Talk:Gherman Pântea

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"Single source"[edit]

(copied from User talk:Dahn:)

  • I noticed this, and after a quick scan of the article I became seriously disappointed (the disappointment was even greater considering the high quality of most of your recent articles). Would you prefer me to present my objections directly on the DYK page, or you would like to put the request on hold and start the discussion on the article's talk page? The main problems are the low overall quality of the basically only source of the article and what I consider to be the misrepresentation of the WW2 events (including the extraordinary claim in your hook). Anonimu (talk) 00:01, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
  • Let's use the article talk page, if we must. To begin with, I'm not particularly pleased with the source, but it does have credentials and it does clearly condemn the Antonescu murders - meaning that it is not out of the pale. But do note that the hook is also supported by Deletant. You will also find that it is supported, and/or his account credited, by other impeccable (if slightly confused/ing) sources: [1], [2], [3], [4], [5], [6]. Now, if you find a better quality of source saying otherwise -and let's say, one not out of the PCR archives ;)-, I'm ready to listen. But I'm not putting DYK on hold, as for now your objections seem, for lack of a better word, frivolous. Dahn (talk) 00:12, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

(end of copy)

Anonimu, the "single source" issue as wikipedia understands it, quoted from the very policy linked through the tag, is the following: "Isolated studies are usually considered tentative and may change in the light of further academic research. The reliability of a single study depends on the field. Studies relating to complex and abstruse fields, such as medicine, are less definitive. Avoid undue weight when using single studies in such fields. Meta-analyses, textbooks, and scholarly review articles are preferred when available, so as to provide proper context." Do you honestly think this article qualifies as such? Dahn (talk) 09:03, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

The source (Ion Constantin) is of extremely low quality. A quick look at its bibliography it's enough to notice this: 8 wikipedia articles used as sources (search the pfd for "Surse web")! 5 of them from the Romanian wikipedia!!! 2 of the 3 articles from the English wikipedia used as sources by Constantin have absolutely no references (and never had)!!! While this would be enough to discredit the source, let's look at other sources ("Lucrări, studii, articole"): op-eds, articles from either notoriously nationalist newspapers like Curentul or web magazines so obscure that they would be dismissed in any WP article. Other sources include a propaganda booklet published by the Romanian occupation force boasting the heaven on earth the war created in Odessa, and some two books published by the head of the Bessarabian political police during his mandate. The few reliable sources listed are usually only used for marginal notes (such as Boris Marian's book only being used gor a footnote explaining Karaite Jews don't acknowledge the Talmud). Not to mention that the bibliography is artificially inflated by listing separately articles and journal or newspapers in which those articles were published.
Now that we've established that the book's sourcing sucks, let's see the content. I've only read the parts about World War II, so I'll only comment about those sections. Most of the info presented is verbatim quotes from Pantea (from reports, the aforementioned propaganda book, and other identified only by their archival number, probably depositions during his trial). Thus, the book, and consequently the WP article created based on it, are pretty much Pantea's declarations on his own role in the events. And boy, he does have a good opinion of himself! In one quote he proudly talks about his "superhuman efforts" (the quotes, sometimes extending over several pages, are full of similar comments underlining the positive role he supposedly had... they read more like a cover letter for a governmental post). The reliability of Pantea's description of the events comes up when he discusses the Odessa massacre.
  • What Pantea says: Romania's dictator wanted to kill 20,000 Jews, but Pantea intervened and only 2,000 were killed (page 111).
  • What the International Commission of the Holocaust in Romania says (note the commission's high quality report was officially assumed by the Romanian government, and moreover is hosted on the web by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum [7]): "Some 22,000 Jews of all ages were packed into nine warehouses in Dalnic, a suburb of Odessa, an operation that continued past nightfall on October 23. The massacre proceeded as follows: 'One by one, the warehouses were riddled with machine gun and rifle fire, doused with gasoline and ignited, except for the last warehouse, which was blown up. The chaos and the horrifying sights that followed cannot be described: wounded people burning alive, women with their hair aflame coming out through the roof or through openings in the burning storehouses in a crazed search for salvation. But the warehouse[s were] surrounded on all sides by soldiers, their rifles cocked. They had been ordered not to let a single civilian escape. The horror was so great that it deeply shocked everyone there, soldiers and officers alike'" (page 55 in the linked pdf, the quote is from a report the Romanian chief of staff of the time prepared for the military cabinet; for more gore see also page 56, 57 and the following ones - not for the faint of heart).
  • What the articles says: "In October 23, he and Macici asked Governor Alexianu to turn back the column of Jews sent on a death march. They registered only partial success: the deportees returned, but only after the Romanian and German troops randomly murdered between 2,000 and 20,000 of them."
Thus, the article not only takes Pantea's view at its face value, presenting a ridiculously low figure for the lower estimate, but also reduces the role of the Romanian army (by implicating the German army, which did not directly participate in the events), and presents the systematic killing of those poor people (many of them burned alive) as just a random action. This should be enough to discredit Pantea as a reliable witness.
About the extraordinary claim that Pantea "rescued Odessan Jews targeted by Romanian troops during the 1941 Massacre". This is a gross overstatement. The sources presented above by Dahn only say that Pantea disagreed with the massacres (as any sane man would have done; even the German troops were appalled by the way Romanians disposed of the Jews), and that he officially protested against the orders of the Romanian dictator. Some Jews probably escaped being burned alive on October 23 because of Pantea's protests, however the great majority of Odessan Jews (over 30,000) were soon to be deported from the city and exterminated at Bogdanovka, Berezovka and Golta. To call Pantea a rescuer of the Jews is simply not fair, and in my opinion is an insult to all the people (Romanians included) who had risked their lives to protect them from the Nazi killing machine.
And a final note, minor compared to the abominations presented above. Constantin's partisan point of view is further demonstrated by his presentation of Nicolae Costin and Dorin Chirtoaca as modern continuators of the oeuvre of Pantea. Why are they special? They both adopted a Romanian nationalist point of view and supported the union with Romania. The sources for Constantin's bold affirmations: a praise book about Costin (edited by his widow and his son, with a foreword by Chirtoaca), and none for Chirtoaca. Nevertheless this dubious claims is integrated in the article as a widely acknowledged fact, with only minor aesthetic modifications.
Considering these, I'd say the "single source" template is the mildest template possible. I hope however that Dahn will work towards finding more reliable sources, and make this one of Wikipedia's elite article, as he did with many articles he has worked on.Anonimu (talk) 19:58, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
I will begin by saying that Constantin is far from a perfect source, but he doesn't appear to be as bad as Anonimu implies. For one, the man has academic credentials, even if these are not the most impeccable, and even if I personally find him quite biased on various issues. The book has editorial oversight, and fragments from it were republished in Magazin Istoric - a more than decent historical review. The use of other sources by that author is not a particularly relevant issue: wikipedia is given at the end of the book, and not cited in the text as far as I can see; the detestable books that Anonimu mentions are of course quotable by a source, if that source has a critical eye, as presumed by the editorial oversight - otherwise, we would be assuming that no author of books on Nazi Germany should be providing references to Nazi events as depicted in Nazi newspapers...
That said, the book is quite thinly researched in some areas, and poorly written all in all. But let's note that Constantin is clearly set apart from the most problematic Romanian historians by the fact that he clearly acknowledges the massacres and the murders committed during deportations. He clearly has some trouble in so doing, and both he and Pântea tend to credit some urban legends about how Antonescu didn't realize the scale of what he had ordered etc. - but the fact remains that the book is quite explicit on the issue of crimes having been committed. That is the minimal test case, the border between what's indecent and what's acceptable; the rest is more or less subjective.
Pântea's beliefs about himself are indeed laughable, in this and other contexts, but his claim of having saved at least some Jews is backed, word by word, by Dennis Deletant - a most competent and most neutral source. Him standing apart from the Romanian satraps, on various issues, is confirmed by countless other sources I used.
Contrary to Anonimu's claim, one other source attests this: the Liviu Rotman book I mentioned above (namely, this one), put out by the Wiesel Institute and the Jewish Federation, and through it Israeli historian Jean Ancel. On p.94-95, they argue (and this probably accounts for the discrepancy between GP's account and the Wiesel Report) that GP didn't know how many people he saved, but that he indeed saved some from those in the Jewish convoy. The rest were indeed killed - Ancel says 30,000 in all. Come to think of it, I'll add this source in the article; I thought it largely redundant the first time I checked it, but now it seems quite important.
Your Chirtoacă etc. comments - I just don't find them at all relevant. I cited Druc's opinion as an opinion, and clearly indicated that this legacy issue refers to the dispute between Romanian nationalism (with GP as a hero) and Moldovenism (without). Unless you imply that it's a positive or needed continuity, there's no real issue of POV - in fact, I don't have a POV on the matter, I just want to give as much coverage as sources permit me to GP's posthumous profile.
As for the tag: I told you, it doesn't address the point, since this article does not promote a medical cure or a novel science. That is what the tag was designed for, as far as I could tell going through the policy it cites. Dahn (talk) 22:11, 1 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

As we stand, I have:

  • a) added sources (including one from the Wiesel Institute, successor to the Wiesel Commission) that further verify the text and expand on the various issues;
  • b) shown with those several sources that GP is not the only one to assert his role in saving the Jews (not all of them, that was never implied); and as such shown that Anonimu's claim to the contrary is unsubstantiated;
  • c) expanded on this and other issues relating to GP and the Romanian occupation of Odessa as far as my abilities took me, and almost as far as RSes online go;
  • d) rephrased some parts of the text about which Anonimu made acceptable claims, and found detail to clarify further what was a blur - including, for instance, what sources say about what shouldn't be taken at face value in GP's claim; that much is intuitive, but stating it more clearly was perhaps necessary;
  • e) pointed out that the tag used by Anonimu to question the article is irrelevant not just here, but in any article from this subject area.

There is the matter of Anonimu's allegations about the one source which still predominates, and which is not in fact sub-standard by our RS requirements (as I have already shown). The parts about its bias are irrelevant, as are those about its use of primary sources of whatever nature (Anonimu seems to be confusing the real world for wikipedia) - as a reader of the Constantin book, I also consider some of those issues to be problematic, in the sense that Constantin could have written it with more care and a better tone; but it doesn't follow that the book is fringe, scandalous, poisonous or whatever. It is perhaps stupid here and there, but so are many of the other RSes - surely, as one who used so much material from Communist Party reviews in sourcing articles he wrote, Anonimu is aware of that issue, as he too knows, in that case, how to separate with a critical eye between wooden tongue and relevant fact. At that level, there's no difference between Constantin's wooden tongue and Valter Roman's Evocări (see Francisc Panet).

As for how much the source is used (which again, is not actually a policy issue): it is used for all relevant aspects, as I have used all other sources in this and other places. It is indeed the only source on anything after 1944, but that's because GP, who is rather obscure in most contexts, is not much discussed in any sources. Constantin's book, for all its textual problems, covers his life in significant detail, and backs the info missing in other sources with quotes (and facsimiles) from primary sources. This is what research is supposed to be doing, regardless of the spin that is added here and there. And even that POV, intellectual honesty dictates, we quote as a relevant opinion on the subject, regardless of whether I or Anonimu approve of it.

And let me add this: I am yet to a single quotable source illustrating in some way Anonimu's take on Pântea's WWII activities. Some will not mention the Massacre at all, some will only mention his protest to Antonescu (with or without discussing its problematic omissions), some will openly state his participation in rescuing Jews. Meanwhile, there seems to be a hype, a meme, in some Russian or Ukrainian sources, mostly forums, blogs and scandal sheets - they will insist on depicting him as one of the Romanian criminals in the administrative apparatus. The creditable Russo-Ukrainian sources on GP (of which there are surprisingly few) will indeed express some negative views of GP, but, as the article currently shows, they don't see him as a criminal, rather as an idiot. (And this for reasons unrelated to the murder of Jews.) Another remarkable phenomenon is that such sources still emphasize, as far as I could tell, that Romanian occupation was rather mild (not least of all due to GP) and corrupt (not least of all due to GP), and even go a far as to rediscover the careers of his Slavic associates, some of whom have been destroyed by an equally idiotic Stalinist regime. So there.

Now, is there anything else, or can I remove the tag? And, is there anybody else out there who has thoughts to share on this subject? Dahn (talk) 17:46, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

I welcome your edits to the WWII sections, as the addition of the new sources successfully toned down most of the apologetic discourse in those section. I note however that some of the elements I noted in my first comment still survive (the supposed participation of the German Army in the massacre, explicitly rejected by Iepan, as well as the unfaithful description of the events).
I still find Pantea's description in the DYK hook as a rescuer of Jews unfair. His opposition to Antonescu's orders can be noted, however, crediting him with saving Jews without further comments about how most of those "rescued" Jews were deported and ultimately killed elsewhere in Transnistria, is an exaggeration.
I accept that there's little chance to find other published sources about Pantea's post 1948 life.
However, considering the biased account of Pantea's life during WW2, coupled with the bibliography issue I've mentioned in my first message, I have strong doubts about the presentation of Pantea's pre-war life, still sourced practically only from Constantin's book.
I think we should concentrate on this article, not on what unrelated sources do (as for the subtle tu quoque, I invite you to my talk page or to the talk pages of the articles you consider problematic). I also find strange the separation of opinions about Pantea along ethnic/language lines, and the implication that some people are expected to take a certain position towards Pantea based on their ethnicity/language.Anonimu (talk) 19:58, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]
Indeed, German participation wasn't mentioned by other sources. But the description of the events is faithful: it is not the goal of this article to retell the entire story of the massacre, just the bit that saw GP's involvement. That much is verified through Deletant, and other sources that mention GP at all do not even mention Macici's change of mind: they simply note that GP himself rescued Jews.
Feel free to propose an alt hook there, and may the best option win. I'm not married to the hook, but I do not that sources other than Constantin also verify that statement. There were enough Jews left in Odessa for the 1942 deportation, and presumably not all of them moved in from elsewhere (and presumably not all of them saved by GP, of course). But I digress.
Ditto.
V, not T.
I mentioned as much about other sources because there simply doesn't seem to be a decent "alternative" account of GP's career, not even where you'd expect one. (The tu quoque is not a tu quoque at all: I'm sure you can and have used such sources properly, as have I in similar cases where the source contains, for instance, Marxist verbiage. Except for momentary unilateralism and the lack of inline citations, the articles I referred to are not problematic at all.) It is not a separation of ethnicity, it is indeed a separation of historical language: it was made by the Romanian authorities, and it creates two narratives of World War II, of which the Romanian one can be (and often is) the more questionable. The very point of contention here is the survival of nationalist rhetoric in Constantin's work, and its contextual importance; when fact is that the bare info is supported by some (Russian, Ukrainian) sources who have no reason to support Romanian nationalist discourse in any form, whereas those who display another nationalism (Russian, Ukrainian) are inane in reporting the sheer facts. It could just as well be the other way around, but it isn't.
So, the tag? Dahn (talk) 21:54, 2 November 2011 (UTC)[reply]

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