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    The Sarmatian Review Data

September 2009

Volume XXIX, No. 3


The fate of General August Emil Fieldorf (“Nil”) in Soviet-occupied Poland

Underground title of General Nil in World War II Resistance movement: commander of anti-Nazi sabotage unit of the Polish Home Army.

Subsequent fate: arrested by the Soviets under a false name after the end of the war, sentenced and sent to the Soviet Gulag, allowed to return to Poland in 1947. Rearrested in 1950 under his real name, tortured and sentenced to death by hanging in 1953. Buried in an unknown grave.

Names and fates of communist prosecutor and judge in General Nil's mock trial: Prosecutor Helena Wolińska Brus (1919-2008), emigrated from Poland in 1968. According to the Institute of National Memory, Wolińska Brus was responsible for “death and persecution of hundreds if not thousands of persons.” Attempts to extradite her to Poland to stand trial were not successful.

Judge Maria Gurowska Sand (1915-1998), since 1946 director of the communist school for judges in Łódź. Participated in a number of communist show trials in the 1940s and ‘50s. Was not charged and lived freely in Poland after communism fell. In 1997 the Commission for Investigation of Crimes against the Polish Nation began an investigation against her.

Sources: Katarzyna Kopacz and Piotr Zychowicz, “Tajny pogrzeb Heleny Wolińskiej,” Rzeczpospolita,

6 December 2008; “General Nil,” film produced by Tadeusz Bugajski in 2009; TV conversation,

<http://www.tvp.pl/publicystyka/tematyka-spoleczna/warto-rozmawiac/wideo/22042009>.

Noncitizens in Germany

Number of foreigners (noncitizens) in Germany in 2008: 7.2 million, including 1,688,000 Turks, 523,000 Italians, and 394,000 Poles.

Percentage of Poles who declared in 2005 and 2008 that they like Germans: 44 percent and 29 percent.

Percentage of Germans who declared in 2005 and 2008 that they like Poles: 23 percent and 17 percent.

Percentage of Germans who would not mind having a daughter-in-law or son-in-law from Poland: 57 percent.

Same question for Poland: 61 percent.

Source: Die Welt (online), 7 April 2009.

Neo-Nazism in Germany

Number of crimes committed by persons associated with neo-Nazi movements in Germany in 2008: 20,500, an increase of 16 percent over 2007.

Total number of aggressive and politically motivated actions in 2008: 31,800.

Number of political murders in Germany in 2008: two.

Source: Fronda, accessed 21 April 2009 (http://fronda.pl/news/czytaj/wzrasta_przemoc_niemieckich_ekstremistow).

Neo-Nazism in Russia

Estimated number of members of neo-Nazi organizations in Russia in 2009: 200,000.

Number of hours during which the three-minute videotaped murder of two young men from the Caucasus remained available on Russian Internet in 2007:18.

Means used by neo-Nazis to “fight foreigners and immigrants:” murders, blowing-up trains, shops, market stands, social clubs.

Techniques used in neo-Nazi acts of violence: similar to Al-Qaeda's-they come together for an attack and then disperse.

Source: Yuri Zarakovich, “Russian Neo-Nazi Movement Facing State Crackdown,” Eurasia Daily Monitor,

vol. 6, no. 96 (19 May 2009).

The Russian Federation's rank in generating political refugees

Three countries that generated the largest number of political refugees in 2008: Iraq, Somalia, Russia.

Number of refugees from Russia in 2008: 20,477, or 9 percent more than in 2007.

Area from which most refugees come: the Caucasus.

Number of refugees from the Caucasus whose destination was Poland in 2008: 6,647.

Source: Rzeczpospolita, 26 March 2009.

The seventh commandment

Percentage of Russians willing to return the illegally occupied Kurile Islands to Japan: 4 percent. Those against: 89 percent.

Source: Poll conducted in 140 Russian cities 18-19 July 2009, as reported by <gazeta.ru>, 24 July 2009.

Changes at American universities

Percentage of faculty at American universities hired on a part-time basis in 1975 and 2008: 30.2 percent and 50.3 percent, respectively.

Percentage of tenured faculty in the same years: 36.5 percent and 21.3 percent; percentage of tenure-track faculty: 20.3 perceent and 9.9 percent.

Percentage increase in charitable contributions to American universities between 1997 and 2007: 6.5 percent per year.

Total charitable contributions to American colleges and universities in 2007: 29.8 billion dollars, the highest total ever recorded.

Endowments at private universities in the U.S.: on the average, ten times larger than at public universities.

Source: The AAUP (American Association of University Professors) Online, 14 April 2009.

Gazprom's woes

Decline in Gazprom's production of natural gas in April 2009 (compared to April 2008): 32 percent.

Decline in Gazprom's production of natural gas in the first quarter of 2009 (compared to the last quarter of 2008): 18 percent.

Gazprom's strategy in view of these declines: secure the behemoth's share of imports from Central Asia.

Source: Pavel K. Baev in Eurasia Daily Monitor, vol. 6, no. 70 (13 April 2009).

East Germany's communist legacy

Amount of money the German government spent modernizing East Germany between 2006-2008: 60 billion dollars.

Productivity in East Germany in comparison to West Germany: 71 percent of the former western sector.

Unemployment figures in former East Germany in comparison to West Germany: 12 percent in 2008, or twice as high as in West Germany.

Number of people who left East Germany since the fall of the Berlin Wall: 1.7 million, or 10 percent of the former East German population.

Number of schools that had to close because of scarcity of children: 2,000 since 1989.

Source: Nicholas Kulich in New York Times, 19 June 2009.

Dr. Mengele was not alone

Number of German physicians sentenced during the Nurenbeg trials for sadistic killings of prisoners: 13, including three university professors.

Punishment meted out to them: three physicians were sentenced to death, three received life, one fifteen years, the remainder several years in prison.

Number of German physicians who escaped punishment for euthanizing (because of old age, mental illness, or physical disability) several hundred thousand people, in Germany and in German-occupied countries: unknown.

Number of Jewish and Catholic babies born in Auschwitz and drowned by female German “bloc leaders” in rainwater barrels: 1,500.

Name of Polish nurse (an inmate herself) who assisted at the birth of hundreds of babies trying to save them and their mothers: Stanisława Leszczyńska.

Number of Auschwitz-born babies who survived: 30.

Source: Aleksander B. Skotnicki, “The Role of German Physicians in Concentration Camps,” Biuletyn Instytutu Pamięci Narodowej, no. 4 (99), April 2009, 73; Zdzisław Jan Ryn, “Physicians Imprisoned in Auschwitz-Birkenau,” ibid., 61-69.

The more it changes. . .

Percentage of potatoes and vegetables consumed in Russia that have been produced on dacha plots in 2008: 90 percent and 75 percent, respectively.

Percentage of land in the postcommunist Russian Federation that is privately owned: a fraction of 1 percent.

Source: Yuri Zarakhovich in Eurasia Daily Monitor, vol. 6, no. 132 (10 July 2009).

Rubbing it in:

Andrei Tumanov, editor of Vashi 600 Sotok [Your 600 square meters], a gardening magazine: “It is this fraction of one percent of the land that helps feed the country.”

Source: <www.3channel.ru>, 16 May 2009 (as reported by Eurasia Daily Monitor, 10 July 2009).


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