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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 Delete 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)
• 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)

• Keep - 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)

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