The Geography and Memory of 14,000,000 Murders in Yad Vashem Studies, Volume 39:2

The Geography and Memory of 14,000,000 Murders: Timothy Snyder, Bloodlands: Europe Between Hitler and Stalin

In his review of Bloodlands, Christoph Dieckmann considers this study to be a major milestone in a much needed process for preserving the memory and writing the history of the mass crimes committed against 14,000,000 victims in Eastern Europe in the twentieth century. Snyder examines the various victim groups with equal empathy and is constantly aware of plural causalities. The reviewer would hope that such an approach might both facilitate mutual recognition between peoples in the region and help establish a new path for further research. While this reviewer expresses praise for many aspects in this study, he is skeptical about others: particularly the top-down approach, which Snyder applies to the influence of Stalin and Hitler, raises many questions. The reviewer also feels that throughout Snyder’s study, the author is more familiar with research on the Stalinist crimes than on those perpetrated by the National-Socialists.