ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

are aware that the Waffen SS was a combat unit that played no role in the management of

concentration camps, and carried out no SS functions? I wonder if you are aware of

this, as you typically - perhaps always? - drop the qualification "Waffen" and refer to

members of the Galicia Division simply as members of the "SS," which gives the

misleading impression that combat soldiers were administrators of concentration camps.

If you are already aware of the distinction between the SS and the Waffen SS, then I

wonder that you would allow yourself to present the misleading picture that you have

been presenting. If you are unaware of this distinction, then I wonder how it came to

be that you are accorded the status of an expert witness on World War II events, as you

were on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom on October 23, 1994. Would

you be able to throw any light on this question?

But on top of that, you must have become aware during your long career as a Nazi

hunter that Ukraine was not unique in providing the German armed forces with Waffen SS

troops. Below, I reproduce a quote from an interview by Slavko Nowytski of Professor

Norman Davies, historian at the University of London, and author of the recent Europe:

A History, published by Oxford University Press:

In discussing the question of collaborating with Germany Prof. Davies

noted that, "A large number of the volunteers for the Waffen SS came

from Western Europe. The nation which supplied it the largest number

of divisions was the Netherlands [four]. There were two Belgian

divisions, there was a French Waffen SS. To my mind, it's rather

surprising that Ukraine, which is a much larger country [than the

Netherlands or Belgium] supplied only one Waffen SS Division.... It's

surprising that there were so few Ukrainians [in the German Army].

Many people don't know, for example, that there were far more Russians

fighting alongside the Wehrmacht or in the various German armies than

there were Ukrainians.... Thanks to Soviet propaganda, the Russian

contribution to the Nazi war effort has been forgotten, whereas the

Ukrainian contribution has been remembered, I think, too strongly."

(Andrew Gregorovich, Forum, No. 95, Spring, 1997, p. 34)

And so the information in the above quotation leads to several more questions:

(1) As the population of The Netherlands is small, and as it contributed the

largest number of Waffen SS divisions, this gives The Netherlands the largest per

capita contribution to the Waffen SS of any country. Would you conclude from this that

the people of The Netherlands are the most anti-Semitic in the world? And following

the same line of reasoning, would you conclude that the people of Belgium are the next

most anti-Semitic? And also that as the population of France is approximately equal to

the population of Ukraine, and as each of these contributed one Waffen SS division,

that the French are approximately as anti-Semitic as the Ukrainians?

(2) As you have expended considerable energy attacking the former members of the

Galicia Division as war criminals, I wonder if you have expended any similar energy

attacking former members of The Netherlands, Belgium, and French Waffen SS divisions in

the same way? For example, have you demanded any investigation of The Netherlands

Waffen SS, and as a result has the government of The Netherlands ever created a

commission on war criminals comparable to Canada's Deschenes Commission on War

Criminals? And have you done so in Belgium? In France?

If not, then why not? Why do you single out the Galicia Division? How is the

Galicia Division different from the other Waffen SS divisions?

(3) If in comparison to several other countries, Ukraine contributed

proportionately fewer numbers to the Waffen SS, or to any of the German armed forces,

then shouldn't you as a Nazi hunter, commend or thank Ukrainians for their relatively

small contribution to the German war effort?

(4) Are you aware that the chief motive behind the creation of the Galicia

Division was to prevent the Soviet re-occupation of Ukraine? Are you aware that in

consequence, the Galicia Division was organized with the proviso that it not be used

against the Western allies, but only against the Soviets on the Eastern front; and that

in fact, the only use to which the Galicia Division was ever put was against the

Soviets in the Battle of Brody? If you are aware of this, then why did you not mention

it on the 60 Minutes broadcast in which you were the chief witness and the Galicia

Division the chief subject of discussion? If you are not aware of this, then why does

60 Minutes consider you an authority on World War II?

Would you happen to know if the Waffen SS divisions of other countries were

created under the same proviso?

(5) Given that Canada's Deschenes Commission on War Criminals failed to identify

even a single member of the Galicia Division as calling for further investigation; and

given that neither you nor anyone else has ever had any member of the Galicia Division

convicted of any crime, or even tried for any crime; and, most importantly, given that

neither you nor anyone else has ever even specified any crime of which the Galicia

Division as a whole, or any member of the Galicia Division, might have been guilty

given all this, I wonder if the time has not finally come when you have to admit that

your obsession with the Galicia Division has been misplaced?

And would you happen to know if the Waffen SS divisions of The Netherlands,

Belgium, and France have proven to be as free from blame as has the Ukrainian Galicia

Division?

Sincerely yours,

Lubomyr Prytulak

HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL 840 hits since 18Jan98

Wiesenthal Letter 19 Sep 12/97 Testimony of Erwin Schulz

September 12, 1997

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

In my letters to you of September 8 and 9, 1997, I have questioned your assertion

made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994 to the

effect that in the few days before the arrival of the Germans, Ukrainians killed some 5

to 6 thousand Jews in Lviv. I have recently come across some testimony that indicates

that your assertion is correct on all of the details of this event save one.

The fresh testimony that I am referring to is that of Erwin Schulz, Commander of

Einsatzkommando 5 (a subunit of Einsatzgruppe C), from May until 26 September, 1941.

From Schulz's testimony, it appears that several of the details of your assertion are

correct: namely that the number murdered was 5,000, which is within the bounds of your

own estimate; that the location was indeed Lviv (identified as Lemberg); that the time

was indeed during the few days prior to the arrival of the Germans; and that the chief

participants were indeed Ukrainians and Jews, although Schulz does mention the

secondary involvement of others.

The point on which Schulz differs from you is that whereas you say that the

slaughter consisted of Ukrainians killing Jews, Schulz says that it consisted of Jews

killing Ukrainians:

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

number of Lemberg 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, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents

in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18)

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

people in Lemberg amounted to about 5,000. It has been determined

without any doubt that the arrests and killings had taken place under

the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with the participation of

the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg. That was the reason why there was

such an excitement against the Jewish population on the part of the

Lemberg citizens. (Erwin Schulz, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The

Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York,

1982, Volume 18, p. 18)

I wonder if you would care to comment on this discrepancy between Schulz's

testimony and your own?

Sincerely yours,

Lubomyr Prytulak

HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL 1435 hits since 18Jan98

Wiesenthal Letter 20 Sep 13/97 Jews killing Ukrainians in Lviv

September 13, 1997

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

In my letter to you of September 12, I presented the testimony of Erwin Schulz to

the effect that in the few days prior to the arrival of German forces in Lviv in 1941,

some 5,000 inhabitants of the Lviv region, predominantly Ukrainians and Poles, had been

killed, and that the killing had been conducted "under the leadership of Jewish

functionaries and with the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg."

The continuing question before us can be broken down into two parts: (1) Were

such large numbers of Ukrainians and Poles killed? (2) What ethnic groups were most

responsible for the killing?

On the first question, there does not appear to be much doubt - every one of the

half-dozen sources that I consulted agree that the slaughter did take place. In fact,

in the last quotation of the following set of six, you yourself, Mr. Wiesenthal, can be

seen to agree:

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)

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.). (Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, Volume

1, p. 886)

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)

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)

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)

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)

The first question having been settled - I trust - to the satisfaction of all, we

turn now to the second question: Is there any ethnic group that might have been

particularly responsible for the killing? Well, if the slaughter was conducted by the

NKVD or was directed by the NKVD, then the question reduces to What was the ethnic

composition of the NKVD?

The evidence that I have come across points to the conclusion that the NKVD was

dominated by Jews. Here is one such piece of evidence. The speaker is Yoram Sheftel,

John Demjanjuk's Israeli defense attorney, describing his visit to the Simferopol,

Ukraine, KGB headquarters in 1990 - what Sheftel seems to be saying is that out of a

sample of some 30 members of the wartime NKVD, every last one was a Jew:

On the right-hand wall was a stone memorial plaque engraved with the

names of about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in the

Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets call World War II. I was shocked

and angry as I read the names: the first was Polonski and the last

Levinstein, and all those between were ones like Zalmonowitz, Geller

and Kagan - all Jews. The best of Jewish youth in Russia, the cradle

of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to the Red Devil. (The

Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, 1994, p. 301)

Of course a sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative of the

entire NKVD; however the Jewish domination of the entire NKVD is not a rare or dubious

hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than one direction:

As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were there

so many Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators - including many of the

most terrible? It's a painful question for me but I cannot evade it.

(Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on

Russia, Past, Present and Future, 1994, p. 147)

Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery