Warsaw Ghetto: A survivor's taleBy Monica Whitlock
BBC World Service
Janina Dawidowicz was a nine-year-old girl when World War II engulfed Poland. As Jews, she and her family were soon driven into the Warsaw Ghetto, but she later escaped and remains one of its few survivors.
The extermination of the Jews of Poland began 70 years ago.
On the morning of 22 July 1942, Nazi soldiers marched the first group of 6,000 Jews held in the Warsaw Ghetto to the railway sidings, the Umshlag Platz, and put them on trains to the Treblinka gas facility.
Janina Dawidowicz, born in 1930, is one of the few people who lived in the ghetto and survived. She recalls the posters going up, ordering residents to report to the Umshlag Platz at 11 o'clock. Any one disobeying would be shot.
Many people, she says, lined up willingly. The Germans told residents that they were being sent to labour camps in eastern Poland where they could escape the misery. What is more, there would be handouts of free food.
"People were offered, I think, two loaves of bread, some margarine or some sugar if they reported to Umshlag Platz. Nobody could imagine that you were going straight into a gas chamber."
The first to go were those with the least power to resist - the old, the ill and the under-12s.
They included, from Janina's apartment, a fragile young woman called Rachel. She had once shown 11-year-old Janina her carefully-stored wedding outfit - a satin skirt and white blouse. When Rachel did not come home and Janina found her trousseau missing, she understood where Rachel had gone.
"Our landlord and landlady went next. They took all their kitchen stuff - pots and pans, large bundles tied up in a sheet, back and front, they could hardly walk. But they went. They waved goodbye and promised to write when they arrived in the East.''
The ghetto had been created as a holding pen for Jews in November 1940. The large Jewish population of Warsaw - a third of the city - was confined to a tiny area, where they were walled in.
They were joined by tens of thousands of Jews from other parts of Poland, Hungary and other German-occupied countries.
"You heard every language in the street," remembers Janina. "Yiddish, Polish, Hungarian, German."
Janina and her well-to-do family came from the city of Kalicz, near the German border.
"I was an only child watched over very carefully by a nanny - frightfully well brought up - white gloves to play in the park! My mother had been to finishing school in Zurich... she could not boil an egg when the war started."
Janina and her parents squeezed into a tiny room, so damp that "I could write sums on the wall", and the sheets had to be dried before bedtime. They cooked on sawdust between two bricks, and fetched water from a communal tap. Food was bread mixed with sawdust and potatoes, rationed to 108 calories per day.
Janina's cousin Rosa had a lively toddler, who slowly starved to death. Like thousands of ghetto children, Cousin Rosa's little boy stopped walking, shriveled and died.
Desperate for a wage, Janina's father Marek got a job in the Jewish Law and Order service - the Jewish police.
The service was often reviled as a tool of Nazi policy, along with the Jewish administration. But at the time, the job seemed to hold out the best chance of keeping the family alive until the end of the war. Marek escorted cartloads of rubble out of the ghetto, and smuggled in small amounts of food.
Families tried fiercely to maintain a semblance of ordinary life between 1940 and 1942.
There were tremendous efforts to run community soup kitchens and look after orphans whose parents had starved to death, or died of the diseases that raged in the ghetto.
Many children like Janina attended illegal schools, risking instant execution for teachers and pupils if discovered.
There were choirs, physics lectures and cabaret shows to raise money for social services. Classes were held in every conceivable skill from cookery to paper-flower making.
The last family summer holiday was in 1939 (Janina is far left)
A symphony orchestra played at the theatre, complete with the stars of the music that all Warsaw had danced to before the war.
The Polish record company, Electro-Syrena, had been Jewish-owned and had produced hundreds of hits before 1939. Now, musicians and technicians alike lived in the ghetto - jazz men like the Gold brothers, Henryk and Artur, who'd run the famous Adria night club.
All they had to do was outlast the war, people told themselves, and life would continue - perhaps not as before, but at least in some form.
"My mother, my grandmother would say: 'Oh, we need new curtains in the living room,'" Janina remembers.
"The carpets! We'll get Sophie and Stephanie in to give us a hand. No-one believed it would go on. France had fallen, but there was England and the USSR and America - there was a whole world. Of course it was going to end."
At the time, it was a reasonable wager. It was not until the autumn of 1941 and the German failure to march victoriously through the Soviet Union, that Nazi policy moved from the mass shooting of European Jews to comprehensive extermination.
Through July and August 1942, another 6,000 were sent from the ghetto to Treblinka each day.
By the end of the summer, more than a quarter of a million were gone, dead within hours of arrival at Treblinka.
Janina, as a policeman's daughter, was one of the few children alive.
"Our whole block of flats was empty. The father of the twins living above us threw himself out of the window when he came home and didn't find the children."
Janina's aunt was taken, then her grandparents. Then the police began being rounded up.
In the last weeks of the ghetto, in the winter of 1942, Janina's parents managed to smuggle her out to Christian Warsaw. As her father had police papers, he was allowed to escort lorries through the gates, so she slipped out with him.
In Warsaw, she was kept hidden by Catholic nuns, changing her name and concealing her identity.
Her parents stayed behind. She never saw them again. Janina thinks her father died in the Majdanek extermination camp. She does not know how or where her mother was killed.
After the war, Janina found one uncle. She returned to Kaliscz, hoping someone else might reappear. She waited for over a year before giving up.
After two years in a children's home, Janina sailed in a ship full of emigrants to start a new life in Melbourne, Australia, where she got a job in a factory. It was in Australia that she managed, finally, to resume her education, and qualified as a social worker.
Homesick for Europe, she moved to London in 1958, where she began to write down her experiences in order to make sense of her life. She became a writer and translator, and has lived in London ever since.
Janina's autobiography, A Square of Sky, is written under her pen name of Janina David
Saturday, July 21, 2012
WWI and Franco-German ties in 2012
REIMS, France: France and Germany marked 50 years of reconciliation on Sunday but the vandalism of German war graves cast a shadow as their leaders sought more unity to tackle the euro debt crisis.
The desecration of the graves of 51 German soldiers killed during World War I came on the eve of the highly symbolic meeting in Reims in northern France, a region scarred by centuries of war with Germany.
French President Francois Hollande immediately launched into damage control telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others gathered in the cathedral at Rheims that "no obscure force and even less stupidity can alter the deep Franco-German friendship.
"Our friendship inspires Europe," he said. "We don't want to preach. We just want to give examples to be followed.
"Madam Chancellor, I propose from our side to open and even cross a new door together that will lead to even closer friendship between our two nations."
The two leaders reviewed troops from their countries, exchanged kisses on the cheeks in greeting, and called each other "dear" Angela and Francois in stark contrast to earlier more formal, and even frosty, meetings.
The main event at Rheims cathedral, a UNESCO world heritage site extensively damaged by German bombing during World War I, was attended by a hundreds-strong cheering crowd.
Merkel's message was more direct.
"Europe is more than just a currency, and the Franco-German relationship is vital in this regard, it has deeply marked European unification," she said.
At the same time she stressed that others were welcome to join in, echoing Hollande who is seeking closer ties with Italy and Spain.
"We must now put finishing touches on a political level of the economic and monetary union, it's a Herculean task but Europe is up to it," she said, ending her speech with "Long live Franco-German friendship" in both languages.
They also unveiled a plaque in German commemorating the "Mass for peace" before visiting an exhibition in the nearby Tau palace.
Hollande, speaking to reporters after the ceremony, rejected the need for a super "Mr Euro" with beefed up powers, saying: "We are mobilised to preserve, nurture and strengthen the euro.
"We will have a good solution once Mr Juncker ends his mandate, a Franco-German solution," he said, referring to Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker who has steered the Eurogroup since 2005. His current term ends on July 17.
The Franco-German post-war reconciliation was symbolically achieved in 1962 by then French president Charles de Gaulle and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
The eurozone's two top economies have worked closely in recent years as they scramble to solve the debt crisis hammering the single currency. Eurozone finance ministers will meet Monday in Brussels to build on measures agreed last month to tame the debt crisis.
Observers are watching to see how the relationship develops between the new French president, a centre-left advocate of growth, and Merkel, a centre-right defender of austerity.
The two have locked horns on resolving the crisis with Hollande advocating more spending to boost growth - a position winning over more adherents in Europe - while Merkel touts serious belt-tightening and more fiscal control.
Hollande told reporters that the relationship was developing well.
"Even though we belong to different political traditions, Mrs Merkel and I share the same values with regard to the EU," he said. "Our relations are good and there's no need to try to too hard."
On the eve of the watershed event, the graves of 51 World War I German soldiers were found desecrated at a military cemetery some 40 kilometres east of Reims.
A local prosecutor said the grave markers had probably been kicked out at the Saint-Etienne-a-Arnes cemetery, which contains the graves of some 12,000 World War I soldiers - the majority of them German.
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls strongly condemned the vandalism saying: "An enquiry is under way and all means are being employed to find those responsible for this terrible desecration."
According to initial information, the wooden crosses had been pulled up and some used for a camp fire. Several beer bottles were found nearby.
It was not immediately possible to say whether this was a "determined action" or just the work of "irresponsible people", a spokesman at the local prefecture said, adding there were no signs of any political message.
Reims was occupied by the Prussians in 1870, devastated by bombings during World War I, and was the city where on May 7, 1945, US general Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Allies received the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht.
www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1212373/1/.html
The desecration of the graves of 51 German soldiers killed during World War I came on the eve of the highly symbolic meeting in Reims in northern France, a region scarred by centuries of war with Germany.
French President Francois Hollande immediately launched into damage control telling German Chancellor Angela Merkel and others gathered in the cathedral at Rheims that "no obscure force and even less stupidity can alter the deep Franco-German friendship.
"Our friendship inspires Europe," he said. "We don't want to preach. We just want to give examples to be followed.
"Madam Chancellor, I propose from our side to open and even cross a new door together that will lead to even closer friendship between our two nations."
The two leaders reviewed troops from their countries, exchanged kisses on the cheeks in greeting, and called each other "dear" Angela and Francois in stark contrast to earlier more formal, and even frosty, meetings.
The main event at Rheims cathedral, a UNESCO world heritage site extensively damaged by German bombing during World War I, was attended by a hundreds-strong cheering crowd.
Merkel's message was more direct.
"Europe is more than just a currency, and the Franco-German relationship is vital in this regard, it has deeply marked European unification," she said.
At the same time she stressed that others were welcome to join in, echoing Hollande who is seeking closer ties with Italy and Spain.
"We must now put finishing touches on a political level of the economic and monetary union, it's a Herculean task but Europe is up to it," she said, ending her speech with "Long live Franco-German friendship" in both languages.
They also unveiled a plaque in German commemorating the "Mass for peace" before visiting an exhibition in the nearby Tau palace.
Hollande, speaking to reporters after the ceremony, rejected the need for a super "Mr Euro" with beefed up powers, saying: "We are mobilised to preserve, nurture and strengthen the euro.
"We will have a good solution once Mr Juncker ends his mandate, a Franco-German solution," he said, referring to Luxembourg Prime Minister Jean-Claude Juncker who has steered the Eurogroup since 2005. His current term ends on July 17.
The Franco-German post-war reconciliation was symbolically achieved in 1962 by then French president Charles de Gaulle and German chancellor Konrad Adenauer.
The eurozone's two top economies have worked closely in recent years as they scramble to solve the debt crisis hammering the single currency. Eurozone finance ministers will meet Monday in Brussels to build on measures agreed last month to tame the debt crisis.
Observers are watching to see how the relationship develops between the new French president, a centre-left advocate of growth, and Merkel, a centre-right defender of austerity.
The two have locked horns on resolving the crisis with Hollande advocating more spending to boost growth - a position winning over more adherents in Europe - while Merkel touts serious belt-tightening and more fiscal control.
Hollande told reporters that the relationship was developing well.
"Even though we belong to different political traditions, Mrs Merkel and I share the same values with regard to the EU," he said. "Our relations are good and there's no need to try to too hard."
On the eve of the watershed event, the graves of 51 World War I German soldiers were found desecrated at a military cemetery some 40 kilometres east of Reims.
A local prosecutor said the grave markers had probably been kicked out at the Saint-Etienne-a-Arnes cemetery, which contains the graves of some 12,000 World War I soldiers - the majority of them German.
French Interior Minister Manuel Valls strongly condemned the vandalism saying: "An enquiry is under way and all means are being employed to find those responsible for this terrible desecration."
According to initial information, the wooden crosses had been pulled up and some used for a camp fire. Several beer bottles were found nearby.
It was not immediately possible to say whether this was a "determined action" or just the work of "irresponsible people", a spokesman at the local prefecture said, adding there were no signs of any political message.
Reims was occupied by the Prussians in 1870, devastated by bombings during World War I, and was the city where on May 7, 1945, US general Dwight D. Eisenhower and the Allies received the unconditional surrender of the German Wehrmacht.
www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/1212373/1/.html
Monday, June 18, 2012
France's war in Algeria explored in Paris exhibitionBy Hugh Schofield
BBC News, Paris
16 Jun 2012
On the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence, it might seem an odd choice to mount an exhibition marking 130 years of French colonial rule over the country.
But at the Army Museum at the Invalides in Paris, that is exactly what they have done.
Algeria 1830-1962 is a look back over France's long military presence there.
It starts with the arrival of an invading force at Sidi-Farruch in June 1830, and ends with the ignominious post-independence pull-out.
Visitors are treated to historic relics such as the ceremonial keys to the city of Algiers and the spurs of rebel leader AbdelKader.
But by far the greatest interest lies in the second part of the exhibition, which deals exclusively with the eight-year war of independence.
'Very sensitive questions'
Fortunately, this is no tub-thumping homage to "our-men-in-khaki" of the kind normally associated with military museums.
On the contrary, it is an honest attempt to understand a traumatic period of history which affected millions of people in sharply different ways.
"Our conception was to place the Algeria war in its long-term context," said Colonel Christophe Bertrand, the exhibition's curator.
"Obviously the emphasis is on the last eight years of France's presence, but a lot of what went on in the war can only be explained by what happened before.
"The story we tell is not one of brave paratroopers fighting nasty fellagha [bandits]. It is a story punctuated by phases of terrible violence, in which it is impossible to avoid some very sensitive questions."
The Algeria war began with a series of bomb attacks carried out by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in November 1954.
Since 1881 the country had been administered (unlike Morocco and Tunisia) as an integral part of France, with departments, communes and French place-names like Philippeville and Oran.
There were also around one million European settlers - not just French but also Italians, Spanish and Maltese - and a large indigenous community of Jews.
The war passed through various stages
a) helicopter-borne raids on the rural maquis [insurgents] of FLN's armed wing, the National Liberation Army (ALN)
b) sealing off the borders with Tunisia and Morocco
c) the so-called battle of Algiers against urban bomb-planters
Then came the Challe offensive of 1959 which effectively finished the ALN as a fighting force, and the hearts-and-minds campaign of the Constantine Plan which took army doctors and teachers out into the remote countryside.
For many historians, the irony is that, from a purely military point of view, the French army won.
But by the end of the 1950s, military victory had ceased to count.
Thousands dead
To Gen Charles de Gaulle - who took power in 1958 - it was obvious that the vast majority of Algerians supported national independence, while mainland French simply wanted the sorry story to end.
Talks with the FLN began as early as June 1960, prompting an angry backlash by the European settlers. There were riots in Algiers, and in 1961 part of the army there staged an unsuccessful military coup.
Peace was signed at Evian in March 1962. Independence officially arrived on 5 July, though it is hard to pinpoint one day in what was in fact a long and often violent process.
One million settlers - the pieds-noirs - were uprooted and transported to France.
And a far worse fate lay in store for the tens of thousands of Algerians who had fought on the side of France. Some 30,000 harkis - and possibly many more - were massacred by the new Algerian authorities.
Lucky Algerian loyalists made it to France, though once there the indifference towards them shown by de Gaulle's government was a bewildering humiliation.
Today arguments rage over casualty figures for the war, but here are the numbers offered in a recent book by British historian Martin Evans, Algeria - France's Undeclared War
- Algerian fighters killed by French army: 140,000
- Algerian civilians killed in French military operations: 60,000
- Algerians killed by FLN: 37,000
- Harkis killed at end of war: 30,000 (though some say 150,000)
- French troops killed in action: 15,500
- Settlers killed in FLN terrorism: 2,800
- Victims (mainly Algerian) of settler terrorism in 1962: 1,700
- All this is told in the exhibition, which draws on the army's own extensive film archives as well as photographs, uniforms, weapons and captured FLN documents.
A Disaster
There is no hiding the FLN's use of terrorism and murder to force Algerians to drop their allegiance to the French.
But nor does the museum avoid the vexed issue of France's own use of torture, which is now known to have been routine.
Previously unpublished photographs show a man trussed up and slung beneath a wooden bar being beaten on the soles of his feet. In another, French officers grip a prisoner by the throat
"If we had, we would have completely lost our credibility."
Testament to the exhibition's success is that it is drawing in visitors of all backgrounds. Not all are happy, but they are certainly fascinated.
One pied-noir, now in his 80s, was angry at the portrayal of the war: "Why rake it all up again? It was a disaster, and now look at the mess the Algerian government has made of the country."
There are also many young Algerians, keen to see a version of their history outside their official textbooks, and French army veterans, from among 1.4 million conscripts who saw service in the war.
"There is no one truth about the Algeria war," said the museum's director Gen Christian Baptiste.
"There are many truths, and we have done our best to reflect all of them.
"The difficulty is that even after 50 years the suffering is still very raw. In many cases, the pain has been handed down from one generation to the next."
'Condemned to co-exist'
The past does indeed still cast a shadow over France's relationship with Algeria. Though the two countries are bound together by a web of human and economic ties, somehow the suspicion never disappears.
In recent years an attempt to draw up a Treaty of Friendship has come to nothing, largely because of Algeria's insistence that France first commit some act of official contrition.
But such an act is most unlikely to emerge.
"Acts of repentance for specific events are one thing but a general statement of repentance is meaningless," said historian Maurice Vaisse.
"Algeria was part of the global historical phenomenon of colonialism. Of course France profited greatly from it and there were great injustices, but by the time France left, Algeria was a developed country with elements of a modern economy.
"Many terrible things happened, but they were also committed on the Algerian side."
For historian Benjamin Stora, France and Algeria are "condemned to co-exist".
"But it is true that the question of memory is a problem," he adds.
"They say that memory divides. Only history heals. That is why it is the task of historians and politicians to tell the full story - from all sides."
The Army Museum's exhibition is part of that process.
BBC News, Paris
16 Jun 2012
On the 50th anniversary of Algerian independence, it might seem an odd choice to mount an exhibition marking 130 years of French colonial rule over the country.
But at the Army Museum at the Invalides in Paris, that is exactly what they have done.
Algeria 1830-1962 is a look back over France's long military presence there.
It starts with the arrival of an invading force at Sidi-Farruch in June 1830, and ends with the ignominious post-independence pull-out.
Visitors are treated to historic relics such as the ceremonial keys to the city of Algiers and the spurs of rebel leader AbdelKader.
But by far the greatest interest lies in the second part of the exhibition, which deals exclusively with the eight-year war of independence.
'Very sensitive questions'
Fortunately, this is no tub-thumping homage to "our-men-in-khaki" of the kind normally associated with military museums.
On the contrary, it is an honest attempt to understand a traumatic period of history which affected millions of people in sharply different ways.
"Our conception was to place the Algeria war in its long-term context," said Colonel Christophe Bertrand, the exhibition's curator.
"Obviously the emphasis is on the last eight years of France's presence, but a lot of what went on in the war can only be explained by what happened before.
"The story we tell is not one of brave paratroopers fighting nasty fellagha [bandits]. It is a story punctuated by phases of terrible violence, in which it is impossible to avoid some very sensitive questions."
The Algeria war began with a series of bomb attacks carried out by the National Liberation Front (FLN) in November 1954.
Since 1881 the country had been administered (unlike Morocco and Tunisia) as an integral part of France, with departments, communes and French place-names like Philippeville and Oran.
There were also around one million European settlers - not just French but also Italians, Spanish and Maltese - and a large indigenous community of Jews.
The war passed through various stages
a) helicopter-borne raids on the rural maquis [insurgents] of FLN's armed wing, the National Liberation Army (ALN)
b) sealing off the borders with Tunisia and Morocco
c) the so-called battle of Algiers against urban bomb-planters
Then came the Challe offensive of 1959 which effectively finished the ALN as a fighting force, and the hearts-and-minds campaign of the Constantine Plan which took army doctors and teachers out into the remote countryside.
For many historians, the irony is that, from a purely military point of view, the French army won.
But by the end of the 1950s, military victory had ceased to count.
Thousands dead
To Gen Charles de Gaulle - who took power in 1958 - it was obvious that the vast majority of Algerians supported national independence, while mainland French simply wanted the sorry story to end.
Talks with the FLN began as early as June 1960, prompting an angry backlash by the European settlers. There were riots in Algiers, and in 1961 part of the army there staged an unsuccessful military coup.
Peace was signed at Evian in March 1962. Independence officially arrived on 5 July, though it is hard to pinpoint one day in what was in fact a long and often violent process.
One million settlers - the pieds-noirs - were uprooted and transported to France.
And a far worse fate lay in store for the tens of thousands of Algerians who had fought on the side of France. Some 30,000 harkis - and possibly many more - were massacred by the new Algerian authorities.
Lucky Algerian loyalists made it to France, though once there the indifference towards them shown by de Gaulle's government was a bewildering humiliation.
Today arguments rage over casualty figures for the war, but here are the numbers offered in a recent book by British historian Martin Evans, Algeria - France's Undeclared War
- Algerian fighters killed by French army: 140,000
- Algerian civilians killed in French military operations: 60,000
- Algerians killed by FLN: 37,000
- Harkis killed at end of war: 30,000 (though some say 150,000)
- French troops killed in action: 15,500
- Settlers killed in FLN terrorism: 2,800
- Victims (mainly Algerian) of settler terrorism in 1962: 1,700
- All this is told in the exhibition, which draws on the army's own extensive film archives as well as photographs, uniforms, weapons and captured FLN documents.
A Disaster
There is no hiding the FLN's use of terrorism and murder to force Algerians to drop their allegiance to the French.
But nor does the museum avoid the vexed issue of France's own use of torture, which is now known to have been routine.
Previously unpublished photographs show a man trussed up and slung beneath a wooden bar being beaten on the soles of his feet. In another, French officers grip a prisoner by the throat
"If we had, we would have completely lost our credibility."
Testament to the exhibition's success is that it is drawing in visitors of all backgrounds. Not all are happy, but they are certainly fascinated.
One pied-noir, now in his 80s, was angry at the portrayal of the war: "Why rake it all up again? It was a disaster, and now look at the mess the Algerian government has made of the country."
There are also many young Algerians, keen to see a version of their history outside their official textbooks, and French army veterans, from among 1.4 million conscripts who saw service in the war.
"There is no one truth about the Algeria war," said the museum's director Gen Christian Baptiste.
"There are many truths, and we have done our best to reflect all of them.
"The difficulty is that even after 50 years the suffering is still very raw. In many cases, the pain has been handed down from one generation to the next."
'Condemned to co-exist'
The past does indeed still cast a shadow over France's relationship with Algeria. Though the two countries are bound together by a web of human and economic ties, somehow the suspicion never disappears.
In recent years an attempt to draw up a Treaty of Friendship has come to nothing, largely because of Algeria's insistence that France first commit some act of official contrition.
But such an act is most unlikely to emerge.
"Acts of repentance for specific events are one thing but a general statement of repentance is meaningless," said historian Maurice Vaisse.
"Algeria was part of the global historical phenomenon of colonialism. Of course France profited greatly from it and there were great injustices, but by the time France left, Algeria was a developed country with elements of a modern economy.
"Many terrible things happened, but they were also committed on the Algerian side."
For historian Benjamin Stora, France and Algeria are "condemned to co-exist".
"But it is true that the question of memory is a problem," he adds.
"They say that memory divides. Only history heals. That is why it is the task of historians and politicians to tell the full story - from all sides."
The Army Museum's exhibition is part of that process.
Saturday, June 9, 2012
Tiananmen revisited - interview with Ezra Vogel (5 Jun 2012, ST)
THE day was June 4, 1989. American Sinologist Ezra Vogel was, as he puts it, 'furious' as he watched on television Chinese soldiers firing on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square.
Beijing's crackdown on the student-led protesters was a 'terrible tragedy', says Professor Vogel, an emeritus don in social sciences at Harvard University.
The man many blamed for the bloodbath was paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who had ordered the crackdown.
Yet when Prof Vogel sat down in 2000 to begin writing a dispassionate biography of Deng, he found 'a logic' in how and why Deng did what he did.
He says Deng, already 84 years old in 1989, had to quell a 'perfect storm' of factors that threatened to derail his 10-year effort to modernise China. The storm had started two months earlier with the sudden death of widely respected former Communist Party of China (CPC) chief Hu Yaobang.
Deng sanctioned no public unrest and reviled anyone he felt was disloyal to China and the CPC. He had fallen out with Hu, whom he considered too liberal on political and economic reforms.
The paramount leader's stance angered Hu's many admirers, who were mostly students and poorly paid workers. They were buckling under soaring inflation, which Deng felt then Premier and CPC general secretary Zhao Ziyang had failed to manage. Deng's differing views with Zhao on reforms hastened their split in May 1989.
Prof Vogel, 81, shared these views with The Straits Times last week, on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the June 4 incident. Chinese officials say about 200 people, including many soldiers, were killed. Prof Vogel, was here for two weeks as the Singapore Management University's Ho Bee Professor in Chinese Economy and Business.
After more than a decade of research, Prof Vogel published his 745-page book in September last year. Titled simply Deng Xiaoping And The Transformation Of China, it received mixed reviews.
Many praised his even-handed approach to the steely, taciturn pragmatist who set China on the path to economic supremacy. But critics found him too sympathetic to Deng. They were riled most by Prof Vogel's conclusion on the June 4 events: 'What we do know is that in the two decades after Tiananmen, China enjoyed relative stability and rapid - even spectacular - economic growth... than at any time in Chinese history.'
Of his critics, Prof Vogel says: 'Many... were reporters in Tiananmen Square on June 4 and Deng did such a horrible thing that they see anyone who explains why he did it, and how China has grown rapidly since, as soft and dumb.'
Deng, a thrice-married Sichuanese and father of five, went in 70 years from leading a small county to steering south-west China and then the entire country. Along the way, he was purged twice from the CPC, first for supposedly being a capitalist and then for being a counter-revolutionary. But Deng, who Mao Zedong once likened to a needle in a ball of cotton, rolled with the many political punches.
Ironically, Prof Vogel learnt none of this from Deng himself.
The closest he got to the leader was seeing him from across a crowded room. Also, Deng wrote almost none of his thoughts down, having learnt from his days in the underground not to leave paper trails that might damn him.
Does all this not leave his book wanting? Prof Vogel responds: 'I don't think I missed that much. Even if I had met him, he wouldn't have told me all the answers to the key questions, such as 'What were you thinking on June 4?', 'What did you really think of Mao?' and 'How did you take power?''
Still, he allows, he is 'not 100 per cent sure' about his interpretation of Deng, even after having interviewed Deng's youngest daughter Deng Rong, China's former president Jiang Zemin and Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, among others.
Prof Vogel says Mr Lee, in particular, helped shape his reading of Deng's controversial 1979 invasion of Vietnam. Many had charged that Deng did that just to gain control of China's army; at that time, many of the country's high military officials were still in thrall of the late Mao and were resisting Deng, who they believed would betray China by making it embrace capitalism.
But Mr Lee, who discussed Deng only once with Prof Vogel some time in 2002, gave a clear-eyed account of Deng's 'intense worries' that the Soviet Union, with Vietnam's help, would encircle China - with a view to conquering South-east Asia.
Deng not only told Mr Lee all this when he visited Singapore for the first time in November 1978, but also asked the Singapore leader to stress to the United States how imminent that threat was. Mr Lee did so. A year later, China invaded Vietnam, staunching the Soviet tide in Asia.
Prof Vogel first met Mr Lee in the early 1970s, when he hosted the then Prime Minister at Harvard's East Asia Centre on the latter's official trip to the US. The Harvard don found Mr Lee 'extremely bright, vigorous and a real intellectual as well as a confident leader'.
And, he adds, although Mr Lee was 19 years younger than Deng, the latter respected Mr Lee for what he had done with Singapore. 'Deng was learning more from Mr Lee than vice versa,' says Prof Vogel, 'because by then, Singapore's leaders had a more settled political structure and learnt how to keep their city attractive'.
With such lessons in hand, Deng steered China to economic success. Who might be its next Deng, then?
Prof Vogel says: 'Nobody - and it's not just a question of talent; it's structural.
'Deng was a revolutionary and war hero who came to power in an unstructured time, so he had a special authority. But people in office in peacetime are not war heroes. It's a natural development.'
Is China's often corrupt nouveau riche a natural development of Deng's reforms too?
'Well, you could say that,' he allows, 'but just before he stepped down in 1992, somebody asked him about a corruption case and Deng said, 'We must move with two fists - one for pushing reform and the other for improper behaviour'.
The most notorious example of that today is the CPC's former top official in Chongqing, Bo Xilai and his lawyer wife, Gu Kailai. Prof Vogel says that with the hard-to-handle Bo gone, China's top and emerging leaders will now work together more closely to weed out corruption in their ranks and speed up political reform.
Prof Vogel is now in talks with China publisher San Lian to release a Chinese language version of his book in China.
He says: 'Many intellectuals in China would like to talk about the background to Tiananmen, but they would have more trouble than a foreigner would in doing so. So my book would hopefully increase the range of freedom they have to write about it
Beijing's crackdown on the student-led protesters was a 'terrible tragedy', says Professor Vogel, an emeritus don in social sciences at Harvard University.
The man many blamed for the bloodbath was paramount leader Deng Xiaoping, who had ordered the crackdown.
Yet when Prof Vogel sat down in 2000 to begin writing a dispassionate biography of Deng, he found 'a logic' in how and why Deng did what he did.
He says Deng, already 84 years old in 1989, had to quell a 'perfect storm' of factors that threatened to derail his 10-year effort to modernise China. The storm had started two months earlier with the sudden death of widely respected former Communist Party of China (CPC) chief Hu Yaobang.
Deng sanctioned no public unrest and reviled anyone he felt was disloyal to China and the CPC. He had fallen out with Hu, whom he considered too liberal on political and economic reforms.
The paramount leader's stance angered Hu's many admirers, who were mostly students and poorly paid workers. They were buckling under soaring inflation, which Deng felt then Premier and CPC general secretary Zhao Ziyang had failed to manage. Deng's differing views with Zhao on reforms hastened their split in May 1989.
Prof Vogel, 81, shared these views with The Straits Times last week, on the eve of the 23rd anniversary of the June 4 incident. Chinese officials say about 200 people, including many soldiers, were killed. Prof Vogel, was here for two weeks as the Singapore Management University's Ho Bee Professor in Chinese Economy and Business.
After more than a decade of research, Prof Vogel published his 745-page book in September last year. Titled simply Deng Xiaoping And The Transformation Of China, it received mixed reviews.
Many praised his even-handed approach to the steely, taciturn pragmatist who set China on the path to economic supremacy. But critics found him too sympathetic to Deng. They were riled most by Prof Vogel's conclusion on the June 4 events: 'What we do know is that in the two decades after Tiananmen, China enjoyed relative stability and rapid - even spectacular - economic growth... than at any time in Chinese history.'
Of his critics, Prof Vogel says: 'Many... were reporters in Tiananmen Square on June 4 and Deng did such a horrible thing that they see anyone who explains why he did it, and how China has grown rapidly since, as soft and dumb.'
Deng, a thrice-married Sichuanese and father of five, went in 70 years from leading a small county to steering south-west China and then the entire country. Along the way, he was purged twice from the CPC, first for supposedly being a capitalist and then for being a counter-revolutionary. But Deng, who Mao Zedong once likened to a needle in a ball of cotton, rolled with the many political punches.
Ironically, Prof Vogel learnt none of this from Deng himself.
The closest he got to the leader was seeing him from across a crowded room. Also, Deng wrote almost none of his thoughts down, having learnt from his days in the underground not to leave paper trails that might damn him.
Does all this not leave his book wanting? Prof Vogel responds: 'I don't think I missed that much. Even if I had met him, he wouldn't have told me all the answers to the key questions, such as 'What were you thinking on June 4?', 'What did you really think of Mao?' and 'How did you take power?''
Still, he allows, he is 'not 100 per cent sure' about his interpretation of Deng, even after having interviewed Deng's youngest daughter Deng Rong, China's former president Jiang Zemin and Singapore's former prime minister Lee Kuan Yew, among others.
Prof Vogel says Mr Lee, in particular, helped shape his reading of Deng's controversial 1979 invasion of Vietnam. Many had charged that Deng did that just to gain control of China's army; at that time, many of the country's high military officials were still in thrall of the late Mao and were resisting Deng, who they believed would betray China by making it embrace capitalism.
But Mr Lee, who discussed Deng only once with Prof Vogel some time in 2002, gave a clear-eyed account of Deng's 'intense worries' that the Soviet Union, with Vietnam's help, would encircle China - with a view to conquering South-east Asia.
Deng not only told Mr Lee all this when he visited Singapore for the first time in November 1978, but also asked the Singapore leader to stress to the United States how imminent that threat was. Mr Lee did so. A year later, China invaded Vietnam, staunching the Soviet tide in Asia.
Prof Vogel first met Mr Lee in the early 1970s, when he hosted the then Prime Minister at Harvard's East Asia Centre on the latter's official trip to the US. The Harvard don found Mr Lee 'extremely bright, vigorous and a real intellectual as well as a confident leader'.
And, he adds, although Mr Lee was 19 years younger than Deng, the latter respected Mr Lee for what he had done with Singapore. 'Deng was learning more from Mr Lee than vice versa,' says Prof Vogel, 'because by then, Singapore's leaders had a more settled political structure and learnt how to keep their city attractive'.
With such lessons in hand, Deng steered China to economic success. Who might be its next Deng, then?
Prof Vogel says: 'Nobody - and it's not just a question of talent; it's structural.
'Deng was a revolutionary and war hero who came to power in an unstructured time, so he had a special authority. But people in office in peacetime are not war heroes. It's a natural development.'
Is China's often corrupt nouveau riche a natural development of Deng's reforms too?
'Well, you could say that,' he allows, 'but just before he stepped down in 1992, somebody asked him about a corruption case and Deng said, 'We must move with two fists - one for pushing reform and the other for improper behaviour'.
The most notorious example of that today is the CPC's former top official in Chongqing, Bo Xilai and his lawyer wife, Gu Kailai. Prof Vogel says that with the hard-to-handle Bo gone, China's top and emerging leaders will now work together more closely to weed out corruption in their ranks and speed up political reform.
Prof Vogel is now in talks with China publisher San Lian to release a Chinese language version of his book in China.
He says: 'Many intellectuals in China would like to talk about the background to Tiananmen, but they would have more trouble than a foreigner would in doing so. So my book would hopefully increase the range of freedom they have to write about it
What happened to Mao's Revolution?
No-one in China is lower in the pecking order than farmers and villagers. When they migrate to cities to work in factories, they often live in squalor. So what happened to Mao Zedong's communist revolution which was supposed to improve the lot of the rural poor?
The rolling hills and rivers of Jiangxi province's Xunwu county in south-west China are picturesque, but this has long been one of the poorest places in the country.
That's why Mao Zedong came here for a month in 1930 - almost two decades before taking power. He visited the county seat, Changning, which was then a dusty little village of about 1,500 people, to see how the class system worked here.
The house where Mao stayed is now a museum. Visitors can gaze at the iron-frame bed where Mao slept, the desk where he worked, and the long table where he sat and talked with locals.
Mao met farmers, merchants, local officials, an imperial scholar, even disaffected youth. He noted, in colourful detail, who felt oppressed by whom, how the classes interacted, and how control of property was key to wealth and power.
Assisting Mao was a 24-year-old local named Gu Bo, the grandson of landowners. His family was renowned for sending many scholars over the centuries to serve the emperor. But Gu Bo wanted change.
"He thought the old system was unfair," says his grand-nephew, Gu Anjian, who lives in a village near Changning. "So once he joined the Communist revolution, he burned down his grandfather's house."
Gu Anjian chuckles affectionately. He's now a wizened 74-year-old, retired after serving 40 years as chief of his village. He sits at a round table in his kitchen with his brother, son and nephew, while the women in the family prepare lunch
He says Gu Bo and his brothers were all committed to revolutionary change in China. Four brothers went on the Long March with Mao. Three died. Gu Bo was killed in 1935 in an ambush, just a few years after working with Mao, believing that Communism was the best way forward to modernise China
China's Communist Party came to power promising to end the country's traditional class structure. As it turned out, it turned the class structure on its head. Scholars, landowners and merchants, the former privileged classes, were stripped of their rights, and sometimes of their lives. Villagers and workers were, for a time, elevated, in status and opportunity.
More than 60 years on, farmers and workers are again at the bottom of the heap, and while there's a growing middle class, China has one of the world's biggest and fastest-growing rates of income disparity.
The fortunes of the Gu family illustrate what's changed in China's class structure since Mao Zedong came here more than 80 years ago.
The family used to have more than its share of imperial scholars. Today, none of the Gu men at the kitchen table stayed in school beyond the age of 15.
Mao tried to abolish capitalism, but Gu Anjian's younger brother, Gu Anjia, is a keen capitalist: he traded steel abroad. I ask him what he thinks Gu Bo would have thought of him forging a career in capitalism.
"How would I know what he'd think?," he says, a little defensively. "Anyway, it was a state-run trading company I worked for - at least at first."
But in China, being connected to the state, or the Communist Party, doesn't mean you're not capitalist. More than 90% of China's richest people are Party members, according to the Hurun Report, which tracks the country's wealthy.
China's national anthem may exhort the downtrodden, "arise, those who refuse to be slaves," but these days, those who want to get rich join the Party, and the Party wants the rich to join it. That way, wealth stays concentrated in the hands of its members, who have little incentive to change the system.
The richest 75 members of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, have an average net worth of $1.2bn.
The Gu family is not in those ranks. It may have sacrificed its sons for the Revolution, but the family now lives a simple village life. Gu Anjian's 36-year-old son, Gu Zisong, scoffs when I ask if the family is proud that their relative worked with Mao to try to make China more egalitarian.
"Pride? What pride? If there were any glory in it, we wouldn't live here," he says.
Gu Zisong makes his living growing oranges - a line of work that has helped pull many farmers in this area out of poverty, since it caught on seven or eight years ago. You can see their profits in the new concrete and brick houses rising up in the village.
Gu Zisong admits life here is better than when he was a child. Back then, he says, the village consisted of mudbrick houses with no electricity or indoor plumbing, and dirt roads that turned to muck in the rain. Now, the roads are good, and most homes have refrigerators, TVs, even the occasional computer - which allows them to see that their lives might have got better - but the elite in China are doing far better still.
Another member of the family, Gu Yuesheng, 34, runs a kindergarten down the street. He started out as a migrant worker, in a sweater factory in the city of Dongguan, 250 miles away.
"I didn't really like the city," he says. "People looked down on migrant workers." He says workers were so underpaid and overworked that strikes and protests were common, even though independent trade unions in China are illegal.
"My own boss was ok," Gu says. "But even in my factory, if you were a migrant worker, you could only move up so far. The good jobs went to local people."
So, when Gu Yuesheng had made a bit of money, he came back here, and started his own sweater factory. At its peak, he says, it employed more than 120 fellow villagers, and produced four million sweaters a year. The factory had to close last year, when too many foreign customers went too long without paying.
"It felt like falling off a cliff," he says, shaking his head ruefully.
Still, Gu Yuesheng is proud of having helped his fellow villagers get a leg up, without having to go through the hardship and humiliation he experienced as a migrant worker. His efforts have also pushed him nicely into China's middle class. It's a mobility villagers here didn't have at the time Mao visited.
But with wages and expectations rising, Gu Yuesheng doubts the next generation will find it as easy as it was for him, if they're not educated. That's what the kindergarten is about, he says - to help children from this village get a head start.
Listen to more on this story at PRI's The World , a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International, and WGBH in Boston.
The rolling hills and rivers of Jiangxi province's Xunwu county in south-west China are picturesque, but this has long been one of the poorest places in the country.
That's why Mao Zedong came here for a month in 1930 - almost two decades before taking power. He visited the county seat, Changning, which was then a dusty little village of about 1,500 people, to see how the class system worked here.
The house where Mao stayed is now a museum. Visitors can gaze at the iron-frame bed where Mao slept, the desk where he worked, and the long table where he sat and talked with locals.
Mao met farmers, merchants, local officials, an imperial scholar, even disaffected youth. He noted, in colourful detail, who felt oppressed by whom, how the classes interacted, and how control of property was key to wealth and power.
Assisting Mao was a 24-year-old local named Gu Bo, the grandson of landowners. His family was renowned for sending many scholars over the centuries to serve the emperor. But Gu Bo wanted change.
"He thought the old system was unfair," says his grand-nephew, Gu Anjian, who lives in a village near Changning. "So once he joined the Communist revolution, he burned down his grandfather's house."
Gu Anjian chuckles affectionately. He's now a wizened 74-year-old, retired after serving 40 years as chief of his village. He sits at a round table in his kitchen with his brother, son and nephew, while the women in the family prepare lunch
He says Gu Bo and his brothers were all committed to revolutionary change in China. Four brothers went on the Long March with Mao. Three died. Gu Bo was killed in 1935 in an ambush, just a few years after working with Mao, believing that Communism was the best way forward to modernise China
China's Communist Party came to power promising to end the country's traditional class structure. As it turned out, it turned the class structure on its head. Scholars, landowners and merchants, the former privileged classes, were stripped of their rights, and sometimes of their lives. Villagers and workers were, for a time, elevated, in status and opportunity.
More than 60 years on, farmers and workers are again at the bottom of the heap, and while there's a growing middle class, China has one of the world's biggest and fastest-growing rates of income disparity.
The fortunes of the Gu family illustrate what's changed in China's class structure since Mao Zedong came here more than 80 years ago.
The family used to have more than its share of imperial scholars. Today, none of the Gu men at the kitchen table stayed in school beyond the age of 15.
Mao tried to abolish capitalism, but Gu Anjian's younger brother, Gu Anjia, is a keen capitalist: he traded steel abroad. I ask him what he thinks Gu Bo would have thought of him forging a career in capitalism.
"How would I know what he'd think?," he says, a little defensively. "Anyway, it was a state-run trading company I worked for - at least at first."
But in China, being connected to the state, or the Communist Party, doesn't mean you're not capitalist. More than 90% of China's richest people are Party members, according to the Hurun Report, which tracks the country's wealthy.
China's national anthem may exhort the downtrodden, "arise, those who refuse to be slaves," but these days, those who want to get rich join the Party, and the Party wants the rich to join it. That way, wealth stays concentrated in the hands of its members, who have little incentive to change the system.
The richest 75 members of China's legislature, the National People's Congress, have an average net worth of $1.2bn.
The Gu family is not in those ranks. It may have sacrificed its sons for the Revolution, but the family now lives a simple village life. Gu Anjian's 36-year-old son, Gu Zisong, scoffs when I ask if the family is proud that their relative worked with Mao to try to make China more egalitarian.
"Pride? What pride? If there were any glory in it, we wouldn't live here," he says.
Gu Zisong makes his living growing oranges - a line of work that has helped pull many farmers in this area out of poverty, since it caught on seven or eight years ago. You can see their profits in the new concrete and brick houses rising up in the village.
Gu Zisong admits life here is better than when he was a child. Back then, he says, the village consisted of mudbrick houses with no electricity or indoor plumbing, and dirt roads that turned to muck in the rain. Now, the roads are good, and most homes have refrigerators, TVs, even the occasional computer - which allows them to see that their lives might have got better - but the elite in China are doing far better still.
Another member of the family, Gu Yuesheng, 34, runs a kindergarten down the street. He started out as a migrant worker, in a sweater factory in the city of Dongguan, 250 miles away.
"I didn't really like the city," he says. "People looked down on migrant workers." He says workers were so underpaid and overworked that strikes and protests were common, even though independent trade unions in China are illegal.
"My own boss was ok," Gu says. "But even in my factory, if you were a migrant worker, you could only move up so far. The good jobs went to local people."
So, when Gu Yuesheng had made a bit of money, he came back here, and started his own sweater factory. At its peak, he says, it employed more than 120 fellow villagers, and produced four million sweaters a year. The factory had to close last year, when too many foreign customers went too long without paying.
"It felt like falling off a cliff," he says, shaking his head ruefully.
Still, Gu Yuesheng is proud of having helped his fellow villagers get a leg up, without having to go through the hardship and humiliation he experienced as a migrant worker. His efforts have also pushed him nicely into China's middle class. It's a mobility villagers here didn't have at the time Mao visited.
But with wages and expectations rising, Gu Yuesheng doubts the next generation will find it as easy as it was for him, if they're not educated. That's what the kindergarten is about, he says - to help children from this village get a head start.
Listen to more on this story at PRI's The World , a co-production of the BBC World Service, Public Radio International, and WGBH in Boston.
Friday, June 8, 2012
China's Great Wall is 'longer than previously thought'
China's Great Wall is 'longer than previously thought' (6 June 2012, BBC News)
The Great Wall of China has been officially declared even longer than previously thought, state-run media report.
The wall measures 21,196.18km (13,170.6956 miles) long based on the latest state survey results, state-run news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
A preliminary study released in 2009 estimated the wall to be 8,850km long.
The world's largest man-made structure was built to protect China's northern border.
This is the first time such a definitive figure has been released, Xinhua reports.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage released the results based on an archaeological survey done since 2007.
Previous estimates of the wall's length were mainly based on historical records.
Tong Mingkang, deputy chief, said that the survey revealed a total of 43,721 heritage sites that included stretches of the Great Wall, reports Xinhua.
Known to the Chinese as the "Long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is a series of walls and earthen works begun in 500BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC.
Only 8.2% of the original wall remains intact, with the rest in poor condition, according to the report.
It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.
Great Wall of China 'even longer' 20 April 2009
The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade.
A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km.
Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.
Infra-red and GPS technologies helped locate some areas concealed over time by sandstorms, state media said.
The project found that there were wall sections of 6,259km, 359km of trenches, and 2,232km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
The study was carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.
Barricade
Experts said the newly-discovered sections of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and stretch from Hu Mountain in northern Liaoning province to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province.
The project will continue for another 18 months in order to map sections of the wall built during the Qin (221-206BC) and Han (206BC-9AD) Dynasties, the report said.
The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, was built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire.
Archaeologists had lobbied for the survey to be done to provide scholars with an accurate understanding of the construction.
Known to the Chinese as the "long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is in fact a series of walls and earthen works begun in the 5th Century BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC.
It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.
The Great Wall of China has been officially declared even longer than previously thought, state-run media report.
The wall measures 21,196.18km (13,170.6956 miles) long based on the latest state survey results, state-run news agency Xinhua reported on Tuesday.
A preliminary study released in 2009 estimated the wall to be 8,850km long.
The world's largest man-made structure was built to protect China's northern border.
This is the first time such a definitive figure has been released, Xinhua reports.
The State Administration of Cultural Heritage released the results based on an archaeological survey done since 2007.
Previous estimates of the wall's length were mainly based on historical records.
Tong Mingkang, deputy chief, said that the survey revealed a total of 43,721 heritage sites that included stretches of the Great Wall, reports Xinhua.
Known to the Chinese as the "Long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is a series of walls and earthen works begun in 500BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC.
Only 8.2% of the original wall remains intact, with the rest in poor condition, according to the report.
It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.
Great Wall of China 'even longer' 20 April 2009
The Great Wall of China is even greater than previously thought, according to the first detailed survey to establish the length of the ancient barricade.
A two-year government mapping study found that the wall spans 8,850km (5,500 miles) - until now, the length was commonly put at about 5,000km.
Previous estimates of its length were mainly based on historical records.
Infra-red and GPS technologies helped locate some areas concealed over time by sandstorms, state media said.
The project found that there were wall sections of 6,259km, 359km of trenches, and 2,232km of natural defensive barriers such as hills and rivers.
The study was carried out by the State Administration of Cultural Heritage and the State Bureau of Surveying and Mapping.
Barricade
Experts said the newly-discovered sections of the wall were built during the Ming Dynasty (1368-1644), and stretch from Hu Mountain in northern Liaoning province to Jiayu Pass in western Gansu province.
The project will continue for another 18 months in order to map sections of the wall built during the Qin (221-206BC) and Han (206BC-9AD) Dynasties, the report said.
The wall, the world's largest man-made structure, was built to protect the northern border of the Chinese Empire.
Archaeologists had lobbied for the survey to be done to provide scholars with an accurate understanding of the construction.
Known to the Chinese as the "long Wall of 10,000 Li", the Great Wall is in fact a series of walls and earthen works begun in the 5th Century BC and first linked up under Qin Shi Huang in about 220BC.
It was listed as a Unesco world heritage site in 1987.
Wednesday, May 23, 2012
Nazi legacy: The troubled descendants
Nazi legacy: The troubled descendantsBy Frances Cronin
BBC News, 23 May 2012
Amon Goeth's daughter Monika only learned the true extent of her father's war crimes when she watched the film Schindler's List
The names of Himmler, Goering, Goeth and Hoess still have the power to evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany, but what is it like to live with the legacy of those surnames, and is it ever possible to move on from the terrible crimes committed by your ancestors?
When he was a child Rainer Hoess was shown a family heirloom.
He remembers his mother lifting the heavy lid of the fireproof chest with a large swastika on the lid, revealing bundles of family photos.
They featured his father as a young child playing with his brothers and sisters, in the garden of their grand family home.
The photos show a pool with a slide and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting - but one that was separated from the gas chambers of Auschwitz by just a few yards.
His grandfather Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess), was the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. His father grew up in a villa adjoining the camp, where he and his siblings played with toys built by prisoners.
It was where his grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries they picked because they smelled of ash from the concentration camp ovens.
Rainer is haunted by the garden gate he spotted in the photos that went straight into the camp - he calls it the "gate to hell".
"It's hard to explain the guilt," says Rainer, "even though there is no reason I should bear any guilt, I still bear it. I carry the guilt with me in my mind.
"I'm ashamed too, of course, for what my family, my grandfather, did to thousands of other families.
"So you ask yourself, they had to die. I'm alive. Why am I alive? To carry this guilt, this burden, to try to come to terms with it.
"That must be the only reason I exist, to do what he should have done."
His father never abandoned the ideology he grew up with and Rainer no longer has contact with him, as he attempts to cope with his family's guilt and shame.
For Katrin Himmler, putting pen to paper was her way of coping with having Heinrich Himmler in her family.
"It's a very heavy burden having someone like that in the family, so close. It's something that just keeps hanging over you."
Himmler, key architect of the Holocaust, was her great-uncle, and her grandfather and his other brother were also in the Nazi party.
She wrote The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History, in a quest to "bring something positive" to the name of Himmler.
"I did my best to distance myself from it and to confront it critically. I no longer need to be ashamed of this family connection."
Rainer Hoess's father (c) plays in a sand pit in the family villa with a gate (r) that leads into Auschwitz
She says the descendants of the Nazi war criminals seem to be caught between two extremes.
"Most decide to cut themselves off entirely from their parents so that they can live their lives, so that the story doesn't destroy them.
"Or they decide on loyalty and unconditional love and sweep all the negative things away."
She says they all face the same question: "Can you really love them if you want to be honest and really know what they did or thought?"
Katrin thought she had a good relationship with her father until she started to research into the family's past. Her father found it very hard to talk about it.
"I could only understand how difficult it was for him when I realised how difficult it was for me to accept that my own grandmother was a Nazi.
"I really loved her, I was fond of her, it was very difficult when I found her letters and learned that she maintained contact with the old Nazis and that she sent a package to a war criminal sentenced to death. It made me feel sick."
Trying to find out exactly what happened in her family's past was hard for Monika Hertwig. She was a baby when her father Amon Goeth was tried and hanged for killing tens of thousands of Jews.
Goeth was the sadistic commander of Plaszow concentration camp, but Monika was brought up by her mother as if the horrors had never happened.
As a child she created a rose-tinted version of her father from family photos.
"I had this image I created [that] the Jews in Plaszow and Amon were one family."
But in her teens she questioned this view of her father and confronted her mother, who eventually admitted her father "may have killed a few Jews".
When she repeatedly asked how many, her mother "became like a madwoman" and whipped her with an electric cable.
It was the film Schindler's List that brought home the full horror of her father's crimes.
Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes and Monika says watching it "was like being struck".
"I kept thinking this has to stop, at some point they have to stop shooting, because if it doesn't stop I'll go crazy right here in this theatre."
She left the cinema suffering from shock.
For Bettina Goering, the great-niece of Hitler's designated successor Hermann Goering, she felt she needed to take drastic action to deal with her family's legacy.
Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.
"We both did it... so that there won't be any more Goerings," she explains.
"When my brother had it done, he said to me 'I cut the line'."
Disturbed by her likeness to her great-uncle, she left Germany more than 30 years ago and lives in a remote home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"It's easier for me to deal with the past of my family from this great distance," she explains.
While Bettina decided to travel far from the site of her relatives' crimes, Rainer Hoess decided he had to visit the heart of his family's shame - Auschwitz.
As a child he was not allowed on school trips to Auschwitz because of his surname, but as an adult in his forties, he felt the need to face "the reality of the horror and the lies I've had all these years in my family".
Seeing his father's childhood home he broke down and kept repeating the word "insanity".
"It's insane what they built here at the expense of others and the gall to say it never happened."
He could not speak when he saw the "gate to hell". In the visitors centre he encountered the raw emotion of descendants of camp victims.
One young Israeli girl broke down as she told him his grandfather had exterminated her family - she could not believe he had chosen to face them.
As Rainer spoke about his guilt and shame, a former Auschwitz prisoner at the back at the room asked if he could shake his hand.
They embraced as Zvika told Rainer how he gives talks to young people, but tells them the relatives are not to blame as they were not there.
For Rainer this was a major moment in dealing with the burden of his family's guilt.
"To receive the approval of someone who survived those horrors and knows for sure that it wasn't you, that you didn't do it.
"For the first time you don't feel fear or shame but happiness, joy, inner joy."
Zvika, holocaust survivor, embraces Rainer Hoess
Bettina Goering chose to be sterilised to ensure the family name did not continue
Schindler's List featured Amon Goeth as a major character
BBC News, 23 May 2012
Amon Goeth's daughter Monika only learned the true extent of her father's war crimes when she watched the film Schindler's List
The names of Himmler, Goering, Goeth and Hoess still have the power to evoke the horrors of Nazi Germany, but what is it like to live with the legacy of those surnames, and is it ever possible to move on from the terrible crimes committed by your ancestors?
When he was a child Rainer Hoess was shown a family heirloom.
He remembers his mother lifting the heavy lid of the fireproof chest with a large swastika on the lid, revealing bundles of family photos.
They featured his father as a young child playing with his brothers and sisters, in the garden of their grand family home.
The photos show a pool with a slide and a sand pit - an idyllic family setting - but one that was separated from the gas chambers of Auschwitz by just a few yards.
His grandfather Rudolf Hoess (not to be confused with Nazi deputy leader Rudolf Hess), was the first commandant of Auschwitz concentration camp. His father grew up in a villa adjoining the camp, where he and his siblings played with toys built by prisoners.
It was where his grandmother told the children to wash the strawberries they picked because they smelled of ash from the concentration camp ovens.
Rainer is haunted by the garden gate he spotted in the photos that went straight into the camp - he calls it the "gate to hell".
"It's hard to explain the guilt," says Rainer, "even though there is no reason I should bear any guilt, I still bear it. I carry the guilt with me in my mind.
"I'm ashamed too, of course, for what my family, my grandfather, did to thousands of other families.
"So you ask yourself, they had to die. I'm alive. Why am I alive? To carry this guilt, this burden, to try to come to terms with it.
"That must be the only reason I exist, to do what he should have done."
His father never abandoned the ideology he grew up with and Rainer no longer has contact with him, as he attempts to cope with his family's guilt and shame.
For Katrin Himmler, putting pen to paper was her way of coping with having Heinrich Himmler in her family.
"It's a very heavy burden having someone like that in the family, so close. It's something that just keeps hanging over you."
Himmler, key architect of the Holocaust, was her great-uncle, and her grandfather and his other brother were also in the Nazi party.
She wrote The Himmler Brothers: A German Family History, in a quest to "bring something positive" to the name of Himmler.
"I did my best to distance myself from it and to confront it critically. I no longer need to be ashamed of this family connection."
She says the descendants of the Nazi war criminals seem to be caught between two extremes.
"Most decide to cut themselves off entirely from their parents so that they can live their lives, so that the story doesn't destroy them.
"Or they decide on loyalty and unconditional love and sweep all the negative things away."
She says they all face the same question: "Can you really love them if you want to be honest and really know what they did or thought?"
Katrin thought she had a good relationship with her father until she started to research into the family's past. Her father found it very hard to talk about it.
"I could only understand how difficult it was for him when I realised how difficult it was for me to accept that my own grandmother was a Nazi.
"I really loved her, I was fond of her, it was very difficult when I found her letters and learned that she maintained contact with the old Nazis and that she sent a package to a war criminal sentenced to death. It made me feel sick."
Trying to find out exactly what happened in her family's past was hard for Monika Hertwig. She was a baby when her father Amon Goeth was tried and hanged for killing tens of thousands of Jews.
Goeth was the sadistic commander of Plaszow concentration camp, but Monika was brought up by her mother as if the horrors had never happened.
As a child she created a rose-tinted version of her father from family photos.
"I had this image I created [that] the Jews in Plaszow and Amon were one family."
But in her teens she questioned this view of her father and confronted her mother, who eventually admitted her father "may have killed a few Jews".
When she repeatedly asked how many, her mother "became like a madwoman" and whipped her with an electric cable.
It was the film Schindler's List that brought home the full horror of her father's crimes.
Goeth was played by Ralph Fiennes and Monika says watching it "was like being struck".
"I kept thinking this has to stop, at some point they have to stop shooting, because if it doesn't stop I'll go crazy right here in this theatre."
She left the cinema suffering from shock.
For Bettina Goering, the great-niece of Hitler's designated successor Hermann Goering, she felt she needed to take drastic action to deal with her family's legacy.
Both she and her brother chose to be sterilised.
"We both did it... so that there won't be any more Goerings," she explains.
"When my brother had it done, he said to me 'I cut the line'."
Disturbed by her likeness to her great-uncle, she left Germany more than 30 years ago and lives in a remote home in Santa Fe, New Mexico.
"It's easier for me to deal with the past of my family from this great distance," she explains.
While Bettina decided to travel far from the site of her relatives' crimes, Rainer Hoess decided he had to visit the heart of his family's shame - Auschwitz.
As a child he was not allowed on school trips to Auschwitz because of his surname, but as an adult in his forties, he felt the need to face "the reality of the horror and the lies I've had all these years in my family".
Seeing his father's childhood home he broke down and kept repeating the word "insanity".
"It's insane what they built here at the expense of others and the gall to say it never happened."
He could not speak when he saw the "gate to hell". In the visitors centre he encountered the raw emotion of descendants of camp victims.
One young Israeli girl broke down as she told him his grandfather had exterminated her family - she could not believe he had chosen to face them.
As Rainer spoke about his guilt and shame, a former Auschwitz prisoner at the back at the room asked if he could shake his hand.
They embraced as Zvika told Rainer how he gives talks to young people, but tells them the relatives are not to blame as they were not there.
For Rainer this was a major moment in dealing with the burden of his family's guilt.
"To receive the approval of someone who survived those horrors and knows for sure that it wasn't you, that you didn't do it.
"For the first time you don't feel fear or shame but happiness, joy, inner joy."
Bettina Goering chose to be sterilised to ensure the family name did not continue
Schindler's List featured Amon Goeth as a major character
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