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Cross-border Talks
Cross-Border Talks is an independent medium ran by journalists from Poland, Bulgaria and Czechia.
Interview on the occasion of the 10th anniversary of the website ‘dVersia’ - about its role in Bulgaria, changes in the Bulgarian and Romanian progressive space over the last 10 years and today's utopias![]()
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www.crossbordertalks.eu
Kalina Drenska, dVERSIA, 11 May 2025 In 2025, dVERSIA magazine will publish a new issue. Dversia...
The second round of the presidential elections pits the candidate of the NGO sector against that of the sovereigntists – a contradiction that seems to be permanent in the era of Donald Trump and in which parts of our society are also likely to be involved![]()
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Some of those we spoke to in Bucharest in recent days still hope that, somehow, a black swan event will swing people’s preferences back in favour of Nicușor Dan. Others believe that George Simion’s victory is certain.![]()
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A week before the second round, protests by young people carrying European flags began in Romania’s major cities. These protests do not yet have the same mass appeal as those against Victor Ponta and the Social Democratic Party in November 2014, when, following an unprecedented mobilisation in the country and among the diaspora, Klaus Iohannis emerged victorious after initially losing to Ponta in the first round. The diaspora now seems clearly positioned in support of Simion, although Nicușor Dan also has influence among Romanians abroad. The scale of the mobilisation behind Nicușor Dan and Europe within Romania in the coming days will show whether or not he will succeed in bringing about a historic upset.![]()
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The second round of the presidential elections pits the candidate of the NGO sector against that of the sovereigntists - a contradiction that seems to be permanent in the era of Donald Trump and in wh...
France had Gaullism. Argentina had Peronism, an ideology based on the legacy of its former president Juan Domingo Perón. Trumpism is presently on the rise, with admirers and copycats worldwide. Romania had its own -ism, although lesser known. Some still copy his style, most still carry his ideas, but few would admit that they get their inspiration from former president Traian Băsescu.
A political era is ending in Romania. The next one could be even worse - Cross-border Talks
www.crossbordertalks.eu
Romanians need imagination and will to think beyond the heritage and presidential model of Băsescu
SPD may have lost the German elections massively, but the new coalition, to be inaugurated within days, does not aim at erasing Olaf Scholz's legacy. Wojciech Albert Łobodziński analyzes the new German 'grand coalition' governance plans.
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Germany is entering a new political phase, not only due to the shift in parliamentary...
Operation Barbarossa was Nazi-Germany’s code-word for Hitler’s brutal war of racial annihilation on the Soviet Union starting in 1941.![]()
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Almost 85 years after that – in 2025 – Germany has finally translated one of the most vital books on the subject: Ales Adamowitsch, Janka Bryl and Uladsimir Kalesnik’s Feuerdörfer or Out Of The Fire.![]()
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This book tells the story of the crimes of Hitler’s army – the Wehrmacht. Unlike conventional armies, Hitler’s fascist army did not conduct a conventional war – army against army.![]()
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Instead, it was, in large parts, a war of one army – Nazi-Germany’s army set against defenceless civilians. Hitler’s Nazi army came to Eastern Europe as ferocious mass killers.![]()
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In this, the words Out Of The Fire or Feuerdörfer stand for the unbearable fact that well over 9,000 villages, hamlets, Jewish shtetels and rural settlements were destroyed by the Germans and with many of its people barbarously and callously massacred.![]()
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Unsurprisingly, it took the Germans a whopping fifty years to translate the book. One might argue that a cold-war Soviet book might not have been popular in Germany fifty years ago – even though it spoke – and still speaks – the truth of what Nazi-Germany did.![]()
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During the last fifty years, what was even less popular in Germany was outlining – to the Germans – what their brothers, uncles, fathers and grandfathers had done in their Nazi army – not so long ago.![]()
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After Nazism, Germany’s Nazis had managed to survive the Allied Forces’ De-Nazification (1946-1951) and enjoyed the ensuing Re-Nazification – the recycling of Nazis – during the subsequent years that filled Germany’s state and corporate apparatus with ex- (and not so) ex-Nazis.![]()
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In 2025, finally, Adamovich’s book has been translated. It even won the Leipzig Book Fair Prize. Perhaps very deservedly, some say that it is impossible to read this book in one go.![]()
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The book is more like a novel or a non-fiction book that you go to immerse yourself into. With this book, you will need several attempts and extended breaks in order to finish the book.![]()
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Again and again, you want to stop reading. It is hard to plunge yourself in the gruesome world of the German Wehrmacht invading the Soviet Union.![]()
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The atrocities are too overwhelming and the horror, the Germans unleashed, is too terrifying. For this reason, it is not intended to describe, in minute detail, how the people of Belarus were murdered by the criminal killer squads of the Wehrmacht and the SS while being burned to death in their houses and barns.![]()
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The fact that this book can now be published in German language for the first time – 50 years after it was published in Minsk despite initial reservations by the Soviet censorship authorities – is still somewhat of an event.![]()
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Its translator – Thomas Weiler – has accomplished an enormous feat and rightly received the Translator Prize of the Leipzig Book Fair 2025.![]()
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Fire villages - Cross-border Talks
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Book review of Ales Adamowitsch, Janka Bryl and Uladsimir Kalesnik’s Feuerdörfer or Out Of The Fire