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Latest revision as of 13:42, 30 January 2022

This discussion was subject to a deletion review on 2018 March 23. For an explanation of the process, see Misplaced Pages:Deletion review.

The following discussion is an archived debate of the proposed deletion of the article below. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was delete. Opinions are divided, but the core issue is whether this event is verifiable. "Delete" opinions point out the lack of English-language sources, and "keep" opinions assert the existence of Polish-language sources. While I can't read Polish, my view is that given the circumstances, we need to err on the side of caution:

What we are dealing here is with an article concerning a supposed 1939 massacre of Poles by "Belarusian and Jewish communists". This is the sort of article that needs excellent sourcing in light of the real-world and Misplaced Pages tensions existing in this topic area, see e.g. the long list of arbitration cases beginning with WP:ARBEE.

While normally WP:NOENG sources are perfectly acceptable as long as no English sources exist, it is my view that controversial issues in WP:AC/DS topic areas do require good sources in more than one (non-English) language in order to allow as many editors as possible, and not just a few or those possibly associated with one side of a conflict, to assess the content. This is not currently possible here, and also, many "keep" opinions do not substantially address the sourcing problems. I must therefore give the "keep" opinions less weight.

Userfication with view to a possible partial merger to the apparently less controversial Skidel revolt, to the extent that consensus allows, remains possible. Sandstein 22:30, 22 March 2018 (UTC)

Massacre of Brzostowica Mała

• Articles for deletion/Massacre of Brzostowica Mała (2nd nomination)

Massacre of Brzostowica Mała (edit | talk | history | protect | delete | links | watch | logs | views) – (View log · Stats)

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Previously nominated in 2008 and closed no consensus -- Misplaced Pages:Articles for deletion/Massacre of Brzostowica Mala. There are number of problems here - to begin with we have glaring factual and POV problems (communist insurgents being described as "Belarusian and Jewish militias" (such militias did not exist yet in 1939), elsewhere as fifth column, and of course the amazing "Scores of intoxicated peasants and criminal opportunists have joined the fray".... to describe what was not so much an ethnic conflict but a political one (local supporters of the invadind communists - staged a revolt). Much of the content in this article relates to the Skidel revolt (which seems to scrape pass the notability threshold), and is a POVFORK of it...

Beyond the POV concerns, the real issue is lack of WP:RS covering this alleged event in any depth. My BEFORE does not find much. In terms of sourcing the article - ref1 (Wierzbicki) would be acceptable quality wise, however it covers the Skidel revolt and not this incident. Ref2 is similar in that is covers the Skidel revolt, with one sentence mentioning Brzostowica. All the other references are modern Polish newspaper reports relating to an IPN (The Institute of National Remembrance – Commission for the Prosecution of Crimes against the Polish Nation) - a state agency which is charged with prosecuting crimes by the Nazies and communists (so obvious BIAS issues off the bat, beyond reputation issues of this politically run memory ministry) - who conducted a probe into whether this event was prosecutable following a newspaper report and reached the conclusion that it was not (due to accounts being second hand - rumors). This is basically akin to a police investigation and some reporting on in - with no actual prosecution. Ref3 (broken link) is an IPN report for their yearly activities (where this is presumably mentioned as on-going). Ref4 is a newspaper report from 2001 about the IPN opening their probe. Ref5 is a Wprost article about the Skidel revolt, and mentions the Brzostowica event in 3 sentences. Ref6 is from ultra-nationalist Nasz Dziennik in 2002 complaining (an op-ed?) about the stalled IPN investigation while mentioning their previous reporting (which started the IPN probe). Ref7 is an IPN document from 2005 that covers media coverage of the IPN (getting a bit circular, no?) - which in one paragraph (in the middle, the rest of the document being unrelated) covers the coverage on the IPN's decision to close the case. Ref8 is an archived copy of what seems to be Ref5 (or a reprint of it - text is very similar). Ref9 is again an IPN media coverage overview (but from 2003) which in one very short sentence states the prosecutor said the case would be discontinued for lack of evidence.

In summary - we are lacking reliable secondary RS. Essentially what this is based on is a single Nasz Dziennik article and subsequent coverage of a IPN probe that didn't go anywhere. No new coverage has surfaced since 2008.Icewhiz (talk) 21:14, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Military-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 21:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Belarus-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 21:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of History-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 21:22, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

• Weak Deletemerge (with Skidel revolt) My reading is that this is based on the research of a historian named Marek Wierzbicki. When I do a google book search of 'Wierzbicki Brzostowica', I can see a number of books, most snippet view, where this is discussed. There is a preview of a book in English with an article by Wierzbicki which mentions it, although it locates it in the neighboring village of Wielka Brzostowica. Wierzbicki focuses on the actions of Jews, Orthodox, Belarusians and other minority groups in Poland. I don't have any idea if there is anything untoward in his research. Looking at that book in particular, and what I can find in general, I think this article does not pass NPOV, as we really only have the POV of one historian, and in reliable publications that POV gives very little information, certainly not enough for an article about a massacre. I could understand some of Wierzbicki's view being put into one or two articles about the Polish resistance, but I don't know if that is necessary and I don't see a merge of any material from this article being useful. Perhaps there could be a context section of the Skidel revolt article that could include the list of similar incidents listed by Wierzbicki in that book. There is a far-right historian(?), Marek Jan Chodakiewicz, who also discusses the event in his writings - for instance on the snippet on page 242 here you can see some of it. That text can be read elsewhere on the internet, here is a google-cached version of it, it is in an appendix. Smmurphy 22:42, 15 March 2018 (UTC)

I've rewritten the article to deal with the issues I could find. I don't find any source other than Chodakiewicz which calls the event a massacre or masakra and none that call it a mass murder. For that reason, I think the article should be renamed Brzostowica Mała revolt. I've moved the Chodakiewicz reference to the end, we don't have an article about the killings of Jews in 1944 in Eishyshok (at least sometimes called a Pogrom), but I've tried to summarize his point. I see my edits as changing the article extensively and would welcome collaborative feedback/criticism. That said, if some form of neutralization along the lines of my edits is acceptable, I would strike my !vote/change my !vote to rename. Smmurphy 15:39, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

@Smmurphy: Much better in terms of POV. We should of-course ascribe these attacks to communist or pro-Soviet militants (some of whom were Belarusian and Jewish as well as Polish (see - which is on the wider the revolt). In the AfD - what is lacking in my mind is reliable secondary sources that address this in depth (e.g. books or articles by reputable historians) - the best I saw were blurb/list mentions - did you locate anything better?Icewhiz (talk) 16:03, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

IPN gives a paragraph at (what is currently) ref3. Ref6, Wybranowski 2002, is (as you point out) a newspaper article about the event. Those two are the sources which give the event more than two sentences and the first is arguably a primary source. All of the Wierzbicki sources are just one or two sentences, I think. The Szawlowski and Chodakiewicz books are also just one or two sentences (Note that current ref11 gives two Chodakiewicz sources, but the Polish American Congress document is entirely contained within the 2002 book, so you can see everything that book has on the incident in the document). So I do not find multiple "reliable secondary sources that address this in depth", so there is a case for delete based on WP:INDEPTH. I do not know if Wierzbicki, Szawłowski, or the involved members of IPN are reputable historians, although I think Chodakiewicz may not be reliable. I do not know anything about Nasz Dziennik or Wybranowski, and I have no problem if that paper and its material were cut - and I'd be happy to rewrite those bits if that were necessary. Just to be clear, there is a trick for seeing large sections of material that only exists in snippet view in google books (feel free to ask me on my talk page if you don't know it), so I am reasonably certain about the degree of coverage in sources available on google books. Also, my Polish is not very good, so I use google translate to assist. Smmurphy 17:43, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

IPN does multiple things (education, historical research, archive, and incvestigation/prosecution) - in this case (the not too long I will add - less than a page) this is a prosecutor's investigation report - which I would view as similar (ignoring POV/BIAS/RSness) to a police, FBI, or special commision report - which would be a primary source (as would be Soviet era records). Wybranowski (a career journalist) writing in Nasz Dziennik (a newspaper, fairly extreme in terms of editorial line) would not be a RS for history - it seems this reporting is mainly from second hand witness stories 60+ years later and was for the most part contradicted by other sources (such as they are).Icewhiz (talk) 18:49, 16 March 2018 (UTC) Note also timing of the initial newspaper report to shortly after the release of Neighbors: The Destruction of the Jewish Community in Jedwabne, Poland (which caused hreat controvesy in Poland and covered the murder of Jews by Poles) - which makes the editorial line here a bit suspect.Icewhiz (talk) 18:53, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm trying to bring up the main content points in talk, but I wanted to put an update here. The source for the statement that as many as 50 people were killed is a genealogist's list, here, which cites Wierzbicki, Marek. Polacy i białorusini w zaborze sowieckim: stosunki polsko-białoruskie na ziemach północno-wschodnich II Rzeczypospolitej pod okupacją sowiecką 1939-1941. Volumen, 2000. I've looked at extended snippets from Wierzbicki for each of the names from the genealogist's list. I don't see snippets for all of the names, but it seems they are all in the book. None of the figures whose snippets I do find from the genealogist labels as being from Brzostowica Mała were said to be killed in that village in that book. Many are said to be from nearby pl:Brzostowica Wielka and other nearby villages. For an example, the first name on the list, Witold Beretti, was according to the book killed near his estate (się w pobliżu majątku) at pl:Parchimowce and was killed on the 22nd, not the 19th. In fact, according to that book, the killings in this region started at least by the 17th and continued until the 22nd when Soviet's arrived. After closely reading this section of the book (p70-74), I agree that these events do seem to be a mass murder/massacre. An article under the title Massacre of Brzostowica Mała should probably focus on the limited number of killings in that place on the 18th, that of hrabia Wołkowicki and his family. Thus, I've edited the article, moving the other events to a context and aftermath section. I still think there are serious POV issues regarding the framing of the perpetrators. I'm not sure what the title should be if the article sought to be about broader events. Smmurphy 21:18, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

I'm striking my !vote. I don't know if the killings of the hrabia and his family on the 18th should be the main focus of the article, if it should focus on all of the results which took place in Grodno, or indeed all the revolts in Białystok Voivodeship. In the long run, I think articles on each of these are possible. Although there are still issues with POV/V and the title seems off, so I don't think removing the article is necessarily the right outcome. Right now, the article is a hybrid of an article on the killings of the hrabia and his family and an article on the revolts and killings in Grodno. This isn't a perfect endpoint for a stable article or set of articles, and I don't know if the endpoint should be a rename, splits/mergers/rewrites, or something else, so I'm not !voting merge or keep as I'm comfortable with a number of outcomes. For this AfD, I would also be happy with a number of outcomes, including: "keep and work things out at talk", "no consensus", "merge", or "rename". Smmurphy 15:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

@Smmurphy: My thoughts were that Skidel revolt should be the primary here (this article mainly duplicating it originally). Skidzyel’ is also in the vicinity of Grodno and is some 38km from Brzostowica Mała. One could imagine a different topic and much wider topic (than the hrabia and his family on the 18th) or inclusion in Soviet invasion of Poland#Domestic Reaction. There are POV issues and selective usage of sources in the present article in regards to the wider revolt(s)/welcoming, and the article would need to be renamed into a more widely used term.Icewhiz (talk) 15:47, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

That would be a good outcome, and the sourcing right now seems to support the combining of the events (Strzembosz 2009 here for an instance I don't already see mentioned). I think the only source (and there are many now in the article) which does not report these events and those in skidel together is the 2003 IPN report, and that is only because that report lists events town by town as individual crimes without a section contextualizing them as a part of a larger event - done only because of the nature of the investigation and not meant to be used to exclude the relationship between the crimes. I'll go ahead and change my !vote to merge (with Skidel revolt), as that is the outcome I prefer. Smmurphy 16:03, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

I think the unifying strand between Skidel, Grodno, Brzostowica Mała, Brzostowica Wielky, and all of the revolts (and they are closely related) is the Communist Party(ies?) of Western Belorussia (KPZB). If the events were merged, a title for the umbrella article could be something like "September 1939 Communist Parties of Western Belorussia revolts". The Skidel revolt was particularly highly organized and successful and may have involved partisan units taking partial control of parts of the town (for instance, of the bridge over the Niemen), and so an article about it independent of this umbrella article might be appropriate. An article about the events in Brzostowica Mała on 18 September seems like it could only really be about the murders of the hrabia and his family, which seems possible but would be a poorly referenced stub. So my proposal to merge with is that the Skidel revolt article continue to focus on Skidel as a part of KPZB activities in the area, while this article, a summary of the Skidel revolts, and some new material about KPZB activities in regions neighboring Grodno be compiled under "September 1939 Communist Parties of Western Belorussia revolts" (or something similarly titled). I like the idea of keeping this separate from articles on Soviet occupation, as the KPZB was closely tied with the Soviets, but calling them one thing would be overstepping. Smmurphy 16:32, 20 March 2018 (UTC)

• Oppose and very strongly so. GizzyCatBella (talk) 00:58, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Keep (obviously). References have just been greatly improved there. The crime was committed by a group of men with red armbands (Barkan, Cole, & Struve call them "red militia" in Shared History, Divided Memory). I did not include sources listed in the Notes to new sources: they can easily be traced back. — The nominator reminds me of this article's first AfD nominator, User:Boodlesthecat, both, painting Poland black. User:Boodlesthecat for example, fought tooth-and-nail to have the article Rescue of Jews by Poles during the Holocaust (written my me) deleted from Misplaced Pages in 2008 on (always the same) claims of the Polish internet sources being either fringe, biased, outright nationalist, far-right, diabolic, and bloodthirsty ... whenever the locals were involved in the killing of Poles. Poeticbent talk 11:33, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

  Shame you did not mention being canvassed. .

  Regarding the added sources - those of them we might deem reliable still mention this locality as just a brief blurb in the context of the wider Skidel revolt. The article still has rather glaring POV problems - possibly reflecting some of the unreliable and highly biased sources it is using (for details beyond a blurb), e.g. the ultra-nationalist Nasz Dziennik which seems to have been the main source to have written at length here. Sourcing here is not close to what we'd expect for history (with an added possible BLPCRIME issue). Even the lede ascribing this (from sourcing on Skidel in general, and not this event) to "Belarusian and Jewish militias" is in this source ascribed to communist supporters of all ethnicities - including Poles. Chodakiewicz does indeed ascribe this chiefly to Jews and Belarusians, however hs is per the SPLC "a long history of right-wing activism and controversy surrounding anti-Semitism", "Chodakiewicz has a history of troubling, far-right views including repeatedly arguing that the killing of Polish Jews who survived the Holocaust by native Poles was not due to anti-Semitism, but rather to Jewish collaboration with Soviets."., "Chodakiewicz’s far-right beliefs have not only centered on dabbling in anti-Semitism. In January of 2017, he penned a piece lamenting what he called the “ongoing genocide against Whites” in South Africa. ". Our article is 'to the right of this fellow - as he even he feels the need to say chiefly (whereas in our article we have created bona fida "Belarusian and Jewish militias" - organizations that did not exist until much later (Skidel, at large, was a communist action).Icewhiz (talk) 12:06, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

  That is not canvassing. The note was made to help verify the existence of this massacre and sent to specifically to Poeticbent for a good reason: he has made significant contributions in this field.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• KeepWeak delete - There are Polish sources describing this event; I, however, cannot adequately translate them. POV may be a concern but, as is famously said for the dozens of poorly-written articles on recent murders and terror attacks (with BLPs!), deletion is not cleanup.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 13:07, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
  • @TheGracefulSlick: POV is a concern - as well as this being a fork/duplicate of much of the content in Skidel revolt. But frankly - if I had been able to locate at least 2 reputable sources penned by historians and published in a reputable outlet at a decent length (say - at least 1 full book page, preferably 2-3 pages at least) - I wouldn't have AfDed - I would've NPOVed it based on the sources. I wasn't able to locate any such source - the most I see (in what I would consider borderline reputable) are blurbs (1 line, 3-4 lines) mentioning this incident in the context of the wider Skidel revolt. WWII is a widely researched topic area written about at length, and we mostly rely on academic quality sources for articles in the topic area. Can you point out to RSes supporting your position?Icewhiz (talk) 16:09, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
    • Icewhiz I finally got around to translating the reports I found over to English and I wasn't satisfied. I think something happened here, but I don't think we can describe it as a "massacre"; I can only find bits and pieces of an incident, not indepth coverage. For that, I have changed my !vote for now.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 20:49, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
      • FWIW, I think the killing of of the countess during the pro-Soviet rebellion does probably (did not fully assess the quality of the sources, hence I qualify) pass WP:V - there are short blurbs mentioning this - but that would support a line or two in another article(s), not a standalone or anything close to this length.Icewhiz (talk) 21:14, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Delete The assertion that in 1939 there was a "a mass murder of the ethnic Polish inhabitants of Brzostowica Mała..." committed by "Belarusian and Jewish militias" and that not a single source on this event exists in any Germanic or Romance language is impossible to swallow. I do accept that this assertion is being made by a walled garden of Polish authors. The sole English-language source in the article (source #2., Barkan, Elazar; Cole, Elizabeth A.; Struve, Kai. Shared History, Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-occupied Poland. Leipziger Universitätsverlag. p. 140.) is used in a misleading manner to source the fact that a "mass murder" took place (in the lede) and to source extreme assertions in the first paragraph of the text. All that the sources actually asserts is that "anti-state revolt(s) occurred in many other small towns and settlements", followed by a list of towns including Wielka Brzostowica. Turn the page and the text continues, "local Jewish communities formed self-defense detachments that were intended to protect the Jews against raids and robberies such as the excesses that took place, for example, in..." There is no mention on pages 140 or 141 of any "mass murder" or '"massacres" in these towns,let alone of one committed by Jews against Poles. I find it frankly impossible to believe that such a "massacre" could have occurred without a source in any language west of Polish. And the sole English source that can be found not only refers to a nearby town with a similar name, it describes quite a different series of actions. Here are some searches on Brzostowica + massacre + 1939. google hits are echos of this article; gbooks nothing; gScholar brings up 4 article that mention all 3 keywords (Brzostowica + massacre + 1939) in articles about massacres of Jews. E.M.Gregory (talk) 14:12, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Comment Like everyone else, I am having difficulty finding English language sourcing. I have found one mention of two deaths by Elma Tryphosa Dangerfield in Beyond the Urals (1946), p. 19, along with other Soviet-related war atrocities prefatory to her discussion of the Gulags. "In the locality of Brzostowica Mala the local landowner, Antoni Wolkowicki, aged 70, was shot, while his wife, aged 60, was buried alive." but this does not really support describing this as a "massacre" and she seems to put the blame more on the Soviets. She also worked for MI9 and Ministry of Information (United Kingdom) during the war, so it's not even clear if this 1946 book is RS. 24.151.116.12 (talk) 17:53, 16 March 2018 (UTC)
• Leaning delete in this case on WP:N, WP:NOTNEWS, and WP:TNT grounds. The content is rather poor, samples:

• In 2002, the newspaper Nasz Dziennik interviewed a witness who was five years old at the time of the events. His testimony noted that the militants were armed with shotguns and axes and consisted mostly of Belarusians but included Jews and were led by Isaac (Ajzik) Zusko, son of Deli and Borucha and later a leader of the Polish Workers' Party and by a person named Koziejko from nearby village Małe Brzostowiczany.
• The lack of success in naming the perpetrators by the institute was criticized in an exposé by one of the biggest national dailies Nasz Dziennik, who interviewed the only surviving eyewitness still alive in 2003, who was five years old at the time.

References

1. ^ Wybranowski, Wojciech (2002-10-02). "Kłopotliwe śledztwo. Dochodzenie w sprawie mordu na Polakach w Brzostowicy Małej utknęło w martwym punkcie" (in Polish). Nasz Dziennik. Archived from the original on 26 June 2011. Retrieved 31 January 2014.
2. Instytut Pamięci Narodowej (IPN), Informacja o działalności Komisji Ścigania Zbrodni przeciwko Narodowi Polskiemu w okresie 1 lipca 2002 – 30 czerwca 2003. Warsaw, November 2003. Sygn. akt S 50/01/Zk p. 52 – via Internet Archive.

This is WP:UNDUE weight given to the testimony of a *5-yr* old witness, who remembered the ethnicities and even names of the perpetrators? This just seems bizarre. It's unclear what has occurred so labelling it a "massacre" seems off. Like others, I'm concerned about the lack of secondary RS that such articles should normally be based on: history books, scholarly articles, etc. K.e.coffman (talk) 20:10, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

I agree with this. In my admittedly imperfect rewrite I didn't add or remove sources, I just tried to make the article better match what the sources say (and in the process make the article more neutral). Smmurphy 20:53, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• I concur. 60-year-old accounts by child witnesses are not WP:RS. I have tried a number of kinds of searches and am not finding notability for this event as an event. The murder of the 4 members of an aristocratic family could be mentioned in an article on partisan/Communist killings in the days following the German invasion of Poland in 1939, with reliable sourcing.E.M.Gregory (talk) 21:40, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• I hope we do understand each other here. – The war ended over 70 years ago. Every single account of the Holocaust is an account of a child nowadays. There are NO other accounts. That includes everything, I mean, every single account of life in the ghetto or in concentration camps. – Have you ever attempted to dismiss them anywhere around here with our community's consent? If not, try it ... Poeticbent talk 04:39, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Comment I removed some of the fringe and unreliable sources to see what this would look like if it focused on just what the investigation confirmed. The categories would need to be changed and a move would be needed. This is not a keep !vote, but just an experimental preview. 24.151.116.12 (talk) 22:42, 16 March 2018 (UTC)

• No. That's not what you did. You and User:Smmurphy before you, changed the meaning of sourced statements to read like the Soviet postwar propaganda which is mentioned below towards the end. – You turned back into a Stalinist legend a band of robbers and murderers some of whom might have been freed from prison by the invasion of Poland, according to citations given. The murders of civilians were never disputed by historians. Poeticbent talk 04:39, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Weak delete per the arguments above. There is some reliable sourcing for some, perhaps six, murders committed by undetermined perpetrators that might be includable in an article of more general scope, but I fear that a page on this specific topic will be a perpetual attraction for unreliable and fringe attacks on ethnic minorities. 24.151.116.12 (talk) 16:10, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• I was wondering if we need an SPI investigation here into the activities of 24.151.116.12 (160 edits) limiting their participation exclusively to deletion discussions. Poeticbent talk 16:59, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Keep Polish-language sources are acceptable. There is no policy-based argument on deleting an article just because there are no English-language sources. Certainly this make verification harder, but so do subscription-based scholarly articles too, for example. I'm not convinced that the Polish-language sources are not RS. Based on Icewhiz's edit note the actual gripe seems to be that some of these Polish historians have "unsusual views, who some call anti-Semitic" (SPLC piece he was probably referencing to). So in essence, some Polish historians have different views on average, than Jewish (or let alone Soviet) historians. Not something we can really do anything about in Misplaced Pages, unless other historians dismiss their views. --Pudeo (talk) 20:37, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

  It is a double problem here - both BIASED (see later SPLC stmt I was referring to) non-RS sources AND lack of WP:INDEPTH coverage (including the Polish sources) - other editors have attempted to locate coverage of this that extends beyond a line, blurb, or paragraph by reputable historians - and have failed.Icewhiz (talk) 20:49, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Please note that recent edits (with massive reverts to prior POV/Sourcing issues) have added sources that do not mention Brzostowica Mała. For instance this diff, in a SYNTH, added an aside from Gross (an esteemed historian) The Soviet invasion of Poland (which began on 17 September 1939) was welcomed by the local committees. Entering troops were showered with flowers "(Jews seemed to have a predilection for kissing tanks; somehow no one mentions Ukrainian or Belorussians doing this)" wrote Jan Tomasz Gross.. However while Gross writes about the Soviet conquest at length (a whole book!) - he does not even mention this event in a single line.Icewhiz (talk) 21:52, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

References

1. Gross, Jan Tomasz. Revolution from Abroad. Princeton University Press. p. 29.

• The paragraph in question – in our article – is about the Skidel revolt in particular, and about the Bialystok Voivodeship (during the Soviet invasion) in general. Surely enough, Skidel is in Gross's book along with the Bialystok Voivodeship mentioned throughout the entire volume. The information, provided for the benefit of our readers, serves as practical and useful background to the understanding of what happened in Brzostowica only one day later: it was a cluster of correlated events. Poeticbent talk 22:15, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Not everything needs to be spelled out in each and every paragraph. Other locations are already named. Sometimes one look at the map of the region would be enough, and the subject is quite familiar to us already. Skidel, Grodno, and Brzostowica form a triangle about 1 hour drive across. Poeticbent talk 22:35, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

Certainly there is other background material of relevance beyond Jewish tank kissing (for instance, Poles being a minority in these areas, and say the degree of acceptance by the non-Polish majority of the Polish rule following the Polish conquest in 1921)... However you basically seem to be making the case that this event should be a 1 liner (and it is already there) in the Skidel revolt - as they are closely connected.Icewhiz (talk) 22:42, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• Keep - Most of the sources are books, and frankly, that is enough. But the whole nomination and the arguments for deletion are, strikingly, attacks on the sources. From the laughably superficial (look, the sources are mostly in Polish!) to the WP:JUSTDONTLIKEIT ("I do not know if Wierzbicki, Szawłowski, or the involved members of IPN are reputable historians"). This would be fine if these attacks on the sources were citations of WP:RS attacking the sources and were cited in the article, but instead the attacks smack of WP:OR. First, the defective nomination: its (weak) main line of attack is that, according to it, the whole thing is based on an article in Nasz Dziennik, a major Polish newspaper, and the subsequent IPN investigation into it. The nominator says "(getting a bit circular, no?)". But editors have since eliminated the Nasz Dziennik ref (I would not have), and instead now there are 15 other sources, so the nominator's argument simply fell apart. Then you have objections to calling the murders "a massacre", yet in addition to at least 20 murders, the entire family of Count Antoni Wolkowicki was brutally tortured and murdered. On Misplaced Pages, murders of single nuclear families are routinely called "massacres", so this objection beggars belief. You then have attacks on historians: "we really only have the POV of one historian," which is not true, as the events are brought up by several historians, but focus on the real problem with this objection: the objector attacks a historian but produces no WP:RS at all opposing this particular historian's book! The objector simply does not like Prof. Marek Wierzbicki, member of Polish Academy of Sciences, director of BEP IPN in Radom (pl), a historian with over 10 books published between 1993 and 2016. Ugly. The next objection is also remarkable: the whole encyclopedic article is called WP:UNDUE because newspaper Nasz Dziennik interviewed a massacre survivor who was 5 years old at the time. Again, an overall attack on the whole Misplaced Pages entry based on just one detail of one major newspaper's report. Why so much animosity against a Misplaced Pages article? Where are the WP:RS objecting to the testimony of a survivor who was a minor at the time? (If you have them, include them on the article!) Anyway, the Nasz Dziennik source has unnecessarily been expunged, so the whole objection is now entirely irrelevant. Finally, it is worth pointing out that the article as it stands now is far, far from perfect, and cleanup is necessary. For example, the Jan Tomasz Gross quote would be more suitable in a "background" section explaining why major or minor portions of some Polish minorities were in favor of the National Socialist and Soviet invasion of Poland (Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact); whereas where it sits now, the quote is susceptible to accusations of synth. But per WP:DINC AfD is not cleanup, so the place to raise these sort of issues is the TP, not here. XavierItzm (talk) 22:55, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• XavierItzm I am surprised by your disturbingly low sense of good-faith, especially toward Icewhiz (the nom) and E.M.Gregory. How well did you read the rationales? You are twisting them dramatically to imply bad faith.TheGracefulSlick (talk) 23:03, 17 March 2018 (UTC)

• @XavierItzm: - Ignore POV and factual issues (e.g. 20 murdered which has been refuted). Ignore the sheer quantity of refs added (edit warring out the cleanup by Smmurphy and the ip). Please examine the actual sources. Some do not mention the event at all (e.g. Gross who is being used to source Jews kissed tanks). Most of the others are one-liners. A few have a blurb to a paragraph. The sole WP:INDEPTH source is Nasz Dziennik, which is not a source we would usually use for history (and one could also question whether an interview is primary or secondary) - but even if it were, we would still be lacking WP:SIGCOV - as we only have a single source (with issues!) that covers this at length. I would appreciate if you could point to sources (preferrably by repuable historians in a peer reviewed journal or book by a reputable publisher) - say at least 2 - with coverage of at least a whole page each (2-3 pages would be better) on which we could base this article?Icewhiz (talk) 04:32, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

Note: This discussion has been included in the list of Judaism-related deletion discussions. Icewhiz (talk) 04:38, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

«Ignore POV and factual issues (e.g. 20 murdered which has been refuted)». I wish you would strikethrough that. In the relevant TP you have since admitted that the massacre is at least 22. Thank you. XavierItzm (talk) 05:27, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

@XavierItzm: No - I have not admitted that. I did say that a non-RS (a Polish genealogical site) lists 22 names - this is not an appropriate source (just as non-Polish sites of this nature are not) - it is not peer reviewed. The later IPN investigation - lists 6 victims. And what is generally lacking here - is reputable secondary sources discussing this in WP:INDEPTH - sourcing here consists of one-liners and blurbs, a paragraph by IPN (a PRIMARY source), and a newspaper article in Nasz Dziennik (which is quite a POVish source, and which later sources (e.g. the IPN) contradict).Icewhiz (talk) 07:24, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Regarding Marek Wierzbicki, this source - Shared History, Divided Memory: Jews and Others in Soviet-occupied Poland - discusses him as part of a group of ethno-nationalist historians (Tomasz Strzembosz, Bogdan Musiał, Marek Jan Chodakiewicz). However as sources presented to date have Wierzbicki addressing this event as a one-liner or in a list of locations as part of the wider Skidel revolt - sourcing to him fails on lack WP:INDEPTH regardless.Icewhiz (talk) 11:36, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

Alright, so you insist in disqualifying the source with the 22 names. Fine, you are still, hairsplitting. You yourself have linked the full text of the Institute of National Remembrance, describing the massacre (including the gory details of the burials while alive), and listing the following victims, which I quote: «They seized the count Antoni and his wife Ludwika Wołkowycki The same group imprisoned the mayor, secretary and cashier of the commune in Brzostowica Mała and the local postman and teacher. Then the perpetrators murdered all detainees». The source is unimpeachable and not wanting to call this a massacre is absurd given the usual Misplaced Pages standards already cited. But the larger point is that you cannot take a difference of magnitude in the sources of the massacre to memory-hole the whole thing, since deletion is not cleanup WP:DINC. Rather, I would encourage you to constructively edit the article to raise these sorts of issues... one source says, another source says, etc., etc. XavierItzm (talk) 20:52, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

• Keep -- Unless the argument is that this article is about an "event" that did not happen, it ought to be notable. This concerns an area that ceased to be part of Poland in 1939. USSR and successor states would have had an interest in suppressing it, as would communist-era Poland. Peterkingiron (talk) 17:02, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

• This article is about an alleged "massacre" of "mass murder" that did not happen. Reliable sources have not been found to support the allegations in the article.E.M.Gregory (talk) 19:12, 18 March 2018 (UTC)

• Delete -- POV and unreliable sources. FRINGE.--יניב הורון (talk) 19:40, 18 March 2018 (UTC)
• Delete and merge what is useful of the content into Skidel revolt (if it isn't already there). As per poster there do not seem to be enough RS specifically covering this topic. Until there are, judging from the discussion above, it seems this page is likely to be a lightningrod for POV warring. For the sake of all of our sanities, it seems discussing this in the context of Skidel revolt rather than an article titled "massacre" and attributing it to ethnic fifth columns will likely engender a more civil debate on the topic. If and when more RS emerge or are found that specifically discuss this topic, it might make sense to split again if Skidel becomes too lengthy, but looking at the present state of affairs that is unlikely for the foreseeable future. --Calthinus (talk) 15:47, 19 March 2018 (UTC)
• Keep this is a notable event and we have reliable sources confirming that it did happen.--MyMoloboaccount (talk) 16:05, 19 March 2018 (UTC)

'Keep. Minor, controversial, but notable event. This is the usual 'Foo-nationality can do no wrong so delete'-type of discussion (at least to some participants, sigh). The event was a subject of scholarly research, and has generated media coverage (at least in Poland, bias of some of that media side). It is notable, and that's the end of the story. AfD is not a place for people to delete things they don't like. --_{Piotr Konieczny aka Prokonsul Piotrus| reply here} 09:21, 21 March 2018 (UTC)

References

1. https://en.wikipedia.org/Greenough_Family_Massacre
2. https://en.wikipedia.org/Corbly_Family_massacre
3. https://en.wikipedia.org/Nepalese_royal_massacre
4. https://en.wikipedia.org/Itamar_attack
5. https://en.wikipedia.org/Khairlanji_massacre

The above discussion is preserved as an archive of the debate. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as the article's talk page or in a deletion review). No further edits should be made to this page.

• Pages at deletion review