had been convicted of some crime or other.
Mensing’s article was published in 2011, in plenty of time for Kotkin to have read it. Did he read it, and just decide not to inform his readers? Or is he ignorant of the whole issue – in which case he should not have written about it at all? Who knows?
From the Book
Here are some additional points that I did not get into in my book
"Seek the truth from facts!"
Yes, but we must add: "Seek the facts from evidence."
This is what Alex de Jong fails to do.
* He says that Hans Neumann was convicted on a "trumped-up" -- i.e., false -- charge.
Here de Jong is "bluffing" -- that is, lying. He does not know this.
And, in fact, ALL the evidence we have concerning Hans N. points to his guilt. Neumann is cited by Osip Pyatnitsky in his statements, and in Pyatnitsky's son's books (the son, now deceased, was a founder of the anticommunist "Memorial" society in the late '80s and got to see parts of his father's file).
* What is de Jong's evidence that the Germans -- e.g., Buber-Neumann and her friend Betti Ol'berg -- were communists? He has none. And, in fact, they were not communists at the time they were deported.
* What evidence does de Jong have that the other German prisoners
repatriated to Gremany were communists?
None! In fact, they could not have been. They were prisoners, convicted of some crime or other.
One would have to check the NKVD investigation files on each of them to know what they were convicted of. But they were certainly no longer communists by the time they were deported.
These men were deported as part of a prisoner exchange agreement.
Soviet prisoners in Germany vs German prisoners in the USSR.
Wilhelm Mensing, the anti-communist researcher whose article I cite and quote in that section of "Stalin, Waiting for ... the Truth" has gathered a lot of information about these men, their histories, and their fates.
But what he has NOT done is study their NKVD investigation files. Just as he has failed to study Buber-Neumann's, and Betti Ol'berg's.
Therefore, at this point, there is NO evidence that even a single German communist was deported to Germany during 1939-1941.
There is also no evidence that any of these men were "innocent" of whatever they were charged with in the USSR.
I hope this is helpful.
Sincerely,
Grover Furr
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