
The Wolves of Stanislav: An Improbably True Parable for the Pandemic Age - Thevet
https://lithub.com/the-wolves-of-stanislav-an-improbably-true-parable-for-the-pandemic-age/
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rdiddly
Why would this be so surprising though, or need corroboration? I would just
assume the presence of wild animals in any place where humans aren't.

Also y'know wolves aren't really some dark harbingers of doom, heavy with
portent; they're just a kind of dog, doing their dog thing, looking for food
and whatnot. Yeah they're ferocious... so is a panda when it's pissed off. But
the panda gets to be the beloved symbol of cute cuddliness while the wolf is
reviled as the symbol of all that is evil. Grow up, Red Riding Hood!

~~~
pm3003
Agree.

But to nuance, a wolf pack is generally small, but there are a lot of stories,
some of them recent, most of them from Europe (I've read at least one from
Northern America), about very large gatherings of wolves in the countryside,
posing a real threat to villagers and travellers. Maybe it's the case here.

These wolves could also have been feral dogs, which nowadays are omnipresent
in Eastern Europe.

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secstate
Best part of the whole story was Piotr Grabowski's comment at the bottom.
Seems the most illuminating aspect of this story is how disconnected
American's are from European history. I don't mean this in a dismissive way. I
mysefl, being American, am hoplessly unaware of large parts of European
history. But the origin of the author's last name along is actually really
easy to understand if one is actually familiar with the culture of the region
(if Piotr is to be believed).

~~~
paganel
Still kind of biased and he says that everything beyond Stanislaw was a
"wasteland" and Far-East presumably because it didn't have Baroque and later
Habsburg architecture. I live in a country bordering Ukraine to the South, in
a part of if where we didn't have Baroque nor Habsburg architecture (we were
under Ottoman influence, even though not under direct control), and I have to
say that reading about this territory's history it didn't seem like we were in
the Far-East. In other words there's a distinct orientalism in some learned
people the closer you get to the "have Baroque buildings" / "does not have
Baroque buildings" border.

He seems to be correct though about what happened to the Poles living there
during WW2, but those very, very complicated times for all those involved.

~~~
theraido
Everyone is biased, and it's not just American being out of touch with
European History. I'm Dutch, I do like history especially parts where changes
of borders/nations have impact now.

I was born in 1986, so I don't have memories of the Cold War and such. In
school we learn a lot about WWII, that 6 million jews died and such.

But halfway trough Germany started the wasteland. Our Reformed churches
sends/sended/smuggled Bible translation to Moldavia, Ukraine, Russia. We
donated money to help Hungarian Baptists, Ukrainian Jews and so on.. But
that's it.

I've visited quite some 'Eastern European' countries, and when I do I always
have to dive into the history. When visiting Krakow for a week I learned about
Galicia (I thought it was weird to have a Jewish museum named after a Spanish
region ;)).

So, in 2010 I decided to first visit all European countries, before flying
somewhere else. I have rules, I have to have visited a bordering country
before I'm allowed to visit a country. (E.g. can't go to Portugal I have to
visit Spain first). And I have to stay in a country , so a train stop our
toilet visit doesn't count for visiting Slovenia..

To know history to some extend, you have to be there. But, it's also around
us. When being overwhelmed by the empty mezuzah spaces, I realized that my
hometown only had a 'Synagoguestreet' without a synagogue. That we have Jewish
cemeteries, but no burials, and that there almost no Jewish community in the
Netherlands, while my late grandmother talked about Jewish shop owners ..

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lovemenot
Could it be that the young poet's father had re-told the literal fact of
reprisals against collaborators as a fairy tale of destroying wolves, which
are generally accepted as wicked?

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pandeiro
Author seems to doubt the poet's story but I'd heard about things like this
myself and found this, from the same time period and part of the world:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirov_wolf_attacks](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kirov_wolf_attacks)

~~~
trhway
just a decade ago there was a story about a family of bobcats taking residence
in a foreclosure stricken neighborhood near Los Angeles -
[https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-
bobcats5-2008sep05-story...](https://www.latimes.com/local/la-me-
bobcats5-2008sep05-story.html) . When humans are gone, the Nature doesn't seem
to cry a river.

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dimitar
Found the news reel that was mentioned in the article, it has a blooper when
one of the "civilian" girls cheerfully greeting the liberators wears Red Army
boots:
[https://youtu.be/7XsXSOSOtq4?t=438](https://youtu.be/7XsXSOSOtq4?t=438)

Overall really sad moment in the history of the town, it had seen a a huge
amount of violence - the almost total destruction of the Jewish population of
the town, but also Nazi attacks on Ukrainian and Polish civilians. The total
death toll caused by the Nazis in Stanislaviv/Ivano-Frankivs was 100 thousand
people with at least 20 thousand of them Jews. Many people were also forcibly
deported to Germany to work in factories (this is unrelated to the millions of
Jews in concentration and extermination plants, where conditions were worse).

The mood was actually deeply sombre and the news reel fails to hide it
(although keep in mind the music was added by the person adding the video to
YouTube). The reason wasn't only the Nazi crimes - the population of the city
remembered 1939 when the Soviets took over the city from Poland and 1941 when
right before they evacuated the city they killed everyone in the prison (many
of them political prisoners) and other people suspecting to aid the German
advance. On the day they captured the city another round of repressions began.

~~~
fit2rule
Those boots are hardly evidence of membership in the Red Army, come on ..

~~~
dimitar
It just happens that she wears the exact type of boots as the army on parade?
In WWII where even food was hard to come by?

Well it is a rather bizarre fashion statement for the 40s, no civilian woman
would wear it the era:
[https://militaryreview.su/uploads/2013/soviet_army1943-1945/...](https://militaryreview.su/uploads/2013/soviet_army1943-1945/sniper1944.jpg)

~~~
fit2rule
Its not inconceivable. Those boots were commonly worn by civilians before the
war, and are still used by horse-riders all over the world - its an indicator
of wealth, not membership in the Russian Red Army, if anything else.

