Legacy Matters

Kingdom of Memory

When personal memoirs tell the truth and authoritative sources do not.

The most notorious case is that of Walter Duranty, the Moscow correspondent of the New York Times who won a Pulitzer award for his reports that we now know covered up some of the most infamous crimes of the Stalin era.

Here are some choice bits by one of the best known correspondents in the world of one of the best known newspapers in the world collected by Arnold Beichman in the Weekly Standard.

"There is no famine or actual starvation nor is there likely to be." 
--New York Times, Nov. 15, 1931, page 1
great
"Any report of a famine in Russia is today an exaggeration or malignant propaganda." 
--New York Times, August 23, 1933

At a time when Ukrainian peasants were dying at a rate of 25,000/day, Duranty when asked what he was going to write, remarked.

Nothing. What are a few million dead Russians in a situation like this? Quite unimportant. This is just an incident in the sweeping historical changes here. I think the entire matter is exaggerated.

Contrast that reporting with a Memoir of The Great Famine of 1933 by Maria D who writes at Aussie Girl.

Soon, the terrible, black specter of the Stalin created Famine-Genocide of l932-33 spread throughout the land.  And even though I was still quite young, I remember that frightening apparition of the famine very well.  Images that are seared in my memory forever -- hundreds -- thousands of people, their limbs and bellies grotesquely swollen from starvation -- the walking dead, the half-dead and the dead -- orphaned children wandering homeless and begging for food in the streets -- or simply dying in the gutters.  

In school during class a small boy suddenly pitched forward onto his desk and died -- I shall never forget the sound of his head hitting the desk -- and he wasn't the only one.  And the textbooks, newspapers and so-called "artistic literature" all around us overflowed with the slogan:  "We are grateful to Comrade Stalin for our happy childhood!"  What obscene and monstrous mockery! 

There is no greater authority than personal witness. Such witness is a gift to the world, not just a family. Elie Wiesel, great witness to the Holocaust, said

I decided to devote my life to telling the story because I felt that having survived I owe something to the dead. and anyone who does not remember betrays them again.
and

"That is my major preoccupation /memory, the kingdom of memory. I want to protect and enrich that kingdom, glorify that kingdom and serve it."

The Legacy Archives you create for yourself, your family and the world is your Kingdom of Memory. Preserve your kingdom.