This painting could be from any battlefield around the world.

"Burned village"
Albert Edelfelt
(1879)

Kimmo Huosionmaa

Above this text is a painting, what we all know. It’s Albert Edelfelt’s “Burned village”, and it is the vision of the burned house. There is a couple of people managed to escape from that place before the military men came and killed all. This vision could be from any war in the world, and it could be the portrait of attack to some village in German Eastern front. Those cavalrymen were painted without details, what helps to return this kind of happenings in the mind if some person were in that kind of situation.


This painting could be the portrait of an attack against civilians. And the message of this painting, is somebody always sees, what really happened. This portrait might be used in some memory therapy, where the therapist tries to find out why some person sees nightmares all the time. So the question of this portrait is that it is painted in 1879, and this picture could be based on the real story.


And when we are thinking about the war crimes, this picture would portray anything from the medieval period to “Einsatzgruppen” actions in the Eastern front. There would be burning house, and a small child, who would not remember this thing in the adult age. But when this young boy returns to that place, would he remember everything, and in the worst case, could this boy became the knight, if he were adopted into the right family.


Remember that this boy would hide his past, and in this painting is a message, that even the child is small, would he grow bigger and stronger. In many war crimes the leader of those crimes would claim, that they have right to do that thing. This painting always makes me think many things. One is that why somebody wants to burn that village? Is that because the maker of that crime wanted to cause hate inside civilians minds?


In some “Einsatzgruppen” operations were used Ukrainian SS-men, who were used Soviet weapons, because the SS wanted that people hate Soviets. Those men were easy to liquidate as the war criminals, and nobody would ever believe, that orders made by the German army. Those units were known as “Terror” or T-units.


Somebody claims that NKVD had similar units, what used German uniforms and shot the co-operatives of SS. If this unit was true, It worked that those men came to the village in SS-uniforms, and then those men have executed those cooperatives immediately. This methodology was in use in the “Phoenix”-program, what was made by Americans in Vietnam War. The “Phoenix”-operators claimed that they were some kind of V.C sympathizers, and then those operators executed the V.C members, who came to talk with them.