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Rating: 
Summary: Reviewing The Forgotten
Review: Father has written an important book on our history. Many of us have learned new information about the history of our Church, of people who suffered in the camps for the Faith, because we were not allowed to read about this. Often it was dangerous to even talk about people who had been taken away, or know the full name of a priest who came to serve Liturgy for us.
We now can worship freely, but still not always in our own churches. And conditions in some places are still strict against our Church. You cannot understand the modern problems between the Catholic and Orthodox Churches, and the pain of the underground believers, unless you read this book.
Rating: 
Summary: the german catholic colonies of russia
Review: Fr. ZUGGER's book, "THE FORGOTTEN" covers a portion of what has been covered up in this country on the fate of GERMAN settlers in Russia. Estimates of the amount of people killed under COMMUNISM, range around 1/6 of the population of the earth. I have been working on the GERMAN CATHOLIC colonies of RUSSIA since 1950 and have a huge amount of material collected on these people. My fathers family immigrated to RUSSIA in 1767 and my mothers side in 1809.
Rating:
Summary: Remembering the Forgotten
Review: Fr. ZUGGER's book, "THE FORGOTTEN" covers a portion of what has been covered up in this country on the fate of GERMAN settlers in Russia. Estimates of the amount of people killed under COMMUNISM, range around 1/6 of the population of the earth. I have been working on the GERMAN CATHOLIC colonies of RUSSIA since 1950 and have a huge amount of material collected on these people. My fathers family immigrated to RUSSIA in 1767 and my mothers side in 1809.
Rating:
Summary: Remembering the Forgotten
Review: In the swirl of subjects that are studied intensively in that bizarre but unforgettable experiment in human social engineering called the Soviet Union, religion is usually neglected. One can count on one hand the significant books focusing on religion in the USSR, works by Dimitry Pospielovsky, Nathaniel Davis, Walter Kolarz, and Bohdan Bociurkiw, but with any other subject, from foreign policy to economics to military affairs, the major publications are numerous, too many in fact to list. Needless to say, when it comes to books on specific religions, let alone religion in general, the field is even smaller. Among one of the least studied religions is Catholicism. There is no general book on the Catholic Church in the Soviet Union. In fact, there is no standard study of the Catholic Church in Russia, whether it is the Tsarist or Soviet period. Of course, there is monographic literature dealing with specific times, leaders, and religious groups--particularly the Jesuits, and some of these are very good. There is also a fair amount of periodical literature, but again nothing that provides an overview. The Reverend Christopher Lawrence Zugger, pastor of the Byzantine Catholic Church in Albuquerque, New Mexico, has not filled this void, but he has produced a thorough, well-researched study of the Catholic Church--in both its Latin and Byzantine rites--during the years of Lenin and Stalin's tenure. What is most impressive about Zugger's work is the encyclopedic nature of the information. In addition, to ferret out the facts, he examined just about everything published, particularly in English, on the Catholic Church and Catholics in Soviet Russia during the years from 1917 to 1953. For some inexplicable reason, he did not consult Russian literature or the recently opened Soviet archives. Admittedly, much Soviet literature, as far as the Catholic Church is concerned, is worthless, but there are recently published documents that provide valuable information on Catholicism during World War II and the immediate postwar period, including Organy gosudarstvennoi bezoprasnosti SSSR v velikoi otechestvennoi voine: Sbornik dokumentove. Vol. 1: Nakanune. Book 2 (January 1-June 21, 1941) (Moscow, 1995); V. I. Pasat, Trudnye stranitsy istorii Moldovy 1940-1950 (Moscow, 1994); and Federal'naia sluzhba bezoprasnosti rossii sluzhba vneshnei razvedki rossii, and Moskovskoie gorodskoe ob'edienie arkhivov, Sikrety Gitlera na stole Stalinia: Razvedka I kontrrazvedka o podgotovke germanskoi agressii protive SSSR mart-iiun' 1941g. (Moscow, 1995). And although counting Catholics in the USSR is not an exact science, the author tends to exaggerate their number, which the Vatican's Annuario Pontificio also does. Studying Russian publications would have made the story more complete and added important information, but, nonetheless, Zugger has done a very good job. His interest and style are more pastoral than historical, but he has the basic story of persecution right. I have already found myself using his work to find out some arcane fact.
Dennis J. Dunn
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