We rented "Defiance" from Netflix. It's the story of the Bielski partisans, Polish Jews (the region today is part of Belarus) who fought back during World War II.
In one of the features on the DVD, director Edward Zwick said that they were not able to film in Belarus so they set up shop in Lithuania. Zwick said that Belarus was "one of the last remaining dictatorships in the world."
Wow, he makes it sound like dictatorships are not long for this world. According to The Economist's annual Democracy Index, 51 out of the 167 nations ranked are considered "authoritarian." That's 30.5 percent of the countries, with 35 percent of the world's population.
Belarus is in the middle of the pack, so it has lots of company dictatorshipwise. And misery loves company.
This country of 10 million residents has 6 million Internet users. The 2005 Jewish population was 55,000. The Holocaust took the lives of 9 out of 10 Belarusian Jews. A Bielski descendant said that there are approximately 19,000 people who are alive today because of the actions taken by the Bielski partisans. They are Jews walking around on the earth who "weren't supposed to be here." I don't know how many live in Belarus. All the Bielskis interviewed for the DVD live in the U.S.A.
Famous Jews born in the region that encompasses modern-day Belarus include Marc Chagall, Chaim Weizmann, Menachem Begin, Irving Berlin, Shimon Peres, Louis B. Mayer, David Sarnoff,Yitzhak Shamir and the Bielski Brothers.
An unwelcome invasion took place when 70 percent of the fallout from Chernobyl made its way to Belarus. One-fifth of the farmland was contaminated.
Alexander Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since 1994. He is "a strong-willed, inquisitive person, very sensitive to shortcomings of the surrounding life." I think that loses something in the translation, don't you?
In one of the features on the DVD, director Edward Zwick said that they were not able to film in Belarus so they set up shop in Lithuania. Zwick said that Belarus was "one of the last remaining dictatorships in the world."
Wow, he makes it sound like dictatorships are not long for this world. According to The Economist's annual Democracy Index, 51 out of the 167 nations ranked are considered "authoritarian." That's 30.5 percent of the countries, with 35 percent of the world's population.
Belarus is in the middle of the pack, so it has lots of company dictatorshipwise. And misery loves company.
This country of 10 million residents has 6 million Internet users. The 2005 Jewish population was 55,000. The Holocaust took the lives of 9 out of 10 Belarusian Jews. A Bielski descendant said that there are approximately 19,000 people who are alive today because of the actions taken by the Bielski partisans. They are Jews walking around on the earth who "weren't supposed to be here." I don't know how many live in Belarus. All the Bielskis interviewed for the DVD live in the U.S.A.
Famous Jews born in the region that encompasses modern-day Belarus include Marc Chagall, Chaim Weizmann, Menachem Begin, Irving Berlin, Shimon Peres, Louis B. Mayer, David Sarnoff,Yitzhak Shamir and the Bielski Brothers.
An unwelcome invasion took place when 70 percent of the fallout from Chernobyl made its way to Belarus. One-fifth of the farmland was contaminated.
Alexander Lukashenko has been president of Belarus since 1994. He is "a strong-willed, inquisitive person, very sensitive to shortcomings of the surrounding life." I think that loses something in the translation, don't you?