Secrets and Lies Shroud Origins of Giant Swastika – New York Times

From the Stories Get Distorted desk:  A stand of fir trees in Kyrgyzstan, planted near the base of the Himalayas some 50 to 60 years ago, has grown in the shape of a 600-foot-wide swastika.  How did it happen?  According to the NY Times, among the explanations in circulation are the following:

• German POWs planted the seedlings in a swastika shape after World War II, “a time-delayed act of defiance by vanquished soldiers marooned in a corner of Stalin’s Soviet Union.”
• In the 1940s, local laborers planted the seedlings under the supervision of a Soviet citizen who was an ethnic German and secret Nazi sympathizer.
• In 1953, a woman who was a German nationalist supervised the tree-planting.
• The trees were planted by Soviet authorites after the Molotov-Ribbentrop non-aggression pact as a symbol of Soviet-German friendship.

The Times says that “History has become malleable, a yarn by turns sinister, wry, clever and Soviet.  It is also warped by errors, a cover-up, competing theories and lies.”