It's just an idea, but I think Gordon Brown should be sending two sixth formers from every school to Kolym, or maybe Norilsk, even possibly Vorkuta. Like I say, it's just an idea, and I admit, I really do, that it is a little gimmicky, but you know, there are some quite important lessons to be learned there too.
This gimmick was brought to you by Sarcasm Inc. Clever arrogant smartarses since 1975 ©
6 comments:
I do take the point about gimmicks, but... having visited both 'Camps' and 'Gulags' there is, really is, a different order of magnitude as to what took place and why.
If you haven't visited Auschwitz and the various Soviet Gulags [try Karaganda or Spassk] I reccommend a trip for comparison.
At it's simplest people were intetnionally released from Gulags, whereas by way of comparison 32 people survived Treblinka - and their survival was emphatically not intentional !
Though comparisons between mass murders ansd murderers is a dangerous game the holocaust is quite different to the horrors of the Soviet system and requires commemoration.
Brown might have have used visits to the camps for political purposes, but no right minded person who has been there could stand by and allow us to start on that road again. For that I can forgive him a bit.
No not sixth formers - send random selections of feral street youth to Auschwitcz, Treblinka, Novosibirsk - in fact any place far, far away.
I have never visited either any of the Nazi or Communist camps but I think I understand fully just how evil they were.
Do they all have to visit Ruanda, Guantánamo Bay, etc also
I would be happier sending Brown to Kolyma, what Solzhenitsyn called 'the pole of cold and cruelty'.
Good fucking point or better stuill teach them how to read or something
The best discussion of this that I have seen is over at Iain Dale's blog.
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