Loyalty Dance

Red-Color News Soldier by Li Zhensheng, Phaidon, 316 pages, $39.95

“A single death,” said Joseph Stalin, who knew a thing or two about such matters, is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” In trying to understand the holocausts of the last century, it seems to be the individual stories that move us the most. Enormity is best described in miniature. We are aware of the nightmares of Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Belsen, of the crematoria, of the bodies heaped into pits, but to grasp the full horror we turn elsewhere, perhaps to a young girl hidden in Amsterdam, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling as if words would shield her from the doom to come.

About the Author

Andrew Stuttaford

Andrew Stuttaford is the editor of National Review's Capital Matters.

Red-Color News Soldier by Li Zhensheng, Phaidon, 316 pages, $39.95

“A single death,” said Joseph Stalin, who knew a thing or two about such matters, is a tragedy; a million deaths is a statistic.” In trying to understand the holocausts of the last century, it seems to be the individual stories that move us the most. Enormity is best described in miniature. We are aware of the nightmares of Auschwitz, Treblinka, or Belsen, of the crematoria, of the bodies heaped into pits, but to grasp the full horror we turn elsewhere, perhaps to a young girl hidden in Amsterdam, scribbling, scribbling, scribbling as if words would shield her from the doom to come.