Here is a quick video from the candle light vigil from the Bloor West Villalge
Category Archives: video
Watch ‘The Soviet Story’
A documentary film by a Latvian director that shows the Soviet Union helped Nazi Germany instigate the Holocaust.Furthermore,it’s a documentary about the Soviet crimes against humanity and its own people. More importantly, it underlines the similarity of Soviet and Nazi regimes and undisputed ways of how they helped and supported each other.
It ends with a conclusion of how Europe lacks political will to fully condemn Communist crimes against humanity because �this is not how the world works. With Germany and Russia building gas pipelines together, it is difficult to imagine one being vocal against the other, and requiring e.g extradition of former Soviet KGB interrogators who tortured many people to death. They continue to live in Moscow as decorated veterans.
The documentary “The Soviet Story†is directed by Edvins Snore, who spent 10 years gathering information and two years filming in several countries. Among those interviewed in the film are Western and Russian historians, as well as survivors of the Soviet Gulag. This is not a pure documentary and not a pure scholarly work. It injects drama and cinematography that goes beyond what we usually see in documentaries.
Click here to watch it in its entirety.
Movie review: The English Surgeon
Earlier this Spring I was lucky enough to catch this great documentary called The English Surgeon at HotDocs, an intimate portrait of a brain surgeon working in an ill-equipped Ukrainian hospital and dealing with the moral and ethical issues that often exist between doctor and patient relationships.
It was an amazing movie to see, and it ended up winning the HotDocs festival. When the movie was released on DVD it was only available in England but I was lucky enough to have some friends bring it over and it has been a pleasure to watch again. Here is a trailer of the movie and some screenshots (click on them for a larger image):
Edit: I’m happy to report that now the DVD is available to all on their official site and finally comes in NTSC format which can be played on North American DVD players. It’s about 16 pounds to purchase, but with the pound coming down recently now is a great to come to buy it!
Edit #2: While the entire movie can now be found on YouTube, it would be great to support the author and buy the DVD.
Ukrainian on The Wire
From Episode 2×01 Ebb Tide:
Ziggy embarrasses Nick by talking too much and offending Sergei, a Ukrainian driver, by calling him Boris (and Russian)
The Wire is a critically acclaimed show that highlights the end of the American empire through the lens of the Baltimore police fighting the different faucets of crime in their city. This season has an interesting focus on human trafficking, where girls from Eastern Europe are funneled through Turkey to work as prostitutes in America. A good book on the subject is The Natashas.
Ukrainian siblings separated by Nazis to reconnect after 66 years
From CBS3’s news wire:
PHILADELPHIA (AP) A Philadelphia woman separated from her family by the Nazis is preparing for a reunion with a brother she hasn’t seen in 66 years.
Irene Famulak was 17 when the Nazis invaded the Ukrainian Catholic family’s home in 1942. Famulak was sent to be a cook in Germany and never saw another family member again. But that’s about to change.
The Red Cross says the 83-year-old’s youngest brother Sevelud has turned up in Germany trying to trace his sister.
Irene Famulak’s daughter says the family will now plan a reunion.
Video coverage is available here, here, here and here, as well as a slideshow.
Interestingly enough as this article was re-published across various news sources, only the Associated Press maintained in their article that the family was Ukrainian Catholic. Why would so many news sources leave this fact out?
Out of the 11 million Hitler killed, six million were Jews but the rest are commonly forgotten as ‘the others’; Christians (Protestant and Catholic), Hungarians, Czechoslovakians, Ukrainians, Russians, Dutch, French and even Germans. Ukraine lost up to 7 million people during the War (roughly 17% of its population), following a plan to re-populate Ukraine with the Aryan Race (although not the first time this type of event has happened).