Remembering a friend....

There are people that come into your life and you never forget them.

When I was 6 years old, my best friend was a chap named Robert Dorssers.  We called him Robbie.

I remember Robbie in the school yard, being carried around pretending he was Superman.

I remember being invited to his house for his birthday, April of 1967.  We played with his GI Joe in the bathroom sink.

I remember how kind his parents were.

Sadly, I remember the day he died....hit by a car while riding his bike.  I was at the Church...receiving my first communion with my Dad...when I noticed one of Robbie's brothers walking toward the Church...letting our Priest know that Robbie was in the hospital...and could he come quick...

That was June 24th, 1967.

June 27th, 1967...my birthday, I was a pallbearer at Robbie's funeral.

Through the years....as I have had my own children, I have often thought of Robbie.  I can't imagine the utter devastation the family must have gone through during this time.  Even as my own children struggled with life, including one needing major surgeries, whom we almost lost.

I can't imagine.

But I remember Robbie.  I just need to say that I have not forgotten him.  That his friends remember him.

The poem inscribed on the back of Robbie's funeral card seems abt:

Lord he was yours...

And not our own...

You have done us no wrong;

We thank you for the precious loan

Afforded us so long.

I do indeed look forward to seeing my friend again...

I have not forgotten you Robbie!

Our grandson: Carter Levi

Well, life has a way of getting out of control.  Earlier this year, we were blessed to have a new grandchild, courtesy of our daughter Becky and her husband Brandon.

Carter Levi arrived on the scene...and he has to be the happiest little boy on the planet!

He has a great Mom and Dad...so no wonder!

A great addition to the family...we are loving watching him grow and experience new things!

The Book Project: Done

After many, many years...the book is finally done.  There were so many kind people that assisted me in my quest...and I could not have done it without them.

I was 18 years old when I told my grandmother I would be writing a book about my grandparents...and what they went through to escape Russia.

It grew to include how the family even ended up in Russia, and now includes data on Gerk's all over the world.

Adventures?  I've had a few.  Working in former Soviet archives and even visiting the site of where my grandparents were born and raised, as well as standing in the abandoned cemetery where so many of my ancestors were buried.

I kept my promise.

Kimmy's Grad

So our dear daughter Kim has now graduated....here is a wonderful shot of my girls, minus Stephanie and Natalie....who were out of town at the time.

I love each and every one of them....and at this time I just want to say how proud we are of Kim and all her hard work!

You are More....

In Memory of Georg Gerk

 This is an example of what a typical file looks like of someone in the Soviet GULAG.  It is the file of an older brother of my grandfather, Georg Gerk.

I wrote about Georg in a previous post.  This past week we received an official copy of his labour camp file.  Imagine....after all these years...through the wonder of technology, we now have a copy of a secret file that authorities of the day never dreamed would be made public!

My previous post about Georg stated:

Georgiy Georgievich Gerk Was born the 27th of December 1897 in the village of Josefstal, near the Volga River in Russia.

He was an older brother to Paul Gerk, my grandfather.

Married 6th of January 1916 in Josefstal to Kristina Rausch. They had 4 children, Georg born 1916; Jakob born 1927; Johannes 1929 and Elisabeth born 1937.

Georg had moved to the Caucasus area of Russia in order to work and provide for his family.  He was, as all Volga Germans, caught up in the mass deportation of Russian Germans to Siberia and slave labour in August of 1941.

Here he was sent to the Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Then he was transferred to the “Chelyabmetallurgstroy” (Chelyabinsk Metal Factories) - a mass labour camp that had over 40,000 prisoners.

As was the case with another brother named Jakob Gerk, and written about here, our family had no details about his death.  Just one of the nameless victims of communism who was lost in Russia's vast Gulag.

But, alas, there is no photograph of Georg Gerk.  I have recently found some of his grandchildren who have emigrated to Germany and asked them if they have anything.  I will post the response here.  In the meantime, all we have left is a complete set of fingerprints as part of his GULAG file.

A copy of the complete file can be found here.

All that remains of a life lived.

Our family remembers this hero.

Our Family in Bogoslovlaga Labour Camp

This Labour Camp had over twenty-thousand Volga German inmates, all performing slave labour for the government of the USSR.

This one camp saw over 18 male members of the Gerk family live and work there.  They included:

Gerk, August Ivanovich born 1923 Kamenskii

Gerk, Adam Johannevich, born 1913 Iosefstal

Gerk, Georg Mateasovich, born 1912 Iosefstal

Gerk, Johannes Georgovich, born 1911 Iosefstal

Gerk, Johannes Jakoblevich, born 1911 Marienfeld

Gerk, Johannes Johannesovich, born 1903 Keller

Gerk, Johannes Mateasovich, born 1900 Iosefstal

Gerk, Johannes Iosefovich, born 1908 Marienfeld

Gerk, Iosef Mateasovich, born 1910 Iosefstal

Gerk, Iosef Robertovich, born 1923 Iosefstal

Gerk, Iosef Jakobevich, born 1909 Marienfeld

Gerk, Iosef Iosefovich, born 1921 Kamenskii

Gerk, Klementii Iosefovich, born 1908 Pfeifer

Gerk, Kospar Michaelovich, born 1904 Marienfeld

Gerk, Nikodemus Petrovich, born 1913 Iosefstal

Gerk, Robert Davidovich, born 1909 Iosefstal

Gerk, Franz Ivanovich, born 1912 Pfeifer

Gerk, Emanuel Iosipovich, born 1923 Pfeifer

The camp was located near the Russian town of Krasnoturinsk, in the Sverdlovsk Oblast. 

Source: Kirillov V.M. , Kuz'mina P.M. (ed.)
GEDENKBUCH: «Kniga pamiati nemtsev-trudarmeitsev Bogoslovlaga. 1941-1946»

Our Family: KULAKS!

Have worked on some more on the family history book. This is what we would call a denunciation document. It declared, after an investigation, that my great uncle, Jakob Gerk, was a "Kulak" from a "Kulak" family, and listed the evidence...my great-grandfather, Jakob's father, was complicit in anti-soviet activities, he had land, they had about 5 people working for them, and Jakob was regularly writing my grandfather in Canada. Under socialism, where all people were to be equal...some were more equal than others. Basically our family were labelled "enemies of the people". Jakob was also involved in some of the insurrections against Soviet power. Shortly after this document was created, my great-uncle was arrested for stealing grain to feed his children. He was sent to prison, and, in 1941, sent to the Chelyabmetallurgstroy camp were he died within just a few short weeks.

Last Letters & the Great Silence

Now working on the chapter "Last Letters & the Great Silence" An analysis of the last letters we received from my great-grandmother in January of 1933. Her name was Maria Eva (Heit) Dieser. She was pleading for help to buy food. Soviet postal authorities stole the money and letters my grandparents sent. She starved to death in August of 1933. There was then a 51 year period of silence, as the family were told they would be shot if they corresponded with our family in Canada.

My grandmother did not find out until 1984 that her Mom had starved in 1933.

All the letters are pretty much like this one...they had two things on their minds...thanking God for health and survival January 5, 1933. Written in old German dialect, it reads:

May God grant you warmest greetings from your mother and mother-in-law to you children Paul and Elizabeth and your two children. I thank the dear Lord I am still halfway healthy and hope this letter finds you as healthy as when you left me. Further I want to tell you where the father has gone with the two children. They have gone further into the Kavkas (ed. note: Caucasus) and I am home alone. Dear children, conditions are difficult here with respect to food. Times are tough dear children. Yes dear children we are having a hard time getting food. Some people have had money sent to them. For one coin (taler) one pound of flour can be bought in Kamyshin. If you could come to my aid could you send me 5 (taler) which would give us five pounds of flour. Perhaps then I wouldn't starve to death, dear children. Again I ask if you can help me so that I don't have to starve. Now I will close this letter and greet you again and ask you to write quickly

Currently Reading.....

This book has been a great help as I have worked on my family history book.  When I started this project about 30 years ago, I had very little original research material.  Soviet archives were closed....top secret, and I never would have imagined that it would ever change.

 Now, after a number of trips to the former USSR since 1992, I can say that I am amazed at what material I was able to collect!  But how to present it, and back up each and every thing I want to say?

 So I made the decision to basically not say anything in the book unless I could produce a document to back it up.  More difficult when dealing with Soviet era documents.

Dave Chang writes:

In the internal evidence test we determine whether the contents of the document itself point towards its reliability or otherwise. According to historian and legal scholar J. W. Montgomery, “historical and literary scholarship continues to follow Aristotle’s dictum that the benefit of doubt is to be given to the document itself, not arrogated by the critic to himself. This means that one must listen to the claims of the document under analysis, and not assume fraud or error unless the author disqualifies himself by contradictions or known factual inaccuracies.”

 My cousin Alex, who was born in the former USSR, once told me to be careful when using Soviet-era documents, because so many of them were tainted by false accusations against people.

 So  when using some of them, I have to use the principle of "internal criticism".  That has been helpful.  I've used a document that is basically a transcript of a denunciation of one of my grandfather's brothers.  In it, it lists "anti-soviet" activities as the reason our family were so bad, and then how much land we owned.  It also gives a list of names of people that used to work for our family.  So...what do I do with this? Well, because of my numerous interviews with my grandmother, I can confirm at least one name of a person working for our family is accurate. This means that the rest of the document has a high probability of being accurate, also because of the fact I also knew that my great uncle was indeed involved in various insurrections to try to usurp communist power.

Fascinating.

Our Family book...finally after 30 years!

Some things just take a long time to complete.  When I started this project over 30 years ago, I had no idea I would be able to stand in the lonely cemetery that contained our ancestors, or be able to work in former Soviet archives to collect information on our family.

Not surprisingly, I was able to confirm many of the stories my grandmother told me of her life in the "old country".

I'll provide ordering information when it is available, as well as price. For those family members who think I'll be making a ton of money on this...all I can say is "Ha!". You will never know how much time it took to compile this history.

The book is schedule to be published in June of 2012. The final product may or may not look like this, but I'm leaning pretty close to keeping it like this. It will be over 100 pages, and will have a roll call of the descendents of the first Gerk to Russia, Sebastian Gerk....about 3-thousand people.  Also included will be lots of photographs and copies of old documents from Russian archives.

I truly hope folks, especially my family, will find this of interest.

Another victim of the Gulag....

Georgiy Georgievich Gerk Was born the 27th of December 1897 in the village of Josefstal, near the Volga River in Russia.

He was an older brother to Paul Gerk, my grandfather.

Married 6th of January 1916 in Josefstal to Kristina Rausch. They had 4 children, Georg born 1916; Jakob born 1927; Johannes 1929 and Elisabeth born 1937.

Georg had moved to the Caucasus area of Russia in order to work and provide for his family.  He was, as all Volga Germans, caught up in the mass deportation of Russian Germans to Siberia and slave labour in August of 1941.

Here he was sent to the Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Then he was transferred to the “Chelyabmetallurgstroy” (Chelyabinsk Metal Factories) - a mass labour camp that had over 40,000 prisoners.

As was the case with another brother named Jakob Gerk, and written about here, our family had no details about his death.  Just one of the nameless victims of communism who was lost in Russia's vast Gulag.

No more. We received word this week from the official archives in the Chelyabinsk Region, of the card file on Georg Gerk.  While, at this time, this is all the information we can glean, it does offer a glimpse into Georg's ultimate fate.

The card reads: (Thanks Olga for the translation!)
Georgiy Georgievich Gerk, born 1897, Place of birth – Autonomic Soviet Socialist Republic (autonomic t republic Germans – Volga region, Kamensky area, Iosifstal village). Social background – peasant, nationality – German, education – 4 grades, not a party member, last place of residence is Easten-Kazahkstan region, Shemonaikhinsky area, Spassky village council, kolkhoz Ilyk. Profession – carpenter, woodworker. No criminal record.
The card is filled out on August 6, 1942.

The text on the back of the card: arrived 17/03/1942, died 05/03/1943.

There might be additional information in a file, and we are requesting that. Georg is one of the brother's whom we have no photographs. To remember him I've posted a photograph of his wife, Kristina Gerk, and child, probably son Georg.

The hunt continues for his photograph.

Seconds - I Am Second

Seconds - I Am Second

Father's Day

Sand in the Gears:

There’s certainly no distinction to breeding, and so Father’s Day must be intended to celebrate something other than one’s ability to procreate. It began in tragedy, which is maybe the truth of too many things, the world’s way of daring us to bring beauty from ashes. Two hundred and ten fathers erased from their homes, one thousand children orphaned in a day, and all anyone could do — all any of us can ever do — was remember.

So on Father’s Day we remember what our fathers have done for us, and unless we and they are saints, we remember what they have not done for us, and so perhaps on Father’s Day we forgive, too. We forgive, and we pray, those of us who are fathers, that we might be forgiven as well, some day, for the thousand little neglects, and the dozen graver sins. We pray forgiveness for the stretches of time when we are not fully their fathers, when instead we yearn to belong more fully to ourselves, forgetting that you can never love richly and deeply so long as it is yourself you seek.

This morning I huffed atop the rickety elliptical machine in our basement, when Isaac stumbled into the room, bed-headed and bleary-eyed, to tell me happy Father’s Day. Then he set himself to love’s labor, making art and then cleaning the art table, two things he knows will make his father and mother happy. He did it smiling, and with intention, and I saw in his face what it must be to fully enjoy giving oneself to others.

As always, I am humbled by the open-heartedness of these sweating, striving, stinky little boys. I don’t know if I was ever that way, but it is the way I would like to be, and so I stretch toward this goodness I see in them, even as they look to me to learn how they should live.

Truth

1 - God is always with me. I will not fear.
2 - God is always in control. I will not doubt.
3 - God is always good. I will not despair.
4 - God is always watching. I will not falter.
5 - God is always victorious. I will not fail.
-Always True: God's 5 Promises for When Life is Hard by James MacDonald

Carolyn Arends Contemplates Her Own Death, and Yours

Carolyn Arends Contemplates Her Own Death, and Yours

Going down singing: Why we should remember that we will die.

Carolyn Arends | posted 4/18/2011 12:00AM Christianity Today

The day before he died, my father wore what his doctors called the "Star Wars mask"—a high-tech oxygen system that covered most of his face. Pneumonia made his breathing extremely labored, but that didn't keep him from chatting.

"Pardon?" my mom would ask patiently, trying to decipher his muffled sounds. Exasperated, he'd yank off the mask, bringing himself to the brink of respiratory arrest to ask about hockey trades or complain about the hospital food.

After several hours, he gave up on conversation. He started singing.

"What are you humming?" my mom asked. My dad repeatedly tried to answer through the mask before yanking it off again. "With Christ in the Vessel, I Can Smile at the Storm," he gasped. "Wow," murmured my mom, before singing it with him.

My dad learned "With Christ in the Vessel" at Camp Imadene in 1949, the summer he asked Jesus into his 8-year-old heart. Six decades later, hours before his death, that silly old camp song was still embedded in his soul and mind, and he was singing it at the top of his nearly-worn-out lungs.

I have never liked thinking about my own death. But I've considered it enough to know I hope I go down singing, or at least speaking or thinking, something about Jesus. 

I suppose that is why I found myself sobbing on an airplane while reading Margaret Guenther's The Practice of Prayer. In one section, Guenther discusses the Eastern Christian discipline of continuously repeating the Jesus Prayer: "Lord Jesus Christ, Son of God, have mercy on me, a sinner." She reports her own efforts to incorporate the practice into her daily life, even sizing up the logs she chops for firewood by the number of Jesus Prayers she'll likely get through before they are cut.

I love the idea of having such truth-giving words ingrained into my routine. But here's Guenther's line that really got to me: "I hope that by imprinting [the Jesus Prayer] on my subconscious, it will be with me for the rest of my life, especially at the end, when other words will perhaps be lost to me."

Guenther, a former professor at General Theological Seminary in New York, is an accomplished and educated woman. Yet she is humble and practical enough to do what she can to prepare for her own death—and for the possibility that even before her death, her mind might fade into dementia. In a culture consumed with denying mortality, here is a woman who plans for it, in a way that affects the minutiae of her life now.

Remembering our own mortality helps reorder our priorities; a race toward a finish line has a different sense of urgency than a jog around the block.

Many early Christian communities encouraged believers to engage in the spiritual discipline of considering their own deaths—not in order to create morbid fear, but to put this life in the proper perspective. Memento mori, medieval monks would say to each other in the hallways. "Remember your mortality," or, more literally, "Remember you will die."

Death unaddressed is the bogeyman in the basement; it keeps us looking over our shoulders and holds us back from entering joyously into the days we are given. But death dragged out from the shadows and held up to the light of the gospel not only loses its sting, it becomes an essential reminder to wisely use the life we have.

When we remember the mortality of those around us, they become more valuable to us. Madeleine L'Engle once noted that when people die, it is the sins of omission, rather than the sins of commission, that haunt us. "If only I had called more," we lament. Remembering a loved one's death before it happens can spur us into the sort of action we won't regret later.

And remembering our own mortality helps reorder our priorities; a race toward a finish line has a different sense of purpose and urgency than a jog around the block. When a believer acknowledges that he is headed toward death (tomorrow or in 50 years), he can stop expending the tremendous energy it takes to deny his mortality and start living into his eternal destiny, here and now. And he can be intentional about investing himself in the things he wants to be with him at the end, much the way Guenther seeks to make the Jesus Prayer a permanent part of her psyche.

I don't want to romanticize death. My friend Bernie calls it "the Great Gash," and I must confess that on the six-month anniversary of my father's passing, the hole left by him is still gaping. 

But though death hurts, it is not the end. Though we mourn, we do not mourn as those who have no hope. And so I offer my dread of death to the Author of Life, asking him to help me to number my days rightly. I don't know how many I've got, but I want to use every one of them to get the truth about who Jesus is—and who I am in him—more deeply ingrained.

That's why I'm teaching my kids "With Christ in the Vessel." We sing it at the top of our lungs

Prayer

We would appreciate any prayers you can muster for Marina's Mom, Elsa, who has been diagnosed with breast cancer.  She had surgery this past Friday and is recovering well. 

Thank you.




 

Bernard Nathanson, rest in peace

"Abortion is now a monster so unimaginably gargantuan that even to think of stuffing it back into its cage ... is ludicrous beyond words," he wrote. "Yet that is our charge -- a herculean endeavour. I am one of those who helped usher in this barbaric age."

Read the full article.

Why we fight....

Those who know me, know of my involvement in the pro-life movement. Reported in the news in the last few weeks has been a case out of the US involving an abortion clinic and members of the staff who have been arrested and charged with various counts. Babies were born alive after their abortion and were murdered with scissors.

No one really wants to claim any responsibility, and we have the pro-choice movement blaming pro-lifers for what happened. Despite the fact it was they who ignored the laws regulating such clinics, and allowed the clinic to operate without any accountability.

This story, and others like it, describe what is all too-common in the abortion industry...and why it is necessary for a pro-life movement to promote a culture of life.

National Abortion Federation implicated in Gosnell case; failed to report illegalities to authorities

Posted By Jill Stanek On January 20, 2011 @ 12:59 pm

The National Abortion Federation touts itself [2] as “the professional association of abortion providers in North America.”

NAF claims to have a membership of 400 abortion mills [3]. There is a screening process [4] to join. which abortionist Kermit Gosnell attempted in November 2009, “apparently, and astonishingly, the day after Karnamaya Mongar died,” according to a Grand Jury report released on January 20, which charged Gosnell and 9 accomplices with 8 counts of murder, including Mongar’s.

Upon receiving Gosnell’s application, an unnamed NAF evaluator assessed his Philadelphia mill, Women’s Medical Society, on December 14 and 15, 2009. According to the Grand Jury report, “It was the worst abortion clinic she had ever inspected,” and NAF denied Gosnell’s application.

Although initially hiding the fact, Gosnell eventually told the inspector about Mangor’s death.

But, according to the report, the NAF inspector “just never told anyone in authority about all the horrible, dangerous things she had seen.”

I submit that more than that, the NAF inspector admitted observing profuse illegalities she never reported either, such as nonphysicians giving sedation and open defiance of Pennsylvania’s 24-hr waiting period. She also noted several unsafe practices, such as not monitoring mothers after their abortions and leaving them unattended – overnight.

I submit that along with several Pennsylvania state agencies, NAF should also face charges of some sort. Following are excerpts about NAF from the Grand Jury report:

Despite his various efforts to fool her, the evaluator from NAF readily noted that records were not properly kept, that risks were not explained, that patients were not monitored, that equipment was not available, that anesthesia was misused….

A NAF quality assurance evaluator testified before the Grand Jury. She stated that NAF’s mission is to ensure safe, legal, and acceptable abortion care, and to promote health and justice for women….

In preparation for NAF’s visit, Latosha Lewis said that Gosnell and his wife frantically cleaned the facility. The doctor bought new lounge chairs to replace the bloody ones that were there, although by February 18, 2010, they were filthy again.

Despite these efforts, the NAF review did not go well. The first thing the evaluator noted when she arrived at 3801 Lancaster Avenue was the lack of an effective security system. Although the door was locked, when she rang the bell, no one answered. Even though she could not gain entry by ringing, she was able to walk right in when a man exited the clinic. Once inside, she found that the facility was packed with so much “stuff, kind of crowded and piled all over the place,” that she couldn’t find a space to put her small overnight bag. She found the facility’s layout confusing, and was concerned that patients could not find their way around it or out of it….

Read all of it here.

Are you resolved?

Ouch.

I’ve been thinking about what I can resolve to do differently. There’s plenty I could name, but it’s the resolve that gets you, isn’t it? There’s a scene, towards the end of The Untouchables, when Jim Malone (Sean Connery), his body riddled with bullets, wheezes at Eliot Ness (Kevin Costner) through blood bubbling up from his mouth: “What are you prepared to do?”

Malone doesn’t ask Ness what he feels like doing, or what he thinks he might do. He doesn’t care about emotions, or reasoned probabilities. He’s seeking resolve. What are you prepared to do?

It’s worth asking ourselves, each of us alone, in the lonely night’s dark when bluster and delusion have left us, when the hard truths of our lives press in close as shadows. What are you prepared to do?

There’s so much I need to do, and so little I feel prepared to do, but those sad truths are neither here nor there. The question isn’t about what we aim to accomplish, so much as it is about what we strive for with everything that’s good within us.

This is liberating, if you think about it. You can’t control outcomes, after all. You can’t make your son stop drinking or your husband stop cheating or your daughter stop cutting herself. You can’t make the boys in the upstairs office give you that promotion, or guarantee that all your hard-earned savings won’t get poured down the drain by some cabal of feckless politicians, all of them blaming one another while they look to you to replenish the till.

You can’t control outcomes, but you can control your actions. You can be kind to your mother even if she no longer recognizes your face. You can pray five times a day — ten if you need to, hour by hour if you’re like me — for a temporary release from the grip of self-centeredness. You can be sure to tell each of your children every day this year that you love him. Every day. Look him in the eyes and say it.

Nothing you or I do guarantees a happy ending. The world can take everything from us like that. But each of us decides what his next step will be, and the step after that.

What are you prepared to do?

A good read.

Careful what you pray for

“You that cry out so loud for right and justice,
Do you mean justice? deed and word and thought
Judges in yourselves by one eternal measure
Of absolute and incorruptible right?
I do not think so. When you call for justice
You would make God your bailiff, to collect
Your legal dues; but not your almoner,
Still less your judge. Alas! you cannot bend
God to your service; yet He may hear prayers–
Sometimes His vengeance is a granted prayer,
When a corrupt heart gains its whole desire
And finds itself in Hell. Children, take heed,
And do not pray for justice; you might get it.”

Dorothy Sayers, “The Just Vengeance,” in Four Sacred Plays

A Franciscan benediction

May God bless you with discomfort
At easy answers, half-truths, and superficial relationships,
So that you may live deep within your heart.
May God bless you with anger
At injustice, oppression and exploitation of people,
So that you may work for justice, freedom and peace.
May God bless you with tears
To shed for those who suffer pain, rejection, hunger, and war,
So that you may reach out your hand to comfort them
And turn their pain into joy.
And may God bless you with enough foolishness
To believe that you can make a difference in the world,
So that you can do what others claim cannot be done
To bring justice and kindness to all our children and the poor.
Amen”

A genocide by any other name....

From Anne Appelbaum’s review of Timothy Snyder’s Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin:

“As the Stanford historian Norman Naimark explains in Stalin’s Genocides, the UN’s definition of genocide was deliberately narrow: ‘Acts committed with the intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group.’ This was because Soviet diplomats had demanded the exclusion of any reference to social, economic, and political groups. Had they left these categories in, prosecution of the USSR for the murder of aristocrats (a social group), kulaks (an economic group), or Trotskyites (a political group) would have been possible.

. . . this discussion of the proper use of the word has also been dogged by politics from the beginning. The reluctance of intellectuals on the left to condemn communism; the fact that Stalin was allied with Roosevelt and Churchill; the existence of German historians who tried to downplay the significance of the Holocaust by comparing it to Soviet crimes; all of that meant that, until recently, it was politically incorrect in the West to admit that we defeated one genocidal dictator with the help of another. Only now, with the publication of so much material from Soviet and Central European archives, has the extent of the Soviet Union’s mass murders become better known in the West. In recent years, some in the former Soviet sphere of influence—most notably in the Baltic states and Ukraine—have begun to use the word ‘genocide’ in legal documents to describe the Soviet Union’s mass killings too.”

Read the rest here.
 Via

Wow....

This is one of the new attractions to our family.  Ashton Pavel Gerk, son of David and Sharan Gerk.

His smile would just melt your heart.

Today, give me your eyes....

On not banishing the dark with a book burning

Written by Tony Woodlief

September 10, 1:09 PM 

World Magazine

There are plenty of good reasons not to burn a Quran, but I’m not hearing them in the international uproar over a Pentecostal preacher’s call for a “Burn the Quran Day.” Many people are afraid that the brouhaha will incite hardcore Muslims to react in brutal violence, as if this is distinguishable from what we normally see, as if ordinarily it’s Methodists beheading people and blowing up school buses and executing missionaries. Whatever one’s point of view about civility and respect for other religions, I’m a little tired of tiptoeing around the sensitive feelings of delusional thugs who want to burn down Western civilization in service to a bloodthirsty cult.
 

In addition to fear of Muslim brutality is the belief, by many well-meaning Christians, that the faith of Muslims should be respected, that we should have an inclusive approach to faith in God, even as we disagree on the particulars. It’s a fine line, engaging someone without affirming some deeply wrong conviction that he holds. But my sense is that too many Christians advocating interfaith dialogue are keen on any civil discussion that does not involve the very heart of the matter, the irreconcilable difference, which is that one does not reach the doorway to Heaven, which is to say Jesus Christ, by way of whatever cobbled-together directions have been attributed to Muhammad.

I think a Christian ought not burn a Quran, not because it will incite violence, not because it will disrupt communion with infidels, and not even because doing so adds the waste of a match to what is already a waste of paper. The Christian ought not burn a Quran, it seems to me, simply because destruction and negation are the purview of the devil, not God. The kingdom of Heaven is not advanced by destroying the false but by embracing the true. Darkness is never erased; it is enlightened.

In contrast, the current turmoil serves the interests of all the wrong people. A publicity-seeker gets national attention. People already harboring hatred for Christianity and America get a fresh dose of righteous indignation. Journalists get a juicy story replete with eye-rolling at the rubes who call themselves Christians. The devil could hardly have cooked up something better.

Name-Calling

Andrew Klavan

Name-Calling

“Islamophobia”: the latest charge to try to stifle legitimate debate

27 August 2010 City Journal

One of the cleverest tricks of the cultural Left is demonizing perfectly reasonable actions and opinions by giving them sinister names. It is the logical go-to technique for those whose ideas have failed in every practical application but who nonetheless still dominate the media by which ideas are spread.

A favorite example of mine is the old feminist declaration that men “objectify” women when they respond to female beauty as nature decrees. This particular reframing was not successful over the long term for the same reason that health scares involving coffee have never caught on: no one was willing to give up the stimulant. A more tenacious variation of the same approach is the accusation that law enforcement officers practice “racial profiling,” which sounds as though police center their suspicions on one race over another out of simple bigotry or meanness. In fact, if criminals of a certain type or in a certain neighborhood tend to be of a specific race, then the proper term for “racial profiling” would be “good police work.” And though, fortunately for liberals and conservatives alike, police continue to do that good work, the evil-sounding sobriquet has forced them to waste a lot of time, effort, and money pretending they don’t.

Recently, in defending an imam’s proposal to build a triumphalist “Muslim Cultural Center” near Manhattan’s Ground Zero—where, we may remember, so many innocents were slaughtered in the name of Allah—the Left has outdone itself. Rather than engage in serious debate with the vast majority of New Yorkers and Americans who oppose the project, the mosque’s defenders have simply dubbed the opposing viewpoint “Islamophobia.” As ever when this naming device is used, the left-wing media seem to rally as one. Within the space of a single week, Time put the word on its cover, Maureen Dowd accused the entire nation of it in her column, and CBS News trotted out the charge in reporting on mosque opposition.

For anyone born with the gift of laughter, the term is absurd to the point of hilarity. A phobia, after all, is an irrational fear. Given that Islam is cancerous with violence in virtually every corner of the globe, given the oppressive and exclusionary nature of many Islamic governments, given the insidious Islamist inroads against long-held freedoms in western Europe, and given those aspects of sharia that seem, to an outsider at least, to prohibit democracy, free speech, and the fair treatment of the female half of our species, those who love peace and liberty would, in fact, be irrational not to harbor at least a measure of concern.

A religion is only a system of beliefs, and to say that all beliefs deserve equal respect or acceptance is to say that ideas have no moral weight, a patent absurdity. Because the human soul thirsts so for God, the sacred principle of individual liberty demands that religion be given wide latitude when it comes to internal mind-states, modes of worship, and the description of the metaphysical. But when it comes to the practical affairs of humankind, humankind may judge—and Islam, as the world stands now, has a lot to answer for.

Whether radical Islamic violence, sexism, religious bigotry, and triumphalism are the natural outgrowths of its dogma or a series of aberrations is a perfectly valid question. Likewise the question of Islamic intentions toward Western culture in general and, by extension, the intentions of those behind the Ground Zero Mosque proposal. By what outlandish moral logic does Imam Feisal Abdul Rauf call America an “accomplice to the crime” of 9/11? From whom will he acquire the $100 million required to build his center, and what will they receive in return? None of these questions will be answered by simply condemning as phobic those who bring them to the fore.

With a hostility toward Christianity second only to Dracula’s, the Left has no credibility on the subject of freedom of religion. In a representative moment in February 2006, liberalism’s flagship paper, the New York Times, refused to publish the controversial Danish cartoons of Mohammed in order to “refrain from gratuitous assaults on religious symbols.” The next day, it famously illustrated a story on the cartoons with an offensive image of the Virgin Mary smeared with dung. One wonders, therefore: Does the Left really cherish the rights of Islam, or is theirs but a short-sighted alliance with the enemy of their enemies?

Which is to say that perhaps opponents of the mosque should question the motives of those who question their motives. In any case, they should greet the designation of Islamophobia with the derision that it deserves.

Andrew Klavan is a contributing editor to City Journal. His new thriller, The Identity Man, is due out in November from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

Complete History Of The Soviet Union, Arranged To The Melody Of Tetris

Thoughts on Israel

I'm concerned.

How do I express what I see in the world?  The antisemitism that smacks of Nazism, with so few understanding and comprehending what is happening?

With no other country do we put the name of their nation and the words "right to exist" in the same sentence.

Breath of the Beast gets it:

It seems as though much of the world has the same problem with Israel and America today that Pope Urban VIII had with Galileo in 1632. Back then Galileo lost his liberty and died under house arrest. It is even more serious for Israel. But I am a little ahead of myself.

More here...very profound and disturbing.....

The Kingdom

“The Kingdom inevitably insults our sense of propriety: very simply it is filled with improper people, with improper backgrounds, with improper habits, improper manners, improper speech, and improper customs. The Kingdom bursts the wineskins of culture by embracing every tribe, race, and tongue.” Thomas Chalmers

Speaking at the BC Legislature

Well, on February 3, I travelled with my good friend John Hof to Victoria. I was a witness appearing before the "Special Committee to Review the Freedom of Information & Privacy Act".

Why you may ask? Well, censorship on the topic of abortion. In 2001, the BC Government passed a law that made one topic off-limits for those wanting information on abortion. Why? Well, I have another blog, Stop Abortion Censorship where I document the embarrassment that government experienced on this topic....the real reason they banned a subject. Sort of let's stop the debate by stopping the flow of information.

Yikes....shades of the Soviet Union!

The transcript of my talk can be read here. Of course, I'd love to debate the NDP on this topic....but....as one can guess....it's not something likely to happen....cowards.