Portrait of Power: 'The Memoirs of Hadrian'
Marguerite Yourcenar's novel "The Memoirs of Hadrian" is a plotless masterpiece that captivates readers with the quality of the emperor's thought and powers of observation. online.wsj.com |
Video, British Pathé archive: Ingrid Bergman introduces her newborn twins to the press
Ingrid Bergman and husband Roberto Rossellini show off their newly born twins - one of whom is Isabella Rossellini - in ParisThis video has no sound guardian.co.uk |
Badly burned Texas man waits for face transplant
By JAMIE STENGLE 2010-10-19T15:26:06ZFORT WORTH, Texas (AP) -- Dallas C. Wiens wants to be able to smile, to smell the rain, to feel his 3-year-old daughter's kisses.... hosted.ap.org |
Iran to Pare Food, Gas Subsidies
As international sanctions against Iran bite, President Ahmadinejad has taken initial steps to remove subsidies of key products from wheat and sugar to gasoline, a move U.S. officials believe could destabilize his government. online.wsj.com |
Letters: Momentous admission on Katyn massacre
While I applaud the publication of your article (Russia blames Stalin for Katyn massacre, 27 November), I would like to point out one omission. You write that "21,768 officers, doctors, policemen and other public servants" were shot in total, but fail to mention that besides officers it was mostly Catholic priests, representatives of Polish "intelligentsia", as well as members of the Polish nobility, who were the main targets of this form of ethnic cleansing. Soviet "class engineering" regarded these groups as the main obstacles to the creation of a new society of the liberated "homo sovieticus". As potential troublemakers, with 20 years of historical evidence in the form of Polish independence to "justify" such a verdict for any dictator, they had to be killed.Hitler and his henchmen were committing similar operations in German-occupied western Poland with only one difference to note: for Polish Slavs in the German "Generalprotektorat" there was no hope of "rebirth" into a Soviet-styled new society: as "Untermenschen" they were doomed.Dr Sascha-Dominik BachmannUniversity of Portsmouth• Russia's blaming Stalin for the Katyn massacre may be "symbolic" but, after 70 years of denial, Russia's admission of responsibility is momentous. However, this atrocity has obscured other appalling acts of inhumanity – notably the deportation of many thousands from eastern Poland, the men to almost certain death in Siberian salt mines, the women to forced labour on collective farms. One of these was my children's grandmother, whose first husband was murdered at Katyn. Isn't it time the UK government admitted its collusion in Soviet denials through excluding from the Armistice Day memorial the refugee Polish war veterans who fought to defend Britain, and by stalling attempts by Polish refugees to erect a memorial to Katyn in 1972?Sarah HuttonAberystwyth, CeredigionRussiaJoseph StalinPolandguardian.co.uk © Guardian News & Media Limited 2010 | Use of this content is subject to our Terms & Conditions | More Feeds guardian.co.uk |