Tim Cornelis
4th January 2013, 13:34
There is this Holocaust museum where you get a card of a child that was persecuted and you follow his or her story throughout the years, in the end you find if the person lived or died. This has a large emotional impact and shows effectively the horror of mass murder.
I initially thought of posting this as a role-playing game, with a similar intent. But that would have been too much effort for too little result. Something like this, where revleft-users decide where to go:
"It is 1933 when Hitler seizes power. You are a leading German communist who is now facing tough decisions. You can choose to remain in Germany for whatever reasons, you can flee into fascist-controlled Italy, or go into exile into the Soviet Union. All other countries are (near) impossible to enter."
What decisions you make would effect the outcome of your life: sent to a concentration camp, killed in a concentration camp, die in a carpet bombing, or survive.
I would have roughly applied historically accurate figures so as to not make this a story of fiction. If you had remained in Germany there was a 15.8% of being killed by the Nazis. If you had gone into exile to the Soviet Union there was a 12.7% of being killed, and a bigger chance you or your family member would have been tortured or sent to a Gulag camp.
In 1933, two stories were added, giving the hotel 300 rooms. The address, meanwhile, was changed to Gorky Street 10.[1] 1933 was also the year Adolf Hitler gained power with the Machtergreifung and soon began to arrest and imprison his political opponents, arresting communists and socialists by the thousands. German communists began to flee to the Soviet Union and the Hotel Lux began to fill with German exiles.[8]
In addition to party functionaries, there were advisors, translators and writers who came with their families. Employees were brought to the Comintern Central Committee's offices by bus.[9] The hotel became overcrowded and conditions were difficult. The hotel was continually plagued by rats;[1] the earliest reports of them were in 1921. There was hot water only twice a week, forcing people to shower in groups, as many as four people at a time. Communal kitchens for the use of residents cooked food next to boiling pots of diapers being sterilized. In spite of the conditions, initially, there was camaraderie among the residents.[9] Children played in the halls[1][3] and attended a German-language school, the Karl Liebknecht School, set up for the children of exiles.[10]
[edit]
Stalin's purges
In 1934, after the murder of Sergei Kirov, Joseph Stalin began a campaign of political repression and persecution to cleanse the Party of "enemies of the people".[11] Stalin viewed the foreign occupants of Hotel Lux as potential spies,[9] or as a Moscow newspaper assumed of Germans (and Japanese) in 1937, they were working actively on behalf of their own country.[12] By 1936, his Great Purge began to include the hotel's residents.[9] The hotel then gained a second name, that of "the golden cage of the Comintern" because many would like to have left, but could not while being investigated.[1][9] Between 1936 and 1938, many residents of the hotel were arrested and interrogated by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs).[1] Suspicion and betrayal created an atmosphere of fear. Arrests came in the middle of the night,[13] so that some residents slept in their clothes, others paced the floor, or played games of concentration to mask the stress.
An investigation or arrest was prompted more by the atmosphere of terror than by charges of wrongdoing, which were often baseless. Walter Laqueur later wrote of the period, "There was no rhyme or reason as to who was arrested and who was not, the security organs were given a plan to fulfill, a certain number of people were to be arrested in a certain region, and from this stage on it was more or less a matter of accident at whose door the NKVD (the secret police) emissaries would knock in the early hours of the morning."[14] The procedure was for the NKVD to knock, the accused was told to pack a small suitcase with a few things, get dressed and wait outside the door to be picked up and taken away. Then the NKVD returned to collect the accused and seal the door. One night, the NKVD knocked on the Langs' door and Franz Lang was told to get ready. Dutifully waiting outside his door to be picked up, the security police returned. "What are you doing standing around out here?", asked the NKVD. Lang replied that he'd been ordered to do so. "What's your room number?", asked the security officer. "Number 13." "We're only taking away the even numbers tonight!" Astonished, Lang went back to bed. Nor did the NKVD ever knock on his door again.[15]
In the morning, the doors of those arrested were sealed;[16][note 1] the wives and children had to move to other quarters and were ostracized as "enemies of the state".[9][note 2] The children of parents under investigation were placed in orphanages, where some died from illness and others rejected both their parents and their own German identity.[18] Some of the adults arrested were sent to a gulag or were executed. Those who came back were regarded with suspicion, as was the case with Herbert Wehner, who was taken away and returned twice. Such people were assumed to have betrayed others[1] under torture[11] or to save themselves. In Wehner's case, that was what happened.[9]
By 1938, in order to get upstairs in the hotel, a propusk was needed, a document that said one was authorized to get past the armed guard, standing in front of the elegant Art Nouveau elevator.[19] Even high-level members of the Comintern could not get past the guard without a propusk.[19]
The atmosphere affected the children. Rolf Schälike, who was a child at Hotel Lux, later wrote, "I grew up in Moscow, in the center of power, and state and non-state criminality, Gorky Street, Hotel Lux. It was the years 1938–1946. Around us too, there was juvenile violence. We played 'partisan and German fascists' in our Hotel Lux, and one kid in our group was hanged—for fun. He couldn't be revived again. There were frequent battles with iron bands with the kids from the neighboring building."[1]
Of the 1400 leading German communists, a total of 178 were killed in Stalin's purges, nearly all of them residents of Hotel Lux.[6] By comparison, the Nazis killed 222 of those 1400 leading German communists. Within the top leadership itself, there were 59 Politburo members between 1918 and 1945, six of whom were killed by Nazis and seven by the Stalinist purges.[6] The saying among the German communists was, "What the Gestapo left of the Communist Party of Germany, the NKWD picked up."[3] When Leon Trotsky was killed in August 1940, the purges at Hotel Lux stopped, bringing a brief respite to the exiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Lux
To all Marxist-Leninists who uphold the Soviet Union under Stalin; I hope you realise there was a big chance that you would have been killed, tortured, sent to a gulag, detained, or your family broken up if you had lived in that time period.
The Soviet Union was a period of slave labour, wage-slavery, oppression, terror, and exploitation; yet you pretend there was democracy and freedom. How anyone can uphold such a regime, besides 13 year old Tankies, is beyond me. How anyone can believe that in such an atmosphere of terror and persecution, workers' democracy could actually function properly is beyond me.
I initially thought of posting this as a role-playing game, with a similar intent. But that would have been too much effort for too little result. Something like this, where revleft-users decide where to go:
"It is 1933 when Hitler seizes power. You are a leading German communist who is now facing tough decisions. You can choose to remain in Germany for whatever reasons, you can flee into fascist-controlled Italy, or go into exile into the Soviet Union. All other countries are (near) impossible to enter."
What decisions you make would effect the outcome of your life: sent to a concentration camp, killed in a concentration camp, die in a carpet bombing, or survive.
I would have roughly applied historically accurate figures so as to not make this a story of fiction. If you had remained in Germany there was a 15.8% of being killed by the Nazis. If you had gone into exile to the Soviet Union there was a 12.7% of being killed, and a bigger chance you or your family member would have been tortured or sent to a Gulag camp.
In 1933, two stories were added, giving the hotel 300 rooms. The address, meanwhile, was changed to Gorky Street 10.[1] 1933 was also the year Adolf Hitler gained power with the Machtergreifung and soon began to arrest and imprison his political opponents, arresting communists and socialists by the thousands. German communists began to flee to the Soviet Union and the Hotel Lux began to fill with German exiles.[8]
In addition to party functionaries, there were advisors, translators and writers who came with their families. Employees were brought to the Comintern Central Committee's offices by bus.[9] The hotel became overcrowded and conditions were difficult. The hotel was continually plagued by rats;[1] the earliest reports of them were in 1921. There was hot water only twice a week, forcing people to shower in groups, as many as four people at a time. Communal kitchens for the use of residents cooked food next to boiling pots of diapers being sterilized. In spite of the conditions, initially, there was camaraderie among the residents.[9] Children played in the halls[1][3] and attended a German-language school, the Karl Liebknecht School, set up for the children of exiles.[10]
[edit]
Stalin's purges
In 1934, after the murder of Sergei Kirov, Joseph Stalin began a campaign of political repression and persecution to cleanse the Party of "enemies of the people".[11] Stalin viewed the foreign occupants of Hotel Lux as potential spies,[9] or as a Moscow newspaper assumed of Germans (and Japanese) in 1937, they were working actively on behalf of their own country.[12] By 1936, his Great Purge began to include the hotel's residents.[9] The hotel then gained a second name, that of "the golden cage of the Comintern" because many would like to have left, but could not while being investigated.[1][9] Between 1936 and 1938, many residents of the hotel were arrested and interrogated by the NKVD (People's Commissariat for Internal Affairs).[1] Suspicion and betrayal created an atmosphere of fear. Arrests came in the middle of the night,[13] so that some residents slept in their clothes, others paced the floor, or played games of concentration to mask the stress.
An investigation or arrest was prompted more by the atmosphere of terror than by charges of wrongdoing, which were often baseless. Walter Laqueur later wrote of the period, "There was no rhyme or reason as to who was arrested and who was not, the security organs were given a plan to fulfill, a certain number of people were to be arrested in a certain region, and from this stage on it was more or less a matter of accident at whose door the NKVD (the secret police) emissaries would knock in the early hours of the morning."[14] The procedure was for the NKVD to knock, the accused was told to pack a small suitcase with a few things, get dressed and wait outside the door to be picked up and taken away. Then the NKVD returned to collect the accused and seal the door. One night, the NKVD knocked on the Langs' door and Franz Lang was told to get ready. Dutifully waiting outside his door to be picked up, the security police returned. "What are you doing standing around out here?", asked the NKVD. Lang replied that he'd been ordered to do so. "What's your room number?", asked the security officer. "Number 13." "We're only taking away the even numbers tonight!" Astonished, Lang went back to bed. Nor did the NKVD ever knock on his door again.[15]
In the morning, the doors of those arrested were sealed;[16][note 1] the wives and children had to move to other quarters and were ostracized as "enemies of the state".[9][note 2] The children of parents under investigation were placed in orphanages, where some died from illness and others rejected both their parents and their own German identity.[18] Some of the adults arrested were sent to a gulag or were executed. Those who came back were regarded with suspicion, as was the case with Herbert Wehner, who was taken away and returned twice. Such people were assumed to have betrayed others[1] under torture[11] or to save themselves. In Wehner's case, that was what happened.[9]
By 1938, in order to get upstairs in the hotel, a propusk was needed, a document that said one was authorized to get past the armed guard, standing in front of the elegant Art Nouveau elevator.[19] Even high-level members of the Comintern could not get past the guard without a propusk.[19]
The atmosphere affected the children. Rolf Schälike, who was a child at Hotel Lux, later wrote, "I grew up in Moscow, in the center of power, and state and non-state criminality, Gorky Street, Hotel Lux. It was the years 1938–1946. Around us too, there was juvenile violence. We played 'partisan and German fascists' in our Hotel Lux, and one kid in our group was hanged—for fun. He couldn't be revived again. There were frequent battles with iron bands with the kids from the neighboring building."[1]
Of the 1400 leading German communists, a total of 178 were killed in Stalin's purges, nearly all of them residents of Hotel Lux.[6] By comparison, the Nazis killed 222 of those 1400 leading German communists. Within the top leadership itself, there were 59 Politburo members between 1918 and 1945, six of whom were killed by Nazis and seven by the Stalinist purges.[6] The saying among the German communists was, "What the Gestapo left of the Communist Party of Germany, the NKWD picked up."[3] When Leon Trotsky was killed in August 1940, the purges at Hotel Lux stopped, bringing a brief respite to the exiles.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hotel_Lux
To all Marxist-Leninists who uphold the Soviet Union under Stalin; I hope you realise there was a big chance that you would have been killed, tortured, sent to a gulag, detained, or your family broken up if you had lived in that time period.
The Soviet Union was a period of slave labour, wage-slavery, oppression, terror, and exploitation; yet you pretend there was democracy and freedom. How anyone can uphold such a regime, besides 13 year old Tankies, is beyond me. How anyone can believe that in such an atmosphere of terror and persecution, workers' democracy could actually function properly is beyond me.