Review: A Vincent van Gogh Movie - 'At Eternity's Gate'

At Eternity’s Gate

Dutch painter Vincent van Gogh (1853-1890), one of the most beloved and iconic artistic figures in history, has been the subject of numerous films, including Loving Vincent (2017), Vincent van Gogh: A New Way of Seeing (2015), Maurice Pialat’s Van Gogh (1991), Robert Altman’s Vincent and Theo (1990), Vincent (a 1987 documentary by Paul Cox) and Vincente Minnelli’s Lust for Life (1956), among others.

American artist and filmmaker Julian Schnabel’s At Eternity’s Gate is the latest treatment of the painter’s life. It focuses on van Gogh’s last years, from 1887 to 1890. Schnabel has created thoughtful works, such as Before Night Falls (2000), about Cuban poet Reinaldo Arenas, and Miral (2010), the story of a Palestinian girl coming of age in Israel during the First Intifada.

At Eternity’s Gate is co-written by Schnabel, Louise Kugelberg and Jean-Claude Carrière. Eighty-seven-year-old Carrière is known for his 19-year collaboration on the films of Spanish filmmaker Luis Buñuel.

According to Schnabel: “This movie is an accumulation of scenes based on painter Vincent van Gogh's letters, common agreement about events in his life that parade as facts, hearsay, and scenes that are just plain invented. The making of art gives an opportunity to make a palpable body that expresses a reason to live, if such a thing exists.”

Oscar Isaac and Emmanuelle Seigner in At Eternity’s Gate

The movie opens in Paris, where a frustrated, unsuccessful Vincent (Willem Dafoe) meets the rebellious painter Paul Gauguin (Oscar Isaac), who convinces him to follow the sunlight to the south of France. Funded by his loving brother Theo (Rupert Friend), Vincent sets up in Arles. One day, he puts his tattered boots on the red tile floor of his yellow room and paints them—a masterpiece that now hangs in New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art.

Vincent is soon joined by Paul. (The latter: “We have to start a revolution between painting and reality”). In one memorable scene, they paint side by side, each creating a wildly different version of the same model. Chiding Vincent, Paul says: “Your surface looks like it’s made out of clay. It’s more like sculpture than painting.” When Paul leaves, a despairing Vincent cuts off part of his ear.
The artist tends to be either wandering child-like through nature with an easel, brushes and paint strapped to his back, or immobilized in a straitjacket during his stays in psychiatric hospitals. Eventually, in the final months of his life, he is discharged into the care of Dr. Paul Gachet (Mathieu Amalric) in Auvers-sur-Oise.

At Eternity’s Gate is suffused with breathtaking beauty and stands as an original look at the internal life of the painter. Cinematographer Benoît Delhomme creates the feeling that Vincent is rooted in the earth and rustles with the vibrant bushes and tall grasses in Arles’ expansive fields. A panoramic shot of a wintry landscape dotted with dead, black sunflowers is affecting.

The intense Dafoe is convincing despite the age difference between the actor and the painter. Furthermore, the relationship between Vincent and Theo, who never loses confidence in his brother, is movingly and sensitively dramatized. Essentially, Schnabel seeks to bring out van Gogh’s psychic state, unconcerned with external trappings such as language, a somewhat awkward mélange of French and English.

Willem Dafoe in At Eternity’s Gate

 

In one significant segment, Vincent meanders through Paris’ Louvre Museum, contemplating the works of Delacroix, Veronese, Goya, Velasquez and Franz Hals. “They are speaking to van Gogh as he speaks to painters today,” says Schnabel. “There is something there about how artists communicate beyond the grave.”

The movie, however, does not go as far as it might. Biographers and filmmakers alike once assumed that social environment and historical circumstances helped shape the artist, so they explored those elements. Not so today.

Schnabel seems to suggest that the title of his film, At Eternity’s Gate, has an other-worldly meaning. “When facing a landscape I see nothing but eternity,” says Vincent in a voiceover. “Am I the only one to see it?”

In fact, something far more down to earth is involved. At Eternity’s Gate is an oil painting done by Van Gogh shortly before his death in 1890. It is based on his 1882 lithograph Worn Out, inspired in turn, at least in part, by the image of an old, worn-out working class man, depicted by the Belgian socialist artist Paul Renouard in San Travail (Without Work). The painting is not, as the filmmakers imply, merely a foreboding of the subject’s mortality, but a representation of his unemployed condition and physical exhaustion.

Schnabel adopts a rather abstract, ahistorical view of van Gogh, a man of exceptional culture and compassion. However, in his letters, the 19th century painter articulately set out his own social and cultural views.

“I see paintings or drawings in the poorest cottages,” van Gogh wrote, “in the dirtiest corners. And my mind is driven towards these things with an irresistible momentum.” He railed against art profiteers. The “art trade” has become “all too much a sort of bankers’ speculation and it still is—I do not say entirely—I simply say much too much ….I contend that many rich people who buy the expensive paintings for one reason or another don’t do it for the artistic value that they see in them.”

The painter was committed to confronting reality. He argued repeatedly along these lines, included in a letter to Theo: “The most touching things the great masters have painted still originate in life and reality itself.” Van Gogh’s subjects included coal miners, peasants, weavers and manual laborers.
The intensity of his short life—during which he sold only one work out of the 850 he painted—and his tragic death have combined to strike a sympathetic chord with millions of people over the years. He painted landscapes and portraits with urgency and an unparalleled emotionality. If he saw things differently, it was not because the structure of his eye was different to that of previous painters, but because the structure of society was different. Ultimately, he was a child of the great social struggles and transformations of the 19th century. Ignoring these issues makes for a less interesting, compelling film.

The case for puns as the most elevated display of wit - By Ephrat Livni (Quartz) 1 Aug 2018

 

 

GET THEE TO A PUNNERY

The case for puns as the most elevated display of wit

By Ephrat Livni 

 August 1, 2018

 

Humor me please, and consider the pun. Though some may quibble over the claim, the oft-maligned wordplay is clever and creative, writer James Geary tells Quartz. His upcoming book Wit’s End robustly defends puns and tells the distinguished history of these disrespected witticisms. 

“Despite its bad reputation, punning is, in fact, among the highest displays of wit. Indeed, puns point to the essence of all true wit—the ability to hold in the mind two different ideas about the same thing at the same time,” Geary writes. “And the pun’s primacy is demonstrated by its strategic use in the oldest sacred stories, texts, and myths.”

The bible, the Indian epic the Ramayana, and the classic Chinese philosophical text the Tao Te Ching all avail themselves of puns, he notes, though we may not recognize these ancient jokes. The Tao Te Ching begins with a pun, for example. The first line of the text states, “The way (tao) that can be spoken of is not the constant way (Tao).”

Geary explains, ”The tao is a physical path, or way, but the Tao is also a spiritual path; the pun brings not only the two sounds and words together but the two ideas, prompting consideration of how to align your physical path (career, life, etc.) with your spiritual path.” It’s thus both a play on ideas and words.

Geary also points out that William Shakespeare, the greatest English language playwright of all time and an acknowledged master of rhetorical jousting, loved puns. The Bard couldn’t resist a quibble—the word for puns in his day. So much so that Shakespeare annoyed contemporaries with his affection for wordplay. “A quibble is the golden apple for which he will always turn aside from his career or stoop from his elevation,” writer Samuel Johnson complained.

Geary counts 200 puns in Love’s Labour’s Lost, 150 in each of the Henry IV plays, more than 100 in Much Ado About Nothing and All’s Well That Ends Well, and an overall average of 78 puns per drama by The Bard. “In stooping to employ the lowly quibble, Shakespeare elevates buried or forgotten senses of words, showing how the names for things intertwine with the things themselves…he makes surprising correlations and uncanny couplings that keep the reader toggling back and forth between meanings,” Geary writes.

Indeed, many a great mind has been inclined to pun. The 18th-century English poet and philosopher Samuel Taylor Coleridge thought it was practically a prerequisite to intelligence, declaring, “All men who possess at once active dance, imagination, and philosophical spirit, are prone to punning.”

US president Abraham Lincoln, despite his somber countenance and grave duties, was famously punny. Once, he received a letter from a Catholic priest asking him to suspend the sentence of a man to be hanged the next day. Lincoln quipped, “If I don’t suspend it tonight, the man will surely be suspended tomorrow.”

By using the same word—suspend—in two ways, Lincoln illuminates the relationship between the literal and metaphorical, legal and physical senses of a single term. It’s a link that in conventional thinking remains invisible, Geary explains.

Perhaps unsurprisingly, the groundbreaking psychiatrist and writer Sigmund Freud appreciated puns precisely for this reason. They reveal the accidental connections that our minds make, just as the Freudian slip reveals insights into a person’s unconscious thinking.

Rhyming ideas

Geary admits that he often makes pun in his head—but he mostly keeps them to himself. He can’t explain why the wordplay’s not appreciated. “In poetry, words rhyme; in puns, ideas rhyme,” he writes. “This is the ultimate test of wittiness, keeping your balance even when you’re of two minds.”

To Geary, puns represent wisdom. He admits some wordplay is just funny, not deep, and even that excessive punning can be tiresome. But he believes the ability to play with and relate disparate ideas, as demonstrated by the pun, underpins all human creativity—in the arts and sciences and beyond. “When you make a pun, you bring together two distinct ideas—a coincidence of sound, significance, or meaning—and a realization results,” Geary says. “Puns are a way of introducing knowledge.”

Although we can quip to ourselves, as Geary sometimes does, a successful pun is best pulled off with an accomplice. The witty utterance matters little if there’s no clever listener to connect the dots with us. The utterer and listener are partners and both must be capable of creativity for the pun to work. Speaker and recipient take one path to connect distinct notions.

“Puns are all about exchange and they create an intimacy,” Geary insists. “You’re in it together, sharing a secret. You both figure it out and that play is the archetypal creative aspect of the mind and being in a relationship.”     

.................

Archive 

Massachusetts Gas Disaster - The Company Managers Were At Fault, Not Workers - Gas Restoration Falling Behind - 9 Nov 2018

Merrimack Valley disaster, National Grid lockout highlights dangers of profit-driven gas system

 

(Gas Worker Locked Out - Labor Union Picket Line - https://www.usw12003.com/) 

 

Autumn has arrived in Massachusetts, with strong winds, chilly days, and nighttime temperatures below freezing. In the Merrimack Valley communities of Lawrence, Andover, and North Andover, thousands of people still do not have gas service in their homes nearly two months after the negligence of Columbia Gas led to an explosion that killed an 18-year-old man, injured dozens and damaged more than 100 buildings.

The September 13 destruction was caused by the over-pressurization of a pipe after the company failed to provide the needed work orders to crews replacing it. A preliminary report from the National Transportation Safety Board found the workers were not to blame.

\Massachusetts Governor Charlie Baker, who was just reelected, assumed authority in the wake of the disaster and promised residents that gas service would be restored by November 19. Columbia Gas has now delayed the promised date until December 16, and it will likely fail to make good on that.
As of October 30, only 1,400 of the 8,400 metered customers whose gas was shut off after the disaster had their service restored, according to the Boston Globe. Nearly 7,000 people were still in alternative housing, such as motels and the temporary trailers that now fill city parks.

Over a dozen officials from the company Baker’s administration chose to oversee the restoration efforts—Eversource—donated more than $12,000 to the Republican governor’s re-election campaign after the company was selected, according to state records
.
Columbia is also reneging on its promise to provide new appliances to all homes that were affected. It now plans to cut corners by repairing rather than replacing furnaces, stoves, and water heaters
damaged because of its negligence. The working-class neighborhood of South Lawrence has many old buildings with plumbing that is not up to code, and the company is trying to avoid upgrading it.  We spoke with Julio about conditions on Salem Street in South Lawrence. “Where I live up there you can’t even drive up the street right now,” he said. “There were multiple explosions. They’re ripping out every pipe and putting in new pipes, but it was essentially destroyed.”

Julio is able to live at home right now because “we live in newer housing. There are still many older houses that don’t have water or electricity. Many people had to leave their homes, and some are in the trailers.”

While the federal government squanders trillions on wars and corporate tax cuts, infrastructure has been systematically starved, particularly in cities like Lawrence, a former textile mill town, which have been ravaged by decades of deindustrialization.

“Things are not good here,” Julio said. “There’s not enough money to fix things. On Salem Street, people still can’t go down the street.”

On October 27 Columbia Gas held an open house at Lawrence High School for residents who were affected by the disaster. The Boston Globe reported many complaints about Columbia’s poor communication and planning. The company’s “chief restoration” officer responded by saying, “‘We have let you down, and I apologize.’” Such apologies are literally cold comfort as winter approaches.

The federal government has empaneled a grand jury and issued subpoenas to Columbia Gas and its parent company, NiSource. The latter’s most recent SEC filing shows an operating loss of $316 million for the quarter ending September 30. However, this figure includes accrued expenses for damage claims, appliance repairs, legal fees, and contractors to help with the restoration. These costs will be reimbursed by insurance, and the company’s stock price did not drop after the operating loss was announced.

Furthermore, Massachusetts law allows utility companies to charge infrastructure costs to customers through rate hikes, and the $135 million-$165 million being spent by Columbia Gas on pipe replacements will likely be passed on to already over-charged customers. Columbia and its contractors have replaced 45 miles of old cast iron pipe since the disaster, at a cost of at least $3 million per mile. According to USA Today, in 2017 the company had 471 miles of antiquated cast iron pipes in its US delivery areas.

The state’s Department of Public Utilities hired an outside evaluator to review the physical condition of the natural gas infrastructure and other potential dangers. However, the DPU is plagued by a lack of inspectors and will not challenge the profit prerogatives of the private companies that monopolize the industry.

The American Society of Civil Engineers gave US energy infrastructure a D+ rating in 2017, noting that a large percentage of higher pressure gas transmission lines were installed before 1980, even though gas consumption increased by 24 percent between 2005 and 2015. “Periodic failures in existing oil and gas pipelines and quality concerns in new construction point to the need for increased monitoring and maintenance spending,” the ASCE report said.

Utility monopolies have little or no incentive to upgrade although they are highly profitable. In other words, without seeing sufficient profit opportunities, the utilities are rolling the dice on near-failing infrastructure, regardless of the devastating human impact. This is the most forceful argument for nationalizing the utility industry and running it as a genuinely public enterprise, free from the relentless demands by Wall Street for ever-higher investor returns.

There are also serious safety concerns arising from the strikebreaking operations of Boston’s other gas monopoly, National Grid. At the end of June, the company, which distributes gas to towns bordering on those destroyed by its competitor, locked out 1,200 skilled workers after they overwhelmingly voted to authorize the United Steelworkers union to call a strike over safety issues, cuts to pay, and health and pension benefits.

After the Merrimack Valley disaster, National Grid officials claimed that customers had nothing to worry about and that the “system is working normally.” But locked-out workers have filed more than 100 safety complaints over the work being done by strikebreakers.

Last month, the DPU ordered National Grid to temporarily suspend all non-essential work except emergency operations following an over-pressurization of a gas line in Woburn leading to the emergency shutdown of gas services to 300 homes. In a statement, the company claimed that management personnel had “inadvertently introduced excess gas into a portion of our system" but quickly recognized and corrected the error.

After National Grid, Columbia Gas, Eversource and the Baker administration initially refused to let locked-out workers participate in the restoration efforts in Merrimack Valley, few workers have been given permission after National Grid released their operator qualifications to the DPU.

Gas Workers Labor Union - United Steel Workers Local 12003

Revenge of the Upper Class Woman - NY Times celebrates downfall of 201 “powerful men:” The ugly face of the #MeToo campaign - 25 Oct 2018

https://archive.is/34NN9
The New York Times published a crude and revealing article October 23, “#MeToo Brought Down 201 Powerful Men. Nearly Half of Their Replacements Are Women.” The piece, credited to seven authors, inadvertently points toward an important truth: the #MeToo campaign is fundamentally an effort by a layer of upper middle class women to advance their economic interests at the expense of their male rivals. The selfish and mercenary motives help explain why the sexual harassment crusade resorts to the foul methods of the smear campaign and the political witch-hunt. The Times credits the allegations of sexual harassment and assault against film producer Harvey Weinstein, published last October in its own pages and in the New Yorker magazine, with having opened the floodgates. The article gloats that the newspaper’s research indicates that “at least 200 prominent men have lost their jobs after public allegations of sexual harassment. … And nearly half of the men who have been replaced were succeeded by women.” The Times does not bother to evaluate the truth or non-truth of the accusations. The authors begin from the assumption that allegations are to be accepted at face value—or, more cynically, that they are useful as part of a gender purge. The deplorable piece begins breathlessly, “They had often gotten away with it for years, and for those they harassed, it seemed as if the perpetrators would never pay any consequences.” It later observes that the controversy over the Supreme Court nomination of Brett Kavanaugh showed that “Americans disagree on how people accused of sexual misconduct should be held accountable and what the standard of evidence should be.” Our seven authors, without a trace of democratic sensibility among them, fail to recognize that an individual merely accused is not to be held accountable for anything. The core of the article is the immense dual pleasure the Times takes in the downfall of the various men—guilty or otherwise, accused of serious abuse or not—and their replacement in a good many cases by women clearly on the ascendancy. The #MeToo movement, the article claims, “shook, and is still shaking, power structures in society’s most visible sectors. The Times gathered cases of prominent people who lost their main jobs, significant leadership positions or major contracts, and whose ousters were publicly covered in news reports. “Forty-three percent of their replacements were women. Of those, one-third are in news media, one-quarter in government, and one-fifth in entertainment and the arts. For example, Robin Wright replaced Kevin Spacey as lead actor on ‘House of Cards,’ Emily Nemens replaced Lorin Stein as editor of ‘The Paris Review,’ and Tina Smith replaced Al Franken as a senator from Minnesota. “Women are starting to gain power in organizations that have been jolted by harassment, with potentially far-reaching effects.” The article makes a half-hearted effort to convince Times readers that this “gain” in “power” will somehow make the world a better place. “Research has repeatedly shown that women tend to lead differently. In general, they create more respectful work environments, where harassment is less likely to flourish and where women feel more comfortable reporting it. Female leaders tend to hire and promote more women; pay them more equally; and make companies more profitable. Women bring their life experiences and perspectives to decision-making, and that can help in business because women make the vast majority of purchasing decisions. In government, women have been shown to be more collaborative and bipartisan, and promote more policies supporting women, children and social welfare.” This is rubbish hardly worth replying to. It is not even necessary to accept Rosa Luxemburg’s contention in 1912 that bourgeois women, equipped with full political rights, “would certainly be a good deal more reactionary than the male part of their class” to recognize that the female of the capitalist species is at least as vicious and exploitive as the male. Workers at PepsiCo, General Motors, General Dynamics, Lockheed Martin, IBM and HP Enterprise, all firms currently blessed with female CEOs, would be able to testify to that reality. Referring only to recent US history, figures such as Madeleine Albright, Condoleezza Rice, Hillary Clinton, Susan Rice, Samantha Power, Nikki Haley, Victoria Nuland, Gina Haspel and others have surely proven themselves thoroughly and enthusiastically murderous. And one of the most conscious and ruthless enemies of “policies supporting women, children and social welfare” in the latter part of the 20th century was none other than British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. In all honesty, however, as noted, the stress in the October 23 Times article is not truly on the social progress the Weinstein allegations have ushered in—that is largely public relations meant to assuage the conscience of those readers susceptible to such things. The excited emphasis here rather is on the economic gains accruing to a small portion of the female population. That small portion, of course, is already doing extraordinarily well. For example, an analysis by executive data firm Equilar, done for Associated Press, found that while women last year made up only five percent of CEOs at S&P 500 companies, “median compensation for a female CEO was valued at $13.5 million for the 2017 fiscal year, versus $11.5 million for their male counterparts. … Median pay for female CEOs rose 15.4% from the prior year, while for men it increased 8.2%.” In their recent article, the Times authors crassly offer a good many “success” stories. Robert Scoble, co-founder of the Transformation Group, an augmented reality company, resigned after being accused of sexual assault or inappropriate behavior with three women, and was replaced by Irena Cronin. John Besh, chief executive, Besh Restaurant Group, stepped down from day-to-day operations after accusations of sexual harassment from multiple employees. Shannon White took his place. NBC News political journalist Mark Halperin, accused of sexual harassment, had his job taken by Alex Wagner. Hamilton Fish, publisher and president of the New Republic, resigned after accusations of inappropriate conduct. Rachel Rosenfelt took over from him. Leonard Lopate was fired as host on New York Public Radio after complaints of sexual harassment. Lopate, who said he had “never done anything inappropriate on any level,” was replaced by Alison Stewart. Etc., etc. In the various “swapping” of positions the Times documents, how many tens of millions of dollars in income have gone from one gender column to the other? The newspaper remains discreetly silent. Among the many statistics the Times is pleased to report, another also goes missing: that 75 or so of the men denied the accusations altogether. Others agreed their behavior had been inappropriate and apologized. Also missing from the article—the word “convicted” or the phrase “found guilty.” No matter, careers have been made and advancement in a good many cases assured. The Times leaves it to the political charlatans in the International Socialist Organization, at Jacobin magazine and the rest of the pseudo-left to carry on the pretense that there is anything “progressive” or “left-wing” about the current sexual misconduct campaign. The article on the downfall of the 201 “powerful men” proceeds along the same general lines as a number of other Times pieces inspired by the #MeToo campaign. In March, Susan Chira, a senior correspondent and editor on gender issues at the newspaper, in her article, “Money Is Power. And Women Need More of Both,” lamented the small number of female billionaires and the fact that “many women, those who grew up wealthy and those who did not, have long been steered away from the unapologetic drive for wealth.” A Times opinion piece in April, by novelist Jessica Knoll, carried the unapologetic headline, “I Want to Be Rich and I’m Not Sorry.” Knoll elaborated, “Success, for me, is synonymous with making money. I want to write books, but I really want to sell books. I want advances that make my husband gasp and fat royalty checks twice a year,” etc. These are the reactionary, grasping elements gathering around the #MeToo and Time’s Up banners. However, they feel their newly won positions are not entirely secure, dangers still lurk. The disgraced males might not simply disappear as they are supposed to do. “More than 10 percent of the ousted men,” the Times piece notes, “have tried to make a comeback, or voiced a desire to, and many never lost financial power. The comedian Louis C.K. recently took the stage at the Comedy Cellar in New York, raising questions of how long is long enough for people to be banished from their field, and who gets to decide. Garrison Keillor, the radio host, has restarted ‘The Writer’s Almanac’ as a podcast and reportedly received $275,000 for a deal in which Minnesota Public Radio reposted archived episodes of his programs.” Again, this latest outburst from the Times staff, which cannot help itself, shows the sexual witch-hunt’s true class interests.
See also: http://shauntrain.blogspot.com/2018/10/year-one-of-metoo-reactionary-movement.html

Ukraine: Goose Stepping With Merkel - 75 Years After Red Army Capture of Kiev from Germans the Tide Has Turned - 1 Nov 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PumyRoImR14


The German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who came to Kiev, greeted the guard of honor in Ukrainian. The ceremony was broadcasted on the official page of the president of Ukraine Petro Poroshenko on Facebook.

”Greetings, soldiers!’‘ said the chancellor, addressing the military personnel.

“Glory to heroes” they answered.

“Glory to Ukraine – Glory to heroes“ – the slogan of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army –became the official military greeting in Ukraine in October.

During her visit Merkel will have a meeting with Poroshenko and the Prime Minister of the country Vladimir Groisman. Bilateral relations and resolving the conflict in Donbass are the central themes of the discussion.

 

 

75 years ago: Soviet Red Army liberates Kiev

Kiev in ruins after the Nazi retreat

 

On November 6, 1943, the Red Army took control of decisive sections of Kiev, Ukraine’s capital, amid heavy fighting with German forces which had occupied the city for the previous three years. The liberation of Kiev was a major strategic and political blow to the Nazi regime, and restored to the Soviet Union its third-largest city.

Soviet troops had succeeded in encircling Kiev over the preceding two months as part of the Battle of the Dnieper, a broader offensive aimed at recapturing the bulk of Ukraine. The advances they made came at a heavy cost, with an estimated 450,000 casualties.

Early on November 3, Soviet forces launched a massive artillery and aerial bombardment, directed against Germany’s 4th Panzer Army, which was in occupation of Kiev. Over the following three days, Soviet troops moved en masse into the city. They encountered strong resistance, and were forced to engage in close combat to take key positions. German forces carried out a scorched earth policy, setting fire to much of the city, and destroying its critical infrastructure, as they were forced to retreat.
The Soviets then sought to use the city as a base from which to launch an offensive aimed at recapturing other Ukrainian towns, including Fastov, Zhitomir, Korosten and Berdichev.

Hitler responded by releasing the 48th Panzer Corps and launching a counter-offensive, which retook cities earlier captured by Soviet forces, including Zhitomir and Brusilov. By early December, after the 48th Corps began making significant eastward advances, the Soviets dispatched tank and infantry reinforcements, which successfully repelled the German invaders.

Kiev had been the scene of horrific crimes by the Nazis and their local collaborators in the Ukrainian fascist organisations. In two days, from April 29-30, 1941, they murdered an estimated 34,000 Jews at the Babi Yar ravine in the city. Throughout the German occupation, between 100,000 and 150,000 Jews, Soviet prisoners of war, Roma and communists were killed by the Nazis at the site.