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Victims, Victors: From Nazi Occupation to the Conquest of Germany as Seen by a Red Army Soldier. By Roman Kravchenko-Berezhnoy. Bedford, Pa.: Aberjona Press, 2007. ISBN 0-9717650-6-5. Maps. Photographs. Pp. 310. $19.95.
This work traces the life beginning in the 1930s of the son of a World War I officer in the Russian Imperial Army living in eastern Poland . Two thirds of the book is a translation of the author's diary, kept almost on a daily basis from 1941 to 1944. Each entry is followed by the author's recent evaluations and copious notes added by the translator and editors. During this period the Germans killed about 8,000 of his hometown's 30,000 inhabitants to systematically rid the area of Jews. In addition thousands of young men and women were sent to Germany to work on farms and in factories to replace Germans in the armed forces.
The last third of the book is a series of anecdotes with two objectives: to relate the author's experience in the Red Army in 1945 and his life as a veteran during the changes that occurred in the Soviet Union after the war. The author's main objective was to reveal the...