Remembering the brave journalist who first told the world about Stalin's famine in Ukraine
Gareth Jones' short but brilliant career put his contemporaries to shame in the early 1930s by sneaking into Ukraine and reporting on the millions being starved by Stalin and his ag policies.
Everyone who cares about journalism — and history in general — should know about the great life and tragic death of Gareth Jones.
The Welsh journalist and British spy risked his life to break the news to the world about the mass famine that had been orchestrated in 1932-1933 by Stalin in Ukraine.
The existence of the famine had infamously been kept quiet by the New York Times' odious and evil top 'journalist' in Moscow, Walter Duranty, who even stuck up for Stalin after Jones’ front page articles appeared around the world.
This article by Lawrence Reed of FEE.org is a reminder of Jones’ short but amazing career, which included interviewing Hitler and Goebbels before they took full power and ended in 1935 at age 30 when he was shot by bandits in Mongolia.
The movie "Mr. Jones" does a good job of telling the true story of Jones’ trip to Ukraine. Watch it first, then find out the complete and true story by watching this BBC4 documentary, ‘Hitler, Stalin and Mr. Jones.’
The BBC4 doc, which proves that Jones was a spy/journalist, shows his meticulous notes, letters and diaries that describe his meetings with Hitler in 1933 and the horrors of the Ukrainian famine, which he risked his life to see firsthand.
The documentary, which has an odd soundtrack, relies on a wealth of material, old film and interviews as it follows Jones' remarkable life to the middle of nowhere in modern Mongolia where it ended.
One more subject that deserves to be better known. Robert Conquest has written perhaps the best book on this subject, called The Harvest of Sorrow.