The Danger Zone (DZ)

In January 1944, Vasily Grossman, a non-practising Jew, entered the town of his birth, Berdichev in the Ukraine, to finally confirm that his mother had been murdered by the Nazis. It was the first time he’d been back there for a long time. Soon after the German invasion of Russia on 22 June 1941, he’d left his mother and other members of his family there because his wife, Olga Mikhailovna, had refused to let them move into their flat in Moscow. The flat was big enough for everyone. Vasily was a member of the prestigious Writer’s Guild and had more generous accommodation than your average Russian.

Because his mother was left in the town, which the Germans overran in July 1941, on 15 September, she was murdered by the Nazis in what was the first days of the holocaust.

20 years after her death, and not long before his own from cancer, Vasily wrote this letter to his mother:

My darling, twenty years have passed since the day of your death.

I last wrote to you ten years ago, and in my heart you are still

His mother was immortalised by him in possibly the greatest Russian novel of the 20th Century, Life and Fate, as the character Anna Shrtum.

Tag words: Vasily Grossman; Berdichev; Nazis; Life and Fate; Anna Shrtum; Auschwitz; Aktion; SS; 1st SS Division; SS Leibstandarte Adolf Hitler; Einsatzgruppen C Sonderkommando 4a; Standartenführer Paul Blöbel; Luftwaffe; Heinrich Himmler; Reichsführer SS; Katya Vaisman; Chelmno; Belzec; Sobibor; Majdanek; Victor Alter; Henryk Erlich; Albert Einstein; Joseph Stalin; Winston Churchill; Shlomo Mikhoels; Itzik Fefer; Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee; Leo Tolstoy; War and Peace; Vostryakovskoe Jewish Cemetery;

Everything has to start somewhere. This programme’s about the first day of the holocaust. Not the efficient extermination camps like Auschwitz. But men working hard days organising the digging of deep pits (just the right length), ammunition (you don’t want to run out half way through), organising Jews to the site and then shooting them all day long (you need plenty of Schnapps for the men) until there were none left. Standartenführer (Colonel) Paul Blobel was the right man for the job. In September 1941, they nailed it at the Ukrainian town of Berdichev. But first you need me to tell you how everything came together for this perfect storm.

The Tom Hanks movie, “Greyhound”, tells the dramatic story of a much older man, Commander Krause (played by Tom Hanks), but still a rookie as a naval

War dramas are always calculated to get the adrenalin pumping. Frequently they show war bringing out the best and worst qualities in men. Convoys seen in this movie were typical of what they were in what Churchill called the Battle of the Atlantic, which began with England’s declaration of war against Germany on 3 September 1939 and ending just under six years later with Germany’s surrender on 8 May 1945.

Let’s look at the movie and see how accurately it tells the story of this fierce war on the seas. The key players included Bletchley Park and Alan Turing, his story’s told in the movie “The Imitation Game” - how the British broke the German secret codes used to send instructions to their U-Boats – well that’s the part

The men of the merchant navy (that was the name that Winston Churchill came up for them during the war). They were civilians, who risked their lives signing up for the perilous crossing of the Atlantic. In this movie, as in the way most people look at this vital battle of World War II, they are a vital character in this

The German U-boat crews were their counterparts – they were mostly conscripts unlike the submariners who served in the Royal Navy and the US Navy who were all volunteers.

The battle was about getting across the Atlantic Ocean the vital supplies needed to be brought beyond the seas from the United States to England.

Tag words: Tom Hanks; Greyhound; Fletcher Class destroyer; Flower Class Corvette; Battle of the Atlantic; Bletchley Park; Alan Turing; The Imitation Game; Winston Churchill; U-boat; Kriegsmarine; Royal Navy; US Navy; C.S Forester; The Good Shepherd; Black Pit; wolf packs; Type VII; Admiral Dönitz; Adolf Hitler; Torpedo boats; PBY Catalina; RAF Coastal Command;