ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

Thus, it is possible that you contributed to Maksym Tsarenko losing his hands, and to

Volodymyr Katelnytsky together with his mother, and Borys Derevyanko, losing their

lives.

Additional information on the Lviv massacre can be found in Alfred M. de Zayas, The

Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945.

July 4, 1999

Morley Safer

60 Minutes, CBS Television

51 W 52nd Street

New York, NY

USA 10019

Morley Safer:

You Broadcast to 30 Million 60 Minutes

Viewers that in the Days Prior to German

Occupation, Ukrainians Killed Jews

In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you joined with

Simon Wiesenthal in charging that in the days preceding the arrival of German forces

in June 1941, Lviv Ukrainians killed thousands of Jews:

SAFER: He [Simon Wiesenthal] remembers that even before the

Germans arrived, Ukrainian police went on a 3-day killing spree.

WIESENTHAL: And in this 3 days in Lvov alone between 5 and 6

thousand Jews was killed.

[...]

SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian

militia, the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here.

Some 60 Minutes viewers may have been struck by the observation that while the 60

Minutes expert witness - Simon Wiesenthal - claimed that the number of Jews killed

was "between 5 and 6 thousand" in three days, you - supposedly the neutral

interviewer - chose to reduce the number killed to "3,000" and the duration of the

killing to two days - but without informing the viewer on what grounds you did so.

One wonders what reason you would have had for undermining the testimony of your

chief - and only - witness. One wonders what superior authority you discovered for

your revised statistic, and why you did not bring this superior authority forward to

testify in front of the CBS cameras instead of Simon Wiesenthal whose testimony you

apparently distrusted and chose to contradict. And one wonders that you could have

such low regard for the intelligence of 60 Minutes viewers that you would broadcast

discrepant accounts without explaining the discrepancy.

However, I Can't Find Anyone Else

Substantiating the Wiesenthal-Safer

Pre-German Lviv Pogrom

In my reading, I have yet to come across a single account which supports the

Wiesenthal-Safer claim of anywhere from 3,000 Jews killed in 2 days to 5,000-6,000

Jews killed in 3 days in Lviv during the pre-German interval. Had the

Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom taken place, then it would have been one of the biggest

pogroms of the war, and possibly the very biggest, and thus obligatory to describe

in every history of the Holocaust, if not in every history of the Second World War.

What I found, in contrast, was statements contradicting the possibility of the

Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom, most notably the following three made by Raul Hilberg:

From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as

follows:

Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to

take active steps against the Jews. This may be

explained by the fear of many people that the Red

Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has

been pointed out to us. Older people have remarked

that they had already experienced in 1918 the

sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet

the fear psychosis, and in order to destroy the

myth [...] which, in the eyes of many Ukrainians,

places the Jew in the position of the wielder of

political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several

occasions marched Jews before their execution

through the city. Also, care was taken to have

Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews.

This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the

desired effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once

more that the inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden

Jews. The Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist

terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the area were busily working

for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the

European Jews, 1961, p. 202)

The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the

unfolding spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the

whole no impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such utter

ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the

Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still threatening to

return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a

potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the

European Jews, 1985, p. 308)

First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen

influence, did not take place; all outbreaks were either organized

or inspired by the Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were

implemented within a short time after the arrival of the killing

units. They were not self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be

started after things had settled down. (Raul Hilberg, The

Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312)

Fearing that substantiation for the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom did exist somewhere

and that I had merely overlooked it, I made enquiry to leading Holocaust historian,

Raul Hilberg, on 15Sep97. Professor Hilberg was good enough in his reply of 15Dec97

to outline for me instances that he knew of anti-Jewish activity conducted in that

area at that time, and none of these instances gave credence to the Wiesenthal-Safer

Lviv pogrom.

Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom was

a fabrication is unearthed upon trying to substantiate it in Simon Wiesenthal's own

writing. In one place, Simon Wiesenthal has the anti-Jewish activity postdating the

arrival of the Germans, and mentions neither the number of fatalities nor the

duration:

The Ukrainian police ... had played a disastrous role in Galicia

following the entry of the German troops at the end of June and the

beginning of July 1941. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance,

1989, p. 34, emphasis added)

And later in the same account, Simon Wiesenthal does mention a Lviv pogrom of three

day's duration, but again without mentioning the number of fatalities, and again

unambiguously placing it after the German occupation:

Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the

retreating Soviets. This gave rise to one of the craziest

accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic

population the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that

all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it

was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities committed

by the Soviets.

All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of

opinion. It is said that after their arrival they gave the

Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews.

(Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis

added)

Also, whereas on your 60 Minutes broadcast you gave the impression that Simon

Wiesenthal was making his appearance on 60 Minutes in the role of an eyewitness to

the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv Pogrom, or at least as a researcher who had documented it,

yet in the quotation immediately above, Simon Wiesenthal's use of "It is said that"

gives the contrasting impression that he is no more than passing along a rumor

concerning events that he has neither witnessed nor verified.

In conclusion, the Wiesenthal-Safer story of a massive pre-German Lviv pogrom is not

supported in historical writing, and is even contradicted by other testimony, some

of it leading Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg's, and some of it your own expert

witness Simon Wiesenthal's. Thus, unless you are able to substantiate the

Wiesenthal-Safer pre-German Lviv pogrom, you will invite the conclusion that it

never took place, and that your implanting it into the minds of 30 million 60

Minutes viewers constituted an attempt on the part of two individuals Simon

Wiesenthal and yourself - to fabricate a piece of history.

In Fact, the Consensus Seems to be that in

the Days Prior to German Occupation, it

was the NKVD that was Killing Ukrainians

In contrast to what appears to be a lack of substantiation of the Wiesenthal-Safer

story that in the days prior to German occupation Ukrainians were murdering Jews, I

do in my reading keep stumbling across quite a different story - that in the days

prior to German occupation, it was the NKVD that was murdering Ukrainians. Below

are 22 such statements. These statements were discovered not through any systematic

or exhaustive search, but rather only through casual reading. A systematic and

exhaustive search would turn up a much larger number of such statements.

In order to demonstrate that the NKVD had a general policy of killing Ukrainians

prior to retreating, of which the Lviv massacre was but a single instance, I include

descriptions of such killings in several locations.

"NKVD," in case you are interested, is an acronym for the Russian "Narodny

Komisariat Vnutrenikh Del," which translates as "National Commissariat of Internal

Affairs," and which bland title gives no hint of the NKVD's true role.

Please note that the block quotation immediately below is attributable to Simon

Wiesenthal, and that in it he demonstrates an awareness of the NKVD massacre of

Ukrainians, such that omitting mention of this massacre on your 23Oct94 60 Minutes

broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, must be considered not an oversight, but a

willful suppression of relevant information:

(1) Thousands of detainees were shot dead.

When the German attack came on 22 June the Soviets had no time to

take with them the people they had locked up. So they simply

killed them. Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells

by the retreating Soviets. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not

Vengeance, 1989, p. 35)

(2) The NKVD burned prisons with prisoners in them.

While the movement to the East was taking place, the NKVD carried

out mass arrests and executions, chiefly of Ukrainians - especially

those who tried to avoid evacuation. In the jails most prisoners

whose period of imprisonment was more than three years were shot;

others were evacuated if possible. In several cities the NKVD

burned prisons with prisoners in them. (Volodymyr Kubijovyc,

editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto

Press, Toronto, 1963, Volume I, p. 878, Vsevolod Holubnychy and H.

M. wrote this section)

(3) Succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political prisoners.

The Bolsheviks succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political

prisoners in Western Ukraine before and after the outbreak of

hostilities (massacres took place in the prisons in Lviv, Zolochiv,

Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, etc.). (Volodymyr Kubijovyc, editor, Ukraine:

A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto,

Volume 1, p. 886)

(4) Mainly members of the city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia.

Before fleeing the German advance the Soviet occupational regime

murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly members of the

city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume

3, p. 222)

(5) NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse.

The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for thousands

of political prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Unable to

evacuate them in time, the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en

masse during the week of 22-29 June 1941, regardless of whether

they were incarcerated for major or minor offenses. Major

massacres occurred in Lviv, Sambir, and Stanyslaviv in Galicia,

where about 10,000 prisoners died, and in Rivne and Lutsk in

Volhynia, where another 5000 perished. Coming on the heels of the

mass deportations and growing Soviet terror, these executions added

greatly to the West Ukrainians' abhorrence of the Soviets. (Orest

Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 461)

(6) Liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck.

Right after the entry we were shown 2,400 dead bodies of Ukrainians

liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck at the city jail

of Lemberg [Lviv] by the Soviets prior to their marching off.

(Hans Frank, In the Face of the Gallows, p. 406)

(7) The city stank.

In Lvov, several thousand prisoners had been held in three jails.

When the Germans arrived on 29 June, the city stank, and the

prisons were surrounded by terrified relatives. Unimaginable

atrocities had occurred inside. The prisons looked like

abattoirs. It had taken the NKVD a week to complete their gruesome

task before they fled. (Gwyneth Hughes and Simon Welfare, Red

Empire: The Forbidden History of the USSR, 1990, p. 133)

(8) Many of them were found mutilated.

We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great

number of Lemberg [Lviv] citizens, Ukrainians and Polish

inhabitants of other towns and villages had been killed in this

prison and in other prisons. Furthermore, there were many corpses

of German men and officers, among them many Air Corps officers, and

many of them were found mutilated. There was a great bitterness

and excitement among the Lemberg population against the Jewish

sector of the population. (Erwin Schulz, from May until 26

September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a subunit of

Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust:

Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982,

Volume 18, p. 18)

(9) The killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000.

On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the

killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000. It has

been determined without any doubt that the arrests and killings had