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Ilya Ehrenburg

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Ilya Ehrenburg WE WILL NOT FORGET UNIVERSITY OF TOLEDO JUN 22 1944 L U• t\. y by ILYA EHRENBURG . I DRAWINGS hy D. SHMARINOV CARTOONS by KUKRINIKSI Ilya Ehrenburg Ilya Ehrenburg, recently awarded the Order of Lenin, is one of the most widely read of Soviet writers. He is a fighting author whose pen is tipped with passion, wrath and hope. Ehrenburg happily combines two talents, those of novel­ ist and journalist. His artistic· gift is enhanced by a jour­ nalistic sense which enables him to react quickly-with an essay, short story or novel-to the questions which history places on the agenda. He discusses the present and deals with problems which influence the destinies of the very people who read him. Born in Moscow in 1891, Ehrenburg emigrated from Tsarist Russia at the age of 17. After the Revolution he returned home. In 1921 he again went to Europe, this time as a writer and journalist. Although far away, he fol­ lowed everything happening within his own country, and on visits to his homeland saw how the sense of human dig­ nity and creative energy had awakened in the millions. His enthusiasm for. the constructive labor of the people found expression in two novels-The Second Day and Without Stopping for Breath. Two Years Nineteen-forty found the writer in Paris. He witnessed the occupation of the great city by the Hitler forces. He saw the people betrayed by cowards and traitors. All this he described in his novel The Fall of Paris. Shortly before fascist Germany invaded the Soviet UNE 22, 1941 will remain a momentous date in Who can calmly recall that June? In two grim Union, Ehrenburg returned to his country. When his J history. On that short summer night Germany years we have changed so much that we look back motherland was threatened with mortal danger, he be­ came a war correspondent and found in his heart the right crossed our frontier. Automobiles of all European on the prewar years with tenderness, but al.so with words to speak. In a series of ardent, passionate and in­ makes sped by, motorcycles clattered, the first a sense of renunciation. We have become both tensely dramatic articles he called upon every Red Army shotR fired b:y tommy gunners frightened the larks. simpler and more complicated. Much that seemed man, every Soviet citizen, to rise up and resist, to fight to save his country from the brown plague. Pomeranian cattle-breeders and Bavarian psycho­ to us natural, habitual and concrete has been aban­ Ehrenburg's words sear the hearts of Red Army men analysts, :flushed with 'war as if it were a picnic, doned and forgotten as illusions. Much that we like coals of fire. Every word is a rifle shot and every mar, J1ed in quest of silver foxes and iron crosses. considered unreal, illusory, has become clothed in phrase a machine-gun burst. Every article is ~aturated with seethin"' passion, like a stream of lava eruptmg from Among the invading hordes were sportsmen, flesh, enabling us to hold out and to repel the a v.olcano. These qualities have earned for the fighting masters of law, bookkeepers, duelists, votaries of enemy's thrusts. author an extraordinary popularity with the Red Army. Wotan, connoisseurs of Paris night clubs, cham­ But there is something in common between the Ehrenburg can hate as strongly as he can love. He ha~es the Hitlerites with a mortal hatred, a hatred that kills pions of the Aryan breed, husky producers and people who on June 22, 1941 crowded around the and scorches. But it is not a blind hatred, a one-sided pygmie::i of the Goebbels type, natives of Swine­ loudspeakers, and the seasoned veterans of the hatred that thinks only of revenge. munde, Merseburg and Zwickau, Kurts and Fried­ front who have experienced so much-and this is "Our hatred of the Hitlerites is dictated by love-by love of our countrymen and mankind,'' he writes. "Therein richs, Kwatschkes and von Gruenwalds, the con­ the nation's conscience. It was this conscience that lies the power of our hate. And therein lies its justification." querors of Thermopylae, designers of gallows, rose against the invaders. The German generals The present collection includes only a small part of llya electricians and geophJ'.'sicists, commandants and who studied relief maps of the Ukraine and Bye­ Ehrenburg's writings during the three years of war. company fuehrers, wearers of the insignia of skull lorussia and the types of our tanks and guns did ' and crossbones, and lecherous orderlies. not reckon with what is usually omitted in mili­ Here were 70 years of German history: Reichs­ tary academies : they failed to reckon with the wehr academicians, "blitz" experts, masters of conscience of our peoples. pincer movements and organizers of encircle­ We can speak of the magnitude of the misfor­ ments. Here was Germany's entire industry: port­ tunes that have befallen our people. Consciousness able appliances for setting houses on fire, pocket of sacrifices only emphasizes our spiritual radios for spies, huge mortars and collapsible strength. Frenchmen were happy before the war; bridges. On the advancing tanks was the dust of they had begun to look upon adversity as some­ all Europe. In the staff cars sat gray-moustached Information Bulletin thing disgraceful and unworthy of man. Their generals-firmly convinced that the German army punishment was severe. When the crucial days Embassy of the was invincible. came many Frenchmen preferred the white :flag Soldiers snorted and expectorated, wore their Union of Soviet Socialist Republics to red, warm blood. Then one heard in France talk caps at a jaunty angle, tanned themselves, sent such as, "We must save what can still be saved Washington, D. C. postcards to their sweethearts, devoured buck­ . .. We must save our cities, our children ..." wheat honey, murdered nursing babies and sang Special Supplement The ruling circles of France wanted to save them­ their soldier's song: "Hi, hi, ho, ho! The gay, gay selves at any cost. war!" June, 1944 But what has surrender brought to France? Her Thus clashed two incompatible worlds: the children are dying of starvation. Her wealth is world of brigandage and the world of labor; the plundered by the Germans. Her heroes are ex­ world of malice and the world of confidence. terminated-not in battle but in dungeons. Her I cities, which have become German bases, are sub­ because he had a corkscrew-shaped cigarette French rentier, on Germany's technical training, even his life, yet one cannot give the Germans his jected to severe bombings, and any day now lighter and a pencil with six colored leads, and on perfidy and surprise attacks, on infamy, on soul. We have realized this from the first day of France will become a battlefield. lastly because he had got from Klagenfurt to Bor­ self-seeking, on arrogance. "The Fuehrer thinks war. It was then we became inflamed with hate. We chose another lot. In the summer of 1941 deaux and from Bordeaux to Orel. for me," was the answer I heard hundreds of times Now the hate has matured and become resolve. we were weaker than the German army. We held Such vanity excludes the concept of dignity. The from German war prisoners. I would like to ask We have acquired new coolness in suffering in out then when it seemed impossible to hold out. Hitlerite 'despises his antagonists-and even his Hitler at his last examination who thought for these two years. We do not seek words, gestures him? or arguments. We thirst for but one thing: justice: Two years of cruel war-an epic of human self­ own kinsfolk if their rank is lower, their enter­ denial. We remember the torments of Leningrad. prise less, their muscles weaker than his own. By In our country everyone is supposed to think: We enter this third year of war with the grim The enemy wanted to strangle it with hunger, to insulting others the fascists have lost all the at­ that is the substance of our society. determination to rout the enemy, to rout him tributes of humanity. with the greatest possible speed, to liberate our mangle it with bombs and shells. In the first winter Never has our hatred of the invader been so Our people ·from time immemorial disliked the native land with the greatest possible speed. We of siege the enfeebled hands of mothers tore in keen as in these days of lull. It is as if we were know that the denouement is drawing nigh. vain at the frozen earth: it was impossible even arrogant, ridiculed vanity and was wary even of now fully realizing the entire me~sure of suffer­ to bury a dead child. Can words describe the cour­ pride. This is the basis of that sense oi human ing inflicted upon us by the invaders. I recently In 1941 Hitler, like the ancient tyrants, sent age of Leningrad, which has held out despite dignity which has twice covered Sevastopol with read in a German newspaper a story about the his armies into distant countries. The Germans glory and which has enablecl Russian youngsters Ukraine. The correspondent describes how the manufactured war for export. They pictured everything? tc endure torture at the hands of the German ex­ death as a foreigner, without right of entry into We remember the time when hundreds of Ger­ Saxonian "lord and master" leads a prosperous ecutioners with a consciousness of inner super­ life in a Ukrainian village. How many such Sax­ the Reich.
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