Hitler's Ukrainian swimming pool

Fifteen years ago I went to perhaps the creepiest place I have visited. Deep in a forest outside Kętrzyn in northern Poland are the shattered remains of Wolfschanze, the 'Wolf's Lair', Hitler's principal HQ during Barbarossa - a gloomy clearing where the guide will tell you 'Hitler lived there, Goering just across the road....', and where you can see the site of von Stauffenberg's failed bomb attempt. The Nazis did their best to blow it all up before they left, also generously seeding the surrounding area with landmines. These, I was told, were finally cleared by young Polish Pioneer 'volunteers' during the 1950s - perhaps the most macabre twist of all.

Lesser known is Hitler's Ukrainian HQ, Wehrwolf, near Vinnytsia in Ukraine, which I sought out on Sunday. Arriving in the town by train and wondering where I could get any information, I stumbled across the one institution which would certainly be able to tell me all about it - the local synagogue. Not only that, but Josef, who was hanging around in the office, had nothing to do and also had a car -he would take me there and show me around.

In the ten years 1935-1945 Vinnytsia saw as much or more cold-blooded murder as almost any other corner of Europe. The Nazis were delighted, on taking control of the region, to discover and publicize the mass graves of nearly 10,000 Ukrainians executed by the NKVD -Ukraine's Katyn. They went on vastly to exceed this terror with the murder of local Jews, Ukrainians and POWs. Like many other such towns in Poland and Ukraine, Vinnytsia's present relative prosperity belies its horrific past. Out along the main roads, smart new houses have been built - so you might not notice the sign indicating the sideroad to Wehrwolf. Indeed even if you saw it, you might wonder if you were on the right route, as the bright new villas continue up to and opposite the site.

Not that there turns out to be much to see. There is the open-air swimming pool (above) constructed for the Fuhrer's personal use, and a few scattered concrete blocks. As it happens, Hitler only spent a few weeks in total at Wehrwolf, and probably never used the pool - constructed, like the rest of the site, by forced labour. What the Nazis themselves didn't destroy, including the system of underground bunkers, was thoroughly dismantled by the Soviets. Rather more disconcerting than any potentially sinister remains was the number of local folk casually picnicking on the site, many equipped with portable barbecues.

Just the other side of the highway -and also surrounded by smart new housing, a hotel and a sports centre - Josef showed me another memorial, not directly visible from the road. It stands on another mass grave, where 14,000 Russians, Czechs, Poles, Norwegians and others were dumped by the Nazis. We walked meditatively away, to the plunk of volleys from the adjoining tennis courts.

A transformed universe

In a case in the museum room of the Kiev Philharmonia are some relics of Ukraine's 'God of the voice', the magnificent bass Boris Gmirya. It somehow reduces his scale to see his glasses, collar and (pre-made) bow-tie - a reminder that even Gods may have human - or even clay - feet. As I was just about to hear a performance of Shostakovich's Fourth Symphony - which I will presently eulogize - I was reminded of an occasion when Gmirya showed he was all too human. In 1962 he was Shostakovich's choice to sing the solo role in his controversial 13th Symphony, 'Babi Yar', with Mravinsky conducting. Under Party pressure, both withdrew. (Kondrashin, who did conduct, received a phone call during the dress rehearsal from the Minister of Culture, 'suggesting' that he might not be well enough to go on stage).

Twenty-five years earlier, the Fourth Symphony had a similarly traumatic transit. It was scheduled for a premiere in Leningrad; but the composer, having been denounced earlier that year in Pravda for his opera Lady Macbeth of Mtsensk, found it expedient to withdraw it at the last minute, producing a year later the (superficially) more conformist Fifth Symphony. The Fourth was not heard until 1961 (Kondrashin conducting) and its reappearance at the time when 'Babi Yar' was gestating is surely not coincidental.

In tonight's spectacular performance by the Ukraine National Symphony Orchestra under Volodymyr Sirenko, it was clear why Shostakovich might have had his second thoughts in 1936. for this is a profoundly subversive work at the deepest levels. Clearly Mahlerian in its scale, its length, its use of sleazy waltzes and bird song, its shattering climaxes and its episodes of solo woodwind and brass instruments exposed against the orchestra like dissidents in conformist societies, it is also Mahler though a distorting mirror; or maybe Mahler modified by one of Einstein's tensors of relativity that can transform one universe - the Austro-Hungarian Empire - into another, the Soviet Union, both different and the same. These are the sort of ideas - even in an inexplicit art such as music - that no authoritarian state could tolerate.

As with Mahler, however, if this music is not driven, it becomes merely bloated. There was no risk of this with Sirenko and his band. Not only the orchestra, but also the audience, were totally gripped as Shostakovich's long paragraphs unfolded. The loose symphonic structure of the two lengthy outer movments renders them sequences of striking aural tableaux, whose contrasts suggest an alienation and individualism clearly at odds with the political strictures of 'popular culture'. The middle movement evaporates in an inane dance-rhythm; the last movement ends in dark, brooding chords. By the end of the work, we had all been expertly led on a most disturbing voyage. The audience rose as one to give conductor and orchestra - and the spirit of Shostakovich - a standing ovation. This was the fnest performance of this strange work I have ever heard, and indeed was the best Shostakovich performance I have heard in years.

The numbers game

I have been fascinated by the comments of 'Bishop' Richard Williamson, reportedly that that historical evidence was "hugely against six million having been deliberately gassed in gas chambers as a deliberate policy of Adolf Hitler ... I believe there were no gas chambers."

This needs taking apart and analyzing; by not analyzing it, the media are in danger of tacitly supporting vicious prejudice. In fact the only person I know of who has made the allegation that the 'Bishop' contradicts - and perhaps he has a lot to answer for in this respect - is Bob Dylan in his song 'God on Our Side' ('though they murdered 6 million, in the ovens they fried'). But not a single historian claims - or has ever claimed - that ''six million [were] deliberately gassed in gas chambers''. All the evidence is however that many millions of Jews (and others) died as a consequence of Nazi policies, in concentration camps by disease and execution as well as by gassing, and by mass-murders and executions in invaded territories (about 100,000 of them in Babi Yar, not far from where I am presently writing). (It is interesting to note, by the way, that, as Mark Mazower points out at the start of his excellent 'Hitler's Empire' , about six million Germans, military and civilian, died from the war and the two years of turmoil following it, and therefore were also casualties of this murderous regime - perhaps the 'Bishop' would be wiling to agree with this statistic).

It is a standard tactic of holocaust deniers to put up the nonsense 'argument' that 6 million were gassed, which is easily demolished. Then you can allege, as the 'bishop' does, that '200,000 to 300,000 Jews perished in the Nazi concentration camps but none of them in gas chambers'. Now we are dealing with 'only' "200,000-300,000 people" - which apparently mitigates the matter - and the argument has been forced to turn on whether or not there were any gas chambers, i.e on the means of murder, rather than the murders themselves.

Arguing about the numbers and the methods only distracts from understanding of Europe in 1933-45. (Or if we include - as we should - the homicidal Russian regime in our assessments, the period 1920-1945). We have not been helped by 'Holocaust education', which with its dismal concentration on gruesome events and statistics may have indeed impeded understanding of the moral and political background to this appalling story, and helps to characterise Jews in student minds merely as victims of a historic tragedy (who, in turn, according to some pundits, 'should know better' as a consequence when it comes to dealing with Palestinians).

This is what happened in the second quarter of the 20th century; untold millions of people died throughout Europe as a consequence of political totalitarianism. 'Punch and Judy' games such as 'it was only 200,000' are just contemptible in this context; and when they are played by a 'Bishop' they become beneath contempt. But when the media just report them in passing and then move gaily on, they become poisonous.