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Most of the team members were arrested and executed in Babyn Yar, but they are
not forgotten. There is a monument to them in Kiev and their heroism inspired
the film Victory starring Sylvester Stallone and Pele. (Andrew Gregorovich,
World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring 1995, p. 21)
If Morley Safer will not swerve from his position that Ukrainians were keen on Naziism, then he
should explain how Ukrainians were able to maintain their keenness when their cities were being
starved:
Koch drastically limited the flow of foodstuffs into the cities, arguing that
Ukrainian urban centers were basically useless. In the long run, the Nazis
intended to transform Ukraine into a totally agrarian country and, in the short
run, Germany needed the food that Ukrainian urban dwellers consumed. As a
result, starvation became commonplace and many urban dwellers were forced to
move to the countryside. Kiev, for example, lost about 60% of its population.
Kharkiv, which had a population of 700,000 when the Germans arrived, saw
120,000 of its inhabitants shipped to Germany as laborers; 30,000 were executed
and about 80,000 starved to death.... (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History,
1994, p. 469)
Among the first actions of the Nazis upon occupying a new city was to plunder it of its
intellectual and cultural treasures, material as well as human, and yet somehow - if we are to
believe Morley Safer - being so plundered failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the Ukrainians for
Naziism:
Co. 4 in which I was employed seized in Kiev the library of the medical
research institute. All equipment, scientific staff, documentation and books
were shipped out to Germany.
We appropriated rich trophies in the library of the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences which possessed singular manuscripts of Persian, Abyssinian and
Chinese writings, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles, incunabula by the first
printer Ivan Fedorov, and rare editions of Shevchenko, Mickiewicz, and Ivan
Franko.
Expropriated and sent to Berlin were many exhibits from Kiev's Museums of
Ukrainian Art, Russian Art, Western and Oriental Art and the Taras Shevchenko
Museum.
As soon as the troops seize a big city, there arrive in their wake team
leaders with all kinds of specialists to scan museums, art galleries,
exhibitions, cultural and art institutions, evaluate their state and
expropriate everything of value. (Report by SS-Oberstrumfuehrer Ferster,
November 10, 1942, in Kondufor, History Teaches a Lesson, p. 176, in Andrew
Gregorovich, World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring, 1995, p. 23)
Only genetic programming could explain how - according to Morley Safer anyway - Ukrainians could
have been among the most loyal of Nazis when their intelligentsia were being decimated and they
were being treated as Untermenschen:
Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, proposed that "the entire Ukrainian
intelligentsia should be decimated." Koch believed that three years of grade
school was more than enough education for Ukrainians. He even went so far as
to curtail medical services in order to undermine "the biological power of the
Ukrainians." German-only shops, restaurants, and sections of trolley cars were
established to emphasize the superiority of the Germans and the racial
inferiority of the Ukrainian Untermenschen. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A
History, 1994, p. 469)
There must not be a more advanced education for the non-German population
of the east than four years of primary school.
This primary education has the following objective only: doing simple
arithmetic up to 500, writing one's name, learning that it was God's command
that the Germans must be obeyed, and that one had to be honest, diligent, and
obedient. I don't consider reading skills necessary. Except for this school,
no other kind of school must be allowed in the east....
The [remaining inferior] population will be at our call as a slave people
without leaders, and each year will provide Germany with migrant workers and
workers for special projects ... and, while themselves lacking all culture,
they will be called upon under the strict, purposeful, and just rule of the
German nation to contribute to [Germany's] eternal cultural achievements and
monuments.... (Himmler, May 1941, in Hannah Vogt, The Burden of Guilt: A Short
History of Germany, 1914-1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1964, p. 263)
The notion proposed by 60 Minutes that Ukrainians were as one with the Nazis - or if we are to
believe Mr. Safer, more Nazi than the Nazis themselves - is a colossal fiction based on colossal
prejudice:
A graphic indication of the extremes of Nazi brutality experienced in Ukraine
was that for one village that was destroyed and its inhabitants executed in
France and Czechoslovakia, 250 villages and their inhabitants suffered such a
fate in Ukraine. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, pp. 479-480)
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division
Quality of Translation
Ukrainian Homogeneity
Were Ukrainians Nazis?
Simon Wiesenthal
What Happened in Lviv?
Nazi Propaganda Film
Collective Guilt
Paralysis of the Comparative
Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
Simon Wiesenthal
Discovered Under the Floorboards
In reading Simon Wiesenthal's biography, one cannot but be impressed by his exactitude. Take
this account of how he was discovered underneath the floorboards:
In early June 1944, during a drinking bout in a neighbouring house, a chief
inspector of the German railways was beaten and robbed by his Polish
companions. A house-to-house police search was ordered. Simon reburied
himself several times and was in his makeshift coffin on Tuesday, 13 June 1944,
when more than eight months of cramped and perilous "freedom" came to an end.
As the Gestapo entered the courtyard of the house, the Polish partisans fled,
leaving Wiesenthal trapped beneath the earth "in a position where I couldn't
even make use of my weapon." (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, pp. 52-53)
To remember not only that it was the 13th of June, but that it was a Tuesday - how impressive!
And how appropriate that Mr. Wiesenthal be credited with a photographic memory:
He is helped by his phenomenal memory: Wiesenthal is able to quote telephone
numbers which he may have happened to see on a visiting card two years before.
He can list the participants in huge functions, one by one, and he can add what
colour suit each wore. Although he writes up to twenty letters a day, and
receives more than that number, he can, years later, quote key passages from
them and indicate roughly where that letter may be found in a file. ... A
man's civilian occupation, his origins in a particular region, his accent
mentioned by someone - all these stick in Wiesenthal's memory for years. And,
just like a computer, he can call them up at any time.
This permanent readiness of recall means that the horror is not relegated,
as it is with most people (and increasingly also with victims), to a remote
recess of the mind, but is always at the forefront, at the painful boundary of
consciousness. Wiesenthal possesses what is usually called a photographic
memory: he is a man who cannot forget. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon
Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, pp. 20-21.)
But from someone in Mr. Wiesenthal's position, one expects no less one expects just such
exactitude as he is gifted with, just such precision, just such vivid and accurate recall of
detail. All such things are essential when one is entrusted with the grave responsibility of
accusing individuals and ascribing guilt to nations. And precise memory of such events is to be
expected all the more of someone who was young when the events occurred, and when the events
were traumatic and seared into his memory.
As Mr. Wiesenthal has related the story of his life to more than one biographer, it is not a
difficult matter for a reader to compare these stories in order to be further edified by the
demonstration of Mr. Wiesenthal's remarkable memory. Take, for example, this other account of
the same story of being discovered underneath the floorboards:
One evening in April 1943 a German soldier was shot dead in the street. The
alarm was raised: SS and Polish police officers in civilian clothes searched
the nearby houses for hidden weapons. Instead they found Simon Wiesenthal. He
was marched off for the third time to, as he believed, his certain execution.
(Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.
11)
But this parallel version of the story is not precisely what the claims concerning Mr.
Wiesenthal's memory led us to expect. The astonishingly accurate "Tuesday, 13 June 1944" has
turned into "April 1943," "beaten" has become "murdered," "in a house" has become "in the
street," the "railway inspector" has become a "German soldier," and the "Gestapo" has become the
"SS." The last might seem like a fine point, but in fact the Gestapo and the SS had clearly
defined and mutually exclusive duties: "A division of authority came about whereby the Gestapo
alone had the power to arrest people and send them to concentration camps, whereas the SS
remained responsible for running the camps" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, 1987, p. 133). Perhaps
a fine point to someone who had not lived through these events, but to someone who had lived
through them, then one would imagine a memorable point, one that should be easier to remember
than, say, what color suit each participant wore at some huge function.
And so now we are forced to wonder whether this is the same event badly remembered, or whether
Mr. Wiesenthal was discovered twice under the floorboards, once in 1943 and again in 1944. The
more cynical reader might even go on to wonder whether any such event took place at all.
As the above comparison illustrates, and as a reading of Mr. Wiesenthal proves a hundred times
over, Mr. Wiesenthal's salient characteristic is not that he has a photographic memory, but
rather that he cannot tell a story twice in the same way. For a second example, take the case
of the Rusinek slap.
The Rusinek Slap
Former inmates took over command. One of them was the future Polish Cabinet
Minister Kazimierz Rusinek. Wiesenthal needed to see him at his office to get
a pass. The Pole, who was about to lock up, struck him across the face - just
as some camp officials had frequently treated Jews. It hurt Wiesenthal more
than all the blows received from SS men in three years: "Now the war is over,
and the Jews are still being beaten."
... He sought out the American camp command to make a complaint. (Peter
Michael Lingens in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 12)
That is one version, but here is another:
A Polish trusty named Kazimierz Rusinek pounced on Simon for no good reason and
knocked him unconscious. When Wiesenthal woke up, friends had carried him to
his bunk. "What has he got against you?" one of them asked.
"I don't know," Simon said. "Maybe he's angry because I'm still alive."
(Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 69)
These two accounts are so different that one wonders whether they are of the same event. In the
first account Wiesenthal is addressing Rusinek when Rusinek slaps him, while in the second
Rusinek pounces on him, which suggests an ambush. But more important, when you have been
pounced on and knocked unconscious, when you become aware that your friends have carried you to
your bunk only after you have regained consciousness, then you would not ordinarily describe
that as merely having been "struck across the face." Mr. Wiesenthal is a skilled raconteur - in
fact an erstwhile professional stand-up comic - so that it is inconceivable that he would weaken
a story, drain it of its significance, by turning a knock-out into a mere slap. With his
training as a stand-up comic, however, it is conceivable that he would turn a slap into a
knock-out.
Mr. Wiesenthal's stories are cluttered with this sort of self-contradiction. Take, for still
another example, the case of the Bodnar rescue: In Justice Not Vengeance, Bodnar saves only
Wiesenthal, and takes him to his apartment. In The Wiesenthal File, however, Bodnar saves
Wiesenthal together with another prisoner and takes the two to the office of a "commissar" which
office they spend the entire night cleaning.
And on top of outright contradiction, there are a mass of details that fail to ring true. For
example, although many Ukrainians did risk their lives to save Jews, the number who knowingly
gave their lives to save Jews must have been considerably smaller - and yet, as noted above,
that is what Wiesenthal seems to be asking us to believe that Bodnar did. And then too,
Wiesenthal tells us that in the execution which he had just barely escaped, the prisoners were
being shot with each standing beside his own wooden box, and dumped into his own box after he
was shot - where we might have expected the executioners to follow the path of least effort, Mr.
Wiesenthal's account shows them going to the trouble of providing each victim with a makeshift
coffin.
And just how did it come to pass that the executioners stopped before killing Wiesenthal
himself? - According to Simon Wiesenthal, they heard church bells, and being devoutly religious,
stopped to pray. But what an incongruous juxtaposition - Ukrainians at once deeply Christian
and deeply genocidal. If Christianity invited the murder of Jews, then this would make sense,
but in fact - in modern times at least - Christianity has stood against such practices, and more
emphatically so in Ukraine than perhaps anywhere else, as we have already noted above.
But what has Mr. Wiesenthal's inability to come up with a consistent or credible biography got
to do with the quality of his professional denunciations? - The evidence suggests that the two
are equally shoddy. Had 60 Minutes looked into Mr. Wiesenthal's professional background, it
would quickly have found much to wonder at. It would, for one thing, have quickly come across
the case of Frank Walus, The Nazi Who Never Was.
Frank Walus: The Nazi Who Never Was
In 1976 Simon Wiesenthal, in Vienna, had gone public with charges that a Polish
emigre living in Chicago, Frank Walus, had been a collaborator involved in
persecuting Polish Jews, including women and children, as part of a Gestapo-led
auxiliary police unit. Walus, charged Wiesenthal, "performed his duties with
the Gestapo in the ghettos of Czestochowa and Kielce and handed over numerous
Jews to the Gestapo." (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters,
1988, p. 193)
Walus, in turn, was convicted by judge Julius Hoffman, who
ran the trial with an iron hand and an eccentricity that bordered on the
bizarre. He allowed government witnesses great latitude, while limiting
severely Korenkiewicz's cross-examination of them. When Walus himself
testified, Hoffman limited him almost entirely to simple yes and no answers.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 193)
Despite weaknesses in the prosecution case, Judge Hoffman went on to convict Walus, and later
despite accumulating evidence of Walus's innocence, refused to reconsider his verdict. But
then a formal appeal was filed. The process took almost two years, but in
February 1980, the court ruled. It threw out Hoffman's verdict and ordered
Walus retried. In making the ruling, the court said that it appeared the
government's case against Walus was "weak" but that Hoffman's handling of the
trial had been so biased that it could not evaluate the evidence properly.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
In view of irrefutable documentary and eye-witness evidence that Walus had served as a farm
laborer in Germany during the entire war, he was never re-tried. And what, we may ask, was the
occasion for Simon Wiesenthal's fingering Walus in the first place?
Only later was the source of the "evidence" against Walus that had reached
Simon Wiesenthal identified. Walus had bought a two-family duplex when he came
to Chicago. In the early 1970s, he rented out the second unit to a tenant with
whom he eventually had a fight. Walus evicted the tenant, who then started
telling one and all how his former landlord used to sit around and reminisce
about the atrocities he had committed against Jews in the good old days.
Apparently one of the groups to which he told the story was a Jewish refugee
agency in Chicago, which passed the information along to Simon Wiesenthal.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
For a statement concerning the Walus case made by Frank Walus himself, please read Frank Walus's
letter to Germany.
The Deschenes Commission
But is the Walus case a single slipup in Simon Wiesenthal's otherwise blemish-free career? No,
other slipups can be found - in one instance a batch of 6,000 others. Simon Wiesenthal kicked
the ball into play with the accusation that Canada harbored "several hundred" war criminals
(Toronto Star, May 19, 1971). The Jewish Defense League caught the ball, found it soft and
inflated it to "maybe 1,000" (Globe and Mail, July 5, 1983) before tossing it to Edward
Greenspan. Edward Greenspan mustered enough hot air to inflate it to 2,000 (Globe and Mail,
November 21, 1983) before tossing it to Sol Littman whose lung capacity was able to raise it to
3,000 (Toronto Star, November 8, 1984). The ball, distended beyond recognition, was tossed back
to Wiesenthal who boldly puffed it up to 6,000 (New York Daily News, May 16, 1986) and then made
the mistake of trying to kick it - but poof! The ball burst!
Judge Jules Deschenes writing the report for Canada's Commission on War Criminals first
certifies that the ball had indeed reached the record-breaking 6,000 Canadian war criminals:
The Commission has ascertained from the New York Daily News that this figure is
correct and is not the result of a printing error. (Jules Deschenes,
Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 247)
But now the big ball was gone, and all that was left was the deflated pigskin which Mr.
Wiesenthal lamely flopped on the Commission's table - a list of 217 names (which in other places
becomes a list of 218 or 219 names). The list was focussed on Ukrainians - Mr. Wiesenthal's
Vienna Documentation Center Annual Report for 1984 claimed that "218 former Ukrainian officers
of Hitler's S.S. (elite guard), which ran death camps in Eastern Europe, are living in Canada."
Upon subjecting the deflated ball to close and prolonged scrutiny, Judge Deschenes, arrived at
the following conclusions:
Between 1971 and 1986, public statements by outside interveners concerning
alleged war criminals residing in Canada have spread increasingly large and
grossly exaggerated figures as to their estimated number ... [among them] the
figure of 6,000 ventured in 1986 by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.... (p. 249)
The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide
discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and
interrogation. (p. 245)
It was obvious that the list of 217 officers of the Galicia Division furnished
by Mr. Wiesenthal was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government,
through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this Commission, to a
considerable amount of purposeless work. (p. 258)
The Commission has tried repeatedly to obtain the incriminating evidence
allegedly in Mr. Wiesenthal's possession, through various oral and written
communications with Mr. Wiesenthal himself and with his solicitor, Mr. Martin
Mendelsohn of Washington, D.C., but to no avail: telephone calls, letters, even
a meeting in New York between Mr. Wiesenthal and Commission Counsel on 1
November 1985 followed up by further direct communications, have succeeded in
bringing no positive results, outside of promises. (p. 257)
From the conclusions of the Deschenes Commission alone, 60 Minutes might have decided that Simon
Wiesenthal is not the kind of person whose pronouncements may be aired without verification.
Had any Ukrainian come to 60 Minutes carrying such a load of hatred toward Jews as Simon
Wiesenthal carries toward Ukrainians, and displaying - or rather flaunting - such credentials of
unreliability, 60 Minutes would never have given him air time, or if it did, it would be only to
excoriate him. Instead of exposing Mr. Wiesenthal, 60 Minutes has joined him in portraying a
world filled with Nazis, and so has lent support to a witch hunt more hysterical than Joe
McCarthy's sniffing out of Communists in the 50's. Consider the following excerpts from cases
submitted to the Deschenes commission for investigation as suspected Nazi war criminals, and see
if you don't agree. In the Commission report, all of the following cases end with the words,
"On the basis of the foregoing, it is recommended that the file on the subject be closed." The
selection is not intended to be representative, as the overwhelming number of cases are simply
dismissed for lack of evidence - but rather is a sample of cases that upon casual browsing stand
out as being particularly comical, pathetic, or alarming depending upon one's mood. The sample,
furthermore, is far from exhaustive - a vastly greater number of similarly striking cases abound
within the Commission report:
CASE NO. 73. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by
Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman made no particular allegation against the
subject, but referred to information obtained from a particular individual as
the source of the subject's name. Mr. Littman further indicated that the
subject resided at an unspecified address in Canada and had been the object of
an extradition request by the government of an Eastern European country. No
particulars of this alleged extradition request were provided. ... The
Commission confirmed that an extradition request had not been received by the
Canadian government and that the Berlin Document Center had no record on the
subject.
CASE NO. 121. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Department of the Solicitor
General which, in turn, had received the information from a private citizen.
It was alleged that this individual may have been a doctor who experimented on
concentration camp prisoners. ... The interview established that the
complainant was not in a position to place the subject in a Nazi war camp nor
was she in possession of names of witnesses able to connect the subject with
wartime criminal activities. ... [T]he subject would have been only 15 to 20
years old during the war, hardly an age to have the position suggested above.
CASE NO. 122. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by an anonymous note. The only allegation initially made was that the subject
was a war criminal and was living at a certain address in Canada. ... [T]he
evidence ... indicates the individual has lived all his life in Canada and was
drafted into the Canadian army for a short time in 1942.
CASE NO. 133. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman. It was alleged
that the subject under investigation had been a member of the SS. ... These
investigations revealed that the subject was born in 1933 and would therefore
have been between 6 and 12 years of age during the war.
CASE NO. 156. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman alleged only that the subject had been a
"propagandist for the party." When contacted by the Commission, Mr. Littman
indicated that he had no further evidence or information. ... On the basis of
the foregoing [itemized investigation], no evidence of participation in or
knowledge of specific war crimes is available.
CASE NO. 158. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by a private citizen. The only allegation initially made was that the subject
was a war criminal because he was so wealthy and of German background. ...
The Commission was advised [by several German sources] that it had a record of
the subject which indicated his membership in the Luftwaffe (air force).
CASE NO. 171. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by ... the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna. ... According to the year
of birth, this person would have been only five or six years old at the end of
World War II.
CASE NO. 179. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by an anonymous letter. The allegation initially made was that the subject was
the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of the store's
goods. ... The subject is the spouse of the individual who is reported in
Case No. 180. Both were denounced in the same anonymous letter. ... The
Commission checked the shop itself and concluded that the complaint is entirely
spurious and unfounded.
CASE NO. 180. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by an anonymous letter. The only allegation initially made was that the
subject was the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of
the store's goods. ... The Commission also checked the shop itself and
concluded that the complaint is entirely spurious and unfounded.
CASE NO. 190. This family's surname was brought to the attention of the
Commission by Mr. David Matas [chairman of the Jewish National Legal
Committee], whose source of information was an anonymous letter claiming the
family came from a foreign country and deserved investigation because they were
"recluses." There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
against this family.
CASE NO. 202. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
citizen. There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
against this individual, and the information received was irrational. ... The
Commission contacted the wife of the subject, who stated that she did not know
the citizen (who made the allegation) and that her husband never had any
business dealings with a person by that name. The Commission also tried to
locate the complainant but to no avail.
CASE NO. 247. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
citizen. There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
against the individual. ... The Commission was advised by the German Military
Service Office ... that it had a record of a person with the same name as the
subject, which indicated that he was a pilot in the Allied Air Force and had
been taken prisoner by the Germans.
CASE NO. 269. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
citizen. It was alleged that this individual is a physician whose physical
description resembles that of the notorious war criminal Dr. Mengele. ...
Personal data of the subject taken from various documentation reveal the
following in comparison with the information contained in the Commission file
with respect to Dr. Mengele:
Year of Birth
Height
Weight
Eyes
Face
Chin
Subject
&&&& 1913
6'3"+
195-215 lbs
Blue
Oval (from Photo)
Dr. Mengele
1911
5'8"+
Medium build
Brown
Round
Round
In addition, the picture of the subject appearing in the various documents
received, does not suggest that he resembles Dr. Mengele. All other search
responses were negative.
CASE NO. 431. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman had
forwarded a letter to the RCMP from a private individual. It was alleged in
the letter that the subject under investigation had been in charge of an
unnamed camp and was believed to have shot civilians. ... The Commission
interviewed the individual who submitted the subject's name to Mr. Littman and
was advised that this individual had subsequently determined that the subject
under investigation had been a prisoner of war and further that the complaint
was unfounded.
CASE NO. 433. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was an anonymous informant. The only
allegation made was that the subject was "a possible German involved in war
crimes". No specific allegation or evidence against the subject was provided.
... The Commission reviewed material available from the RCMP and CSIS, which
determined that the subject was born in 1933, and for that reason could not
have been involved in the commission of war crimes between 1939 and 1945.
CASE NO. 526. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
individual. It was alleged that the subject under investigation might be Dr.
Josef Mengele. ... The Department of External Affairs reported that it had a
record in respect of the individual, but that the individual had been born in
1928 in Canada.... ... Furthermore, the subject's name is not one of the
aliases used from time to time by Josef Mengele.
CASE NO. 561. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress. It
was alleged that the subject was responsible for the deaths of "hundreds of
Jews." No specific evidence of the alleged war crimes was provided. ...
Records of the Department of Employment and Immigration ... indicate that the
subject was born in 1941....
CASE NO. 588.1. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, who were investigating the suspicions of the Department of
Employment and Immigration officials that the individual might be older than he
claims and might be hiding a questionable past, which may have involved the
Nazi Party. ... It was verified [through various investigations] that the
subject is indeed who he claims to be and that he was indeed born in 1929. He
was barely 10 years old at the start of the war.
Sol Littman's Mengele Scare
As another piece of evidence that we are in the midst of a witch hunt a witch hunt in which
Simon Wiesenthal plays the role of chief inquisitor - consider Sol Littman's Mengele Scare. On
December 20, 1984, Mr. Littman - Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center - wrote
to the Prime Minister of Canada unequivocally affirming that
Mengele, employing the alias of Dr. Joseph Menke, applied to the Canadian
embassy in Buenos Aires for admission to Canada as a landed immigrant in late
May or early June, 1962. (In Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War
Criminals, 1986, p. 67)
Then on January 23, 1985, Ralph Blumenthal wrote an article in the New York Times captioned
"Records indicate Mengele sought Canadian visa":
Other records indicate that Mengele applied to the Canadian Embassy in Buenos
Aires for a Canadian visa in 1962 under a pseudonym and that the Canadians
informed American intelligence officials of this attempt.
This information was widely reprinted and broadcast. Subsequently, both Mr. Blumenthal and Mr.
Littman affirmed that the information in this article concerning Josef Mengele came solely from
Mr. Littman. However, following its thorough investigation, the Commission concluded:
There is no documentary evidence whatsoever of an attempt by Dr. Joseph
Mengele to seek admission to Canada from Buenos Aires in 1962.
The affirmation has come from Mr. Sol Littman, and from him alone. ...
The advice which Littman solicited [in the course of his own research] ...
did not support his assumptions, but put him on notice about their fragility.
As stated at the outset, all that Littman could rely on was "speculation,
impression, possibility, hypothesis". Yet he chose to transmute them into
statements of facts which he publicized....
This is a case where not a shred of evidence has been tendered to support
Mr. Littman's statement to the Prime Minister of Canada on 20 December 1984, or
Mr. Ralph Blumenthal's article in the New York Times on 23 January 1985.
(Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 70)
In view of Sol Littman's irresponsibility in engineering the Mengele Scare, it is not a little
ironic to note that it was this very scare which was the prime cause of the Canadian government
constituting the Jules Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. We see this
demonstrated when the reasons for the Commission being constituted are laid out, and Sol
Littman's Mengele disinformation - at the time accepted as information - appears at the top of
the list:
WHEREAS concern has been expressed about the possibility that Joseph Mengele,
an alleged Nazi war criminal, may have entered or attempted to enter
Canada.... (Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p.
17)
What we see in Sol Littman, then, is a case somewhat paralleling that of Morley Safer - a single
Jew creates a story out of thin air, and gets it disseminated to tens of millions of people
through a Jewish-controlled media which conveniently neglects to verify it prior to
publication. In Littman's case, he goes well beyond dissemination - he further succeeds in
pressuring the Canadian government to waste taxpayer money (always in short supply for education
and health care) on a costly inquiry which turns up just about nothing, and whose only
appreciable benefit is not to the Canadian people, and not even to Jews collectively, but only
to Sol Littman personally - which benefit is the stirring up of Jewish anxiety on the one hand
together with anti-Jewish resentment on the other, both of which are necessary to increasing the
flow of Jewish contributions into Sol Littman's coffers. Sol Littman, in short, is a parasite
upon the Jewish people, preying on the fears of the more gullible of them, essentially playing a
role not unlike that of Stephen King in which the bigger a scare he is able to elicit out of his
audience by means of the fantastic stories he is able to concoct, the greater is his success.
Repeating the same principle in different words, we may say that the more anti-Semitism Sol
Littman is able to provoke, the greater is his success.
How does Sol Littman come to be in the vanguard of the fight to suppress hate on the Internet?
Consider the information on Sol Littman which can be found on The Ukrainian Archive: (1)
Reviewing the sampling higher above of irresponsible denunciations submitted to the Deschenes
Commission, we note that four of them were submitted by Sol Littman, suggesting that in the full
list of denunciations, his contribution would have been substantial. (2) The Sol Littman
Mengele scare immediately above. (3) My 27May98 letter to Demjanjuk persecutor Neal Sher, in
which I present data supporting the conclusion that Neal Sher and Sol Littman are members of a
subculture who lie not only to those who are not members of their subculture, but to each other
as well, thus steeping themselves in untruths. Still more information is available on a web
site unconnected to UKAR devoted exclusively to exposing Sol Littman. Given the present UKAR
disclosure of Sol Littman's irresponsibility, and given the similar disclosure on other sites on
the Internet, as the one cited above, it is little wonder that Sol Littman is today a leading
exponent for society bestowing upon him (and others like him) the power to suppress information
on the Internet when he decides (or they decide) that it expresses "hate." Perhaps a suspicion
that it would be healthy to occasionally entertain is that those who call loudest for the
suppression of information may be those with the most to hide.
Salem's Was Not the Last Witch Hunt
Surely the above data convinces us that many of the horrors that we all despise - that even Mr.
Safer might profess to despise - are being realized as contemporary actualities. Slanderous and
unfounded allegations. Anonymous letters of accusation. Government agencies investigating
people for no other reason than that someone has submitted their names. McCarthyism. A witch
hunt. Individuals accused of having committed war crimes while they were still in diapers. And
instead of standing back from this mass hysteria or exposing it, 60 Minutes has chosen instead
to play a contributory role.
The Deschenes Commission cites 31 newspaper accounts between 1971 and 1986 of Nazi war criminals
residing in Canada, and points out that this list is not exhaustive. Decades of coverage of
such sensational accusations leaves a permanent impression on the minds of the public, while the
Deschenes Commission refutation takes place only once, and does not carry the same lurid
appeal. The net effect is a propaganda victory for the false accusers. 60 Minutes is making
its contribution to this phenomenon - its false accusations in "The Ugly Face of Freedom" were
long and sensational and will be remembered by many, its retraction will be short and dull and
will be remembered by few. 60 Minutes hands Ukrainophobes another victory.
Letters to Simon Wiesenthal
I have written a number of letters to Simon Wiesenthal asking for his clarification on the
issues raised above, and on other issues relating to his credibility and to his calumniation of
Ukraine. These letters can be found by clicking the above link. Other material relating to
Simon Wiesenthal can be found scattered throughout the UKAR site, and can be located using the
Internal Search Engine whose link can be found on the Home Page. One item particularly worth
mentioning might be my sixth letter to Michael Jordan, Chairman of Westinghouse. Following
examination of any of these materials, clicking BACK on your browser will return you to this
location (if your browsing trail has not been too long).
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division
Quality of Translation
Ukrainian Homogeneity
Were Ukrainians Nazis?
Simon Wiesenthal
What Happened in Lviv?
Nazi Propaganda Film
Collective Guilt
Paralysis of the Comparative
Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
What Happened in Lviv?
According to Simon Wiesenthal on the 60 Minutes broadcast, in three days following the
evacuation of the Communist forces and before the arrival of the German troops, Ukrainian police
killed between five and six thousand 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 curious 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, the interviewer - Morley Safer chose to reduce that number
killed to "3,000" and the duration of the killing to two days - but without informing the viewer
on what grounds he did so.
Let us begin our examination of this claim by reviewing the historical context.
Historical Context of the Lviv Pogrom
Eight Years Previously. Although Western Ukraine was spared the induced famine of 1932-1933 in
which some six million Ukrainians perished, Western Ukrainians were nevertheless aware of the
famine in adjacent Soviet Ukraine and aware that it was administered at the top by Lazar
Kaganovich, a Jew, and was supported at the bottom by cadres, many said to be Jewish, who moved
from village to village confiscating grain and livestock.
During the previous 21 months. Western Ukraine was annexed by Soviet forces in 1939 for a
period of 21 months until the Germans arrived in 1941. What was the experience of Western
Ukrainians under Russian communism? It was traumatic. On top of suppression of culture and
confiscation of property, there was terror:
The most widespread and feared measure was deportation. Without warning,
without trial, even without formal accusation, thousands of alleged "enemies of
the people" were arrested, packed into cattle cars, and shipped to Siberia and
Kazakhstan to work as slave laborers under horrible conditions. Many of these
deportees, including entire families, perished. ... According to Metropolitan
Andrei Sheptytsky, the Soviets deported about 400,000 Ukrainians from Galicia
alone. ... West Ukrainians found their first exposure to the Soviet system to
be a generally negative experience and many concluded that "Bolshevik" rule had
not forgotten. There is a monument to them in Kiev and their heroism inspired
the film Victory starring Sylvester Stallone and Pele. (Andrew Gregorovich,
World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring 1995, p. 21)
If Morley Safer will not swerve from his position that Ukrainians were keen on Naziism, then he
should explain how Ukrainians were able to maintain their keenness when their cities were being
starved:
Koch drastically limited the flow of foodstuffs into the cities, arguing that
Ukrainian urban centers were basically useless. In the long run, the Nazis
intended to transform Ukraine into a totally agrarian country and, in the short
run, Germany needed the food that Ukrainian urban dwellers consumed. As a
result, starvation became commonplace and many urban dwellers were forced to
move to the countryside. Kiev, for example, lost about 60% of its population.
Kharkiv, which had a population of 700,000 when the Germans arrived, saw
120,000 of its inhabitants shipped to Germany as laborers; 30,000 were executed
and about 80,000 starved to death.... (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History,
1994, p. 469)
Among the first actions of the Nazis upon occupying a new city was to plunder it of its
intellectual and cultural treasures, material as well as human, and yet somehow - if we are to
believe Morley Safer - being so plundered failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the Ukrainians for
Naziism:
Co. 4 in which I was employed seized in Kiev the library of the medical
research institute. All equipment, scientific staff, documentation and books
were shipped out to Germany.
We appropriated rich trophies in the library of the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences which possessed singular manuscripts of Persian, Abyssinian and
Chinese writings, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles, incunabula by the first
printer Ivan Fedorov, and rare editions of Shevchenko, Mickiewicz, and Ivan
Franko.
Expropriated and sent to Berlin were many exhibits from Kiev's Museums of
Ukrainian Art, Russian Art, Western and Oriental Art and the Taras Shevchenko
Museum.
As soon as the troops seize a big city, there arrive in their wake team
leaders with all kinds of specialists to scan museums, art galleries,
exhibitions, cultural and art institutions, evaluate their state and
expropriate everything of value. (Report by SS-Oberstrumfuehrer Ferster,
November 10, 1942, in Kondufor, History Teaches a Lesson, p. 176, in Andrew
Gregorovich, World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring, 1995, p. 23)
Only genetic programming could explain how - according to Morley Safer anyway - Ukrainians could
have been among the most loyal of Nazis when their intelligentsia were being decimated and they
were being treated as Untermenschen:
Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, proposed that "the entire Ukrainian
intelligentsia should be decimated." Koch believed that three years of grade
school was more than enough education for Ukrainians. He even went so far as
to curtail medical services in order to undermine "the biological power of the
Ukrainians." German-only shops, restaurants, and sections of trolley cars were
established to emphasize the superiority of the Germans and the racial
inferiority of the Ukrainian Untermenschen. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A
History, 1994, p. 469)
There must not be a more advanced education for the non-German population
of the east than four years of primary school.
This primary education has the following objective only: doing simple
arithmetic up to 500, writing one's name, learning that it was God's command
that the Germans must be obeyed, and that one had to be honest, diligent, and
obedient. I don't consider reading skills necessary. Except for this school,
no other kind of school must be allowed in the east....
The [remaining inferior] population will be at our call as a slave people
without leaders, and each year will provide Germany with migrant workers and
workers for special projects ... and, while themselves lacking all culture,
they will be called upon under the strict, purposeful, and just rule of the
German nation to contribute to [Germany's] eternal cultural achievements and
monuments.... (Himmler, May 1941, in Hannah Vogt, The Burden of Guilt: A Short
History of Germany, 1914-1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1964, p. 263)
The notion proposed by 60 Minutes that Ukrainians were as one with the Nazis - or if we are to
believe Mr. Safer, more Nazi than the Nazis themselves - is a colossal fiction based on colossal
prejudice:
A graphic indication of the extremes of Nazi brutality experienced in Ukraine
was that for one village that was destroyed and its inhabitants executed in
France and Czechoslovakia, 250 villages and their inhabitants suffered such a
fate in Ukraine. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, pp. 479-480)
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division
Quality of Translation
Ukrainian Homogeneity
Were Ukrainians Nazis?
Simon Wiesenthal
What Happened in Lviv?
Nazi Propaganda Film
Collective Guilt
Paralysis of the Comparative
Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
Simon Wiesenthal
Discovered Under the Floorboards
In reading Simon Wiesenthal's biography, one cannot but be impressed by his exactitude. Take
this account of how he was discovered underneath the floorboards:
In early June 1944, during a drinking bout in a neighbouring house, a chief
inspector of the German railways was beaten and robbed by his Polish
companions. A house-to-house police search was ordered. Simon reburied
himself several times and was in his makeshift coffin on Tuesday, 13 June 1944,
when more than eight months of cramped and perilous "freedom" came to an end.
As the Gestapo entered the courtyard of the house, the Polish partisans fled,
leaving Wiesenthal trapped beneath the earth "in a position where I couldn't
even make use of my weapon." (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, pp. 52-53)
To remember not only that it was the 13th of June, but that it was a Tuesday - how impressive!
And how appropriate that Mr. Wiesenthal be credited with a photographic memory:
He is helped by his phenomenal memory: Wiesenthal is able to quote telephone
numbers which he may have happened to see on a visiting card two years before.
He can list the participants in huge functions, one by one, and he can add what
colour suit each wore. Although he writes up to twenty letters a day, and
receives more than that number, he can, years later, quote key passages from
them and indicate roughly where that letter may be found in a file. ... A
man's civilian occupation, his origins in a particular region, his accent
mentioned by someone - all these stick in Wiesenthal's memory for years. And,
just like a computer, he can call them up at any time.
This permanent readiness of recall means that the horror is not relegated,
as it is with most people (and increasingly also with victims), to a remote
recess of the mind, but is always at the forefront, at the painful boundary of
consciousness. Wiesenthal possesses what is usually called a photographic
memory: he is a man who cannot forget. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon
Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, pp. 20-21.)
But from someone in Mr. Wiesenthal's position, one expects no less one expects just such
exactitude as he is gifted with, just such precision, just such vivid and accurate recall of
detail. All such things are essential when one is entrusted with the grave responsibility of
accusing individuals and ascribing guilt to nations. And precise memory of such events is to be
expected all the more of someone who was young when the events occurred, and when the events
were traumatic and seared into his memory.
As Mr. Wiesenthal has related the story of his life to more than one biographer, it is not a
difficult matter for a reader to compare these stories in order to be further edified by the
demonstration of Mr. Wiesenthal's remarkable memory. Take, for example, this other account of
the same story of being discovered underneath the floorboards:
One evening in April 1943 a German soldier was shot dead in the street. The
alarm was raised: SS and Polish police officers in civilian clothes searched
the nearby houses for hidden weapons. Instead they found Simon Wiesenthal. He
was marched off for the third time to, as he believed, his certain execution.
(Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.
11)
But this parallel version of the story is not precisely what the claims concerning Mr.
Wiesenthal's memory led us to expect. The astonishingly accurate "Tuesday, 13 June 1944" has
turned into "April 1943," "beaten" has become "murdered," "in a house" has become "in the
street," the "railway inspector" has become a "German soldier," and the "Gestapo" has become the
"SS." The last might seem like a fine point, but in fact the Gestapo and the SS had clearly
defined and mutually exclusive duties: "A division of authority came about whereby the Gestapo
alone had the power to arrest people and send them to concentration camps, whereas the SS
remained responsible for running the camps" (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust, 1987, p. 133). Perhaps
a fine point to someone who had not lived through these events, but to someone who had lived
through them, then one would imagine a memorable point, one that should be easier to remember
than, say, what color suit each participant wore at some huge function.
And so now we are forced to wonder whether this is the same event badly remembered, or whether
Mr. Wiesenthal was discovered twice under the floorboards, once in 1943 and again in 1944. The
more cynical reader might even go on to wonder whether any such event took place at all.
As the above comparison illustrates, and as a reading of Mr. Wiesenthal proves a hundred times
over, Mr. Wiesenthal's salient characteristic is not that he has a photographic memory, but
rather that he cannot tell a story twice in the same way. For a second example, take the case
of the Rusinek slap.
The Rusinek Slap
Former inmates took over command. One of them was the future Polish Cabinet
Minister Kazimierz Rusinek. Wiesenthal needed to see him at his office to get
a pass. The Pole, who was about to lock up, struck him across the face - just
as some camp officials had frequently treated Jews. It hurt Wiesenthal more
than all the blows received from SS men in three years: "Now the war is over,
and the Jews are still being beaten."
... He sought out the American camp command to make a complaint. (Peter
Michael Lingens in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 12)
That is one version, but here is another:
A Polish trusty named Kazimierz Rusinek pounced on Simon for no good reason and
knocked him unconscious. When Wiesenthal woke up, friends had carried him to
his bunk. "What has he got against you?" one of them asked.
"I don't know," Simon said. "Maybe he's angry because I'm still alive."
(Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 69)
These two accounts are so different that one wonders whether they are of the same event. In the
first account Wiesenthal is addressing Rusinek when Rusinek slaps him, while in the second
Rusinek pounces on him, which suggests an ambush. But more important, when you have been
pounced on and knocked unconscious, when you become aware that your friends have carried you to
your bunk only after you have regained consciousness, then you would not ordinarily describe
that as merely having been "struck across the face." Mr. Wiesenthal is a skilled raconteur - in
fact an erstwhile professional stand-up comic - so that it is inconceivable that he would weaken
a story, drain it of its significance, by turning a knock-out into a mere slap. With his
training as a stand-up comic, however, it is conceivable that he would turn a slap into a
knock-out.
Mr. Wiesenthal's stories are cluttered with this sort of self-contradiction. Take, for still
another example, the case of the Bodnar rescue: In Justice Not Vengeance, Bodnar saves only
Wiesenthal, and takes him to his apartment. In The Wiesenthal File, however, Bodnar saves
Wiesenthal together with another prisoner and takes the two to the office of a "commissar" which
office they spend the entire night cleaning.
And on top of outright contradiction, there are a mass of details that fail to ring true. For
example, although many Ukrainians did risk their lives to save Jews, the number who knowingly
gave their lives to save Jews must have been considerably smaller - and yet, as noted above,
that is what Wiesenthal seems to be asking us to believe that Bodnar did. And then too,
Wiesenthal tells us that in the execution which he had just barely escaped, the prisoners were
being shot with each standing beside his own wooden box, and dumped into his own box after he
was shot - where we might have expected the executioners to follow the path of least effort, Mr.
Wiesenthal's account shows them going to the trouble of providing each victim with a makeshift
coffin.
And just how did it come to pass that the executioners stopped before killing Wiesenthal
himself? - According to Simon Wiesenthal, they heard church bells, and being devoutly religious,
stopped to pray. But what an incongruous juxtaposition - Ukrainians at once deeply Christian
and deeply genocidal. If Christianity invited the murder of Jews, then this would make sense,
but in fact - in modern times at least - Christianity has stood against such practices, and more
emphatically so in Ukraine than perhaps anywhere else, as we have already noted above.
But what has Mr. Wiesenthal's inability to come up with a consistent or credible biography got
to do with the quality of his professional denunciations? - The evidence suggests that the two
are equally shoddy. Had 60 Minutes looked into Mr. Wiesenthal's professional background, it
would quickly have found much to wonder at. It would, for one thing, have quickly come across
the case of Frank Walus, The Nazi Who Never Was.
Frank Walus: The Nazi Who Never Was
In 1976 Simon Wiesenthal, in Vienna, had gone public with charges that a Polish
emigre living in Chicago, Frank Walus, had been a collaborator involved in
persecuting Polish Jews, including women and children, as part of a Gestapo-led
auxiliary police unit. Walus, charged Wiesenthal, "performed his duties with
the Gestapo in the ghettos of Czestochowa and Kielce and handed over numerous
Jews to the Gestapo." (Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters,
1988, p. 193)
Walus, in turn, was convicted by judge Julius Hoffman, who
ran the trial with an iron hand and an eccentricity that bordered on the
bizarre. He allowed government witnesses great latitude, while limiting
severely Korenkiewicz's cross-examination of them. When Walus himself
testified, Hoffman limited him almost entirely to simple yes and no answers.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 193)
Despite weaknesses in the prosecution case, Judge Hoffman went on to convict Walus, and later
despite accumulating evidence of Walus's innocence, refused to reconsider his verdict. But
then a formal appeal was filed. The process took almost two years, but in
February 1980, the court ruled. It threw out Hoffman's verdict and ordered
Walus retried. In making the ruling, the court said that it appeared the
government's case against Walus was "weak" but that Hoffman's handling of the
trial had been so biased that it could not evaluate the evidence properly.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
In view of irrefutable documentary and eye-witness evidence that Walus had served as a farm
laborer in Germany during the entire war, he was never re-tried. And what, we may ask, was the
occasion for Simon Wiesenthal's fingering Walus in the first place?
Only later was the source of the "evidence" against Walus that had reached
Simon Wiesenthal identified. Walus had bought a two-family duplex when he came
to Chicago. In the early 1970s, he rented out the second unit to a tenant with
whom he eventually had a fight. Walus evicted the tenant, who then started
telling one and all how his former landlord used to sit around and reminisce
about the atrocities he had committed against Jews in the good old days.
Apparently one of the groups to which he told the story was a Jewish refugee
agency in Chicago, which passed the information along to Simon Wiesenthal.
(Charles Ashman Robert J. Wagman, The Nazi Hunters, 1988, p. 195)
For a statement concerning the Walus case made by Frank Walus himself, please read Frank Walus's
letter to Germany.
The Deschenes Commission
But is the Walus case a single slipup in Simon Wiesenthal's otherwise blemish-free career? No,
other slipups can be found - in one instance a batch of 6,000 others. Simon Wiesenthal kicked
the ball into play with the accusation that Canada harbored "several hundred" war criminals
(Toronto Star, May 19, 1971). The Jewish Defense League caught the ball, found it soft and
inflated it to "maybe 1,000" (Globe and Mail, July 5, 1983) before tossing it to Edward
Greenspan. Edward Greenspan mustered enough hot air to inflate it to 2,000 (Globe and Mail,
November 21, 1983) before tossing it to Sol Littman whose lung capacity was able to raise it to
3,000 (Toronto Star, November 8, 1984). The ball, distended beyond recognition, was tossed back
to Wiesenthal who boldly puffed it up to 6,000 (New York Daily News, May 16, 1986) and then made
the mistake of trying to kick it - but poof! The ball burst!
Judge Jules Deschenes writing the report for Canada's Commission on War Criminals first
certifies that the ball had indeed reached the record-breaking 6,000 Canadian war criminals:
The Commission has ascertained from the New York Daily News that this figure is
correct and is not the result of a printing error. (Jules Deschenes,
Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 247)
But now the big ball was gone, and all that was left was the deflated pigskin which Mr.
Wiesenthal lamely flopped on the Commission's table - a list of 217 names (which in other places
becomes a list of 218 or 219 names). The list was focussed on Ukrainians - Mr. Wiesenthal's
Vienna Documentation Center Annual Report for 1984 claimed that "218 former Ukrainian officers
of Hitler's S.S. (elite guard), which ran death camps in Eastern Europe, are living in Canada."
Upon subjecting the deflated ball to close and prolonged scrutiny, Judge Deschenes, arrived at
the following conclusions:
Between 1971 and 1986, public statements by outside interveners concerning
alleged war criminals residing in Canada have spread increasingly large and
grossly exaggerated figures as to their estimated number ... [among them] the
figure of 6,000 ventured in 1986 by Mr. Simon Wiesenthal.... (p. 249)
The high level reached by some of those figures, together with the wide
discrepancy between them, contributed to create both revulsion and
interrogation. (p. 245)
It was obvious that the list of 217 officers of the Galicia Division furnished
by Mr. Wiesenthal was nearly totally useless and put the Canadian government,
through the RCMP [Royal Canadian Mounted Police] and this Commission, to a
considerable amount of purposeless work. (p. 258)
The Commission has tried repeatedly to obtain the incriminating evidence
allegedly in Mr. Wiesenthal's possession, through various oral and written
communications with Mr. Wiesenthal himself and with his solicitor, Mr. Martin
Mendelsohn of Washington, D.C., but to no avail: telephone calls, letters, even
a meeting in New York between Mr. Wiesenthal and Commission Counsel on 1
November 1985 followed up by further direct communications, have succeeded in
bringing no positive results, outside of promises. (p. 257)
From the conclusions of the Deschenes Commission alone, 60 Minutes might have decided that Simon
Wiesenthal is not the kind of person whose pronouncements may be aired without verification.
Had any Ukrainian come to 60 Minutes carrying such a load of hatred toward Jews as Simon
Wiesenthal carries toward Ukrainians, and displaying - or rather flaunting - such credentials of
unreliability, 60 Minutes would never have given him air time, or if it did, it would be only to
excoriate him. Instead of exposing Mr. Wiesenthal, 60 Minutes has joined him in portraying a
world filled with Nazis, and so has lent support to a witch hunt more hysterical than Joe
McCarthy's sniffing out of Communists in the 50's. Consider the following excerpts from cases
submitted to the Deschenes commission for investigation as suspected Nazi war criminals, and see
if you don't agree. In the Commission report, all of the following cases end with the words,
"On the basis of the foregoing, it is recommended that the file on the subject be closed." The
selection is not intended to be representative, as the overwhelming number of cases are simply
dismissed for lack of evidence - but rather is a sample of cases that upon casual browsing stand
out as being particularly comical, pathetic, or alarming depending upon one's mood. The sample,
furthermore, is far from exhaustive - a vastly greater number of similarly striking cases abound
within the Commission report:
CASE NO. 73. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission by
Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman made no particular allegation against the
subject, but referred to information obtained from a particular individual as
the source of the subject's name. Mr. Littman further indicated that the
subject resided at an unspecified address in Canada and had been the object of
an extradition request by the government of an Eastern European country. No
particulars of this alleged extradition request were provided. ... The
Commission confirmed that an extradition request had not been received by the
Canadian government and that the Berlin Document Center had no record on the
subject.
CASE NO. 121. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Department of the Solicitor
General which, in turn, had received the information from a private citizen.
It was alleged that this individual may have been a doctor who experimented on
concentration camp prisoners. ... The interview established that the
complainant was not in a position to place the subject in a Nazi war camp nor
was she in possession of names of witnesses able to connect the subject with
wartime criminal activities. ... [T]he subject would have been only 15 to 20
years old during the war, hardly an age to have the position suggested above.
CASE NO. 122. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by an anonymous note. The only allegation initially made was that the subject
was a war criminal and was living at a certain address in Canada. ... [T]he
evidence ... indicates the individual has lived all his life in Canada and was
drafted into the Canadian army for a short time in 1942.
CASE NO. 133. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman. It was alleged
that the subject under investigation had been a member of the SS. ... These
investigations revealed that the subject was born in 1933 and would therefore
have been between 6 and 12 years of age during the war.
CASE NO. 156. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman alleged only that the subject had been a
"propagandist for the party." When contacted by the Commission, Mr. Littman
indicated that he had no further evidence or information. ... On the basis of
the foregoing [itemized investigation], no evidence of participation in or
knowledge of specific war crimes is available.
CASE NO. 158. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by a private citizen. The only allegation initially made was that the subject
was a war criminal because he was so wealthy and of German background. ...
The Commission was advised [by several German sources] that it had a record of
the subject which indicated his membership in the Luftwaffe (air force).
CASE NO. 171. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by ... the Jewish Documentation Centre in Vienna. ... According to the year
of birth, this person would have been only five or six years old at the end of
World War II.
CASE NO. 179. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by an anonymous letter. The allegation initially made was that the subject was
the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of the store's
goods. ... The subject is the spouse of the individual who is reported in
Case No. 180. Both were denounced in the same anonymous letter. ... The
Commission checked the shop itself and concluded that the complaint is entirely
spurious and unfounded.
CASE NO. 180. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by an anonymous letter. The only allegation initially made was that the
subject was the owner of a shop who behaved curiously regarding the sources of
the store's goods. ... The Commission also checked the shop itself and
concluded that the complaint is entirely spurious and unfounded.
CASE NO. 190. This family's surname was brought to the attention of the
Commission by Mr. David Matas [chairman of the Jewish National Legal
Committee], whose source of information was an anonymous letter claiming the
family came from a foreign country and deserved investigation because they were
"recluses." There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
against this family.
CASE NO. 202. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
citizen. There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
against this individual, and the information received was irrational. ... The
Commission contacted the wife of the subject, who stated that she did not know
the citizen (who made the allegation) and that her husband never had any
business dealings with a person by that name. The Commission also tried to
locate the complainant but to no avail.
CASE NO. 247. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
citizen. There was no specific allegation of involvement in war crimes made
against the individual. ... The Commission was advised by the German Military
Service Office ... that it had a record of a person with the same name as the
subject, which indicated that he was a pilot in the Allied Air Force and had
been taken prisoner by the Germans.
CASE NO. 269. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
citizen. It was alleged that this individual is a physician whose physical
description resembles that of the notorious war criminal Dr. Mengele. ...
Personal data of the subject taken from various documentation reveal the
following in comparison with the information contained in the Commission file
with respect to Dr. Mengele:
Year of Birth
Height
Weight
Eyes
Face
Chin
Subject
&&&& 1913
6'3"+
195-215 lbs
Blue
Oval (from Photo)
Dr. Mengele
1911
5'8"+
Medium build
Brown
Round
Round
In addition, the picture of the subject appearing in the various documents
received, does not suggest that he resembles Dr. Mengele. All other search
responses were negative.
CASE NO. 431. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was Mr. Sol Littman. Mr. Littman had
forwarded a letter to the RCMP from a private individual. It was alleged in
the letter that the subject under investigation had been in charge of an
unnamed camp and was believed to have shot civilians. ... The Commission
interviewed the individual who submitted the subject's name to Mr. Littman and
was advised that this individual had subsequently determined that the subject
under investigation had been a prisoner of war and further that the complaint
was unfounded.
CASE NO. 433. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was an anonymous informant. The only
allegation made was that the subject was "a possible German involved in war
crimes". No specific allegation or evidence against the subject was provided.
... The Commission reviewed material available from the RCMP and CSIS, which
determined that the subject was born in 1933, and for that reason could not
have been involved in the commission of war crimes between 1939 and 1945.
CASE NO. 526. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the Canadian Jewish Congress, whose source of information was a private
individual. It was alleged that the subject under investigation might be Dr.
Josef Mengele. ... The Department of External Affairs reported that it had a
record in respect of the individual, but that the individual had been born in
1928 in Canada.... ... Furthermore, the subject's name is not one of the
aliases used from time to time by Josef Mengele.
CASE NO. 561. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, whose source of information was the Canadian Jewish Congress. It
was alleged that the subject was responsible for the deaths of "hundreds of
Jews." No specific evidence of the alleged war crimes was provided. ...
Records of the Department of Employment and Immigration ... indicate that the
subject was born in 1941....
CASE NO. 588.1. This individual was brought to the attention of the Commission
by the RCMP, who were investigating the suspicions of the Department of
Employment and Immigration officials that the individual might be older than he
claims and might be hiding a questionable past, which may have involved the
Nazi Party. ... It was verified [through various investigations] that the
subject is indeed who he claims to be and that he was indeed born in 1929. He
was barely 10 years old at the start of the war.
Sol Littman's Mengele Scare
As another piece of evidence that we are in the midst of a witch hunt a witch hunt in which
Simon Wiesenthal plays the role of chief inquisitor - consider Sol Littman's Mengele Scare. On
December 20, 1984, Mr. Littman - Canadian representative of the Simon Wiesenthal Center - wrote
to the Prime Minister of Canada unequivocally affirming that
Mengele, employing the alias of Dr. Joseph Menke, applied to the Canadian
embassy in Buenos Aires for admission to Canada as a landed immigrant in late
May or early June, 1962. (In Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War
Criminals, 1986, p. 67)
Then on January 23, 1985, Ralph Blumenthal wrote an article in the New York Times captioned
"Records indicate Mengele sought Canadian visa":
Other records indicate that Mengele applied to the Canadian Embassy in Buenos
Aires for a Canadian visa in 1962 under a pseudonym and that the Canadians
informed American intelligence officials of this attempt.
This information was widely reprinted and broadcast. Subsequently, both Mr. Blumenthal and Mr.
Littman affirmed that the information in this article concerning Josef Mengele came solely from
Mr. Littman. However, following its thorough investigation, the Commission concluded:
There is no documentary evidence whatsoever of an attempt by Dr. Joseph
Mengele to seek admission to Canada from Buenos Aires in 1962.
The affirmation has come from Mr. Sol Littman, and from him alone. ...
The advice which Littman solicited [in the course of his own research] ...
did not support his assumptions, but put him on notice about their fragility.
As stated at the outset, all that Littman could rely on was "speculation,
impression, possibility, hypothesis". Yet he chose to transmute them into
statements of facts which he publicized....
This is a case where not a shred of evidence has been tendered to support
Mr. Littman's statement to the Prime Minister of Canada on 20 December 1984, or
Mr. Ralph Blumenthal's article in the New York Times on 23 January 1985.
(Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 70)
In view of Sol Littman's irresponsibility in engineering the Mengele Scare, it is not a little
ironic to note that it was this very scare which was the prime cause of the Canadian government
constituting the Jules Deschenes Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals. We see this
demonstrated when the reasons for the Commission being constituted are laid out, and Sol
Littman's Mengele disinformation - at the time accepted as information - appears at the top of
the list:
WHEREAS concern has been expressed about the possibility that Joseph Mengele,
an alleged Nazi war criminal, may have entered or attempted to enter
Canada.... (Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p.
17)
What we see in Sol Littman, then, is a case somewhat paralleling that of Morley Safer - a single
Jew creates a story out of thin air, and gets it disseminated to tens of millions of people
through a Jewish-controlled media which conveniently neglects to verify it prior to
publication. In Littman's case, he goes well beyond dissemination - he further succeeds in
pressuring the Canadian government to waste taxpayer money (always in short supply for education
and health care) on a costly inquiry which turns up just about nothing, and whose only
appreciable benefit is not to the Canadian people, and not even to Jews collectively, but only
to Sol Littman personally - which benefit is the stirring up of Jewish anxiety on the one hand
together with anti-Jewish resentment on the other, both of which are necessary to increasing the
flow of Jewish contributions into Sol Littman's coffers. Sol Littman, in short, is a parasite
upon the Jewish people, preying on the fears of the more gullible of them, essentially playing a
role not unlike that of Stephen King in which the bigger a scare he is able to elicit out of his
audience by means of the fantastic stories he is able to concoct, the greater is his success.
Repeating the same principle in different words, we may say that the more anti-Semitism Sol
Littman is able to provoke, the greater is his success.
How does Sol Littman come to be in the vanguard of the fight to suppress hate on the Internet?
Consider the information on Sol Littman which can be found on The Ukrainian Archive: (1)
Reviewing the sampling higher above of irresponsible denunciations submitted to the Deschenes
Commission, we note that four of them were submitted by Sol Littman, suggesting that in the full
list of denunciations, his contribution would have been substantial. (2) The Sol Littman
Mengele scare immediately above. (3) My 27May98 letter to Demjanjuk persecutor Neal Sher, in
which I present data supporting the conclusion that Neal Sher and Sol Littman are members of a
subculture who lie not only to those who are not members of their subculture, but to each other
as well, thus steeping themselves in untruths. Still more information is available on a web
site unconnected to UKAR devoted exclusively to exposing Sol Littman. Given the present UKAR
disclosure of Sol Littman's irresponsibility, and given the similar disclosure on other sites on
the Internet, as the one cited above, it is little wonder that Sol Littman is today a leading
exponent for society bestowing upon him (and others like him) the power to suppress information
on the Internet when he decides (or they decide) that it expresses "hate." Perhaps a suspicion
that it would be healthy to occasionally entertain is that those who call loudest for the
suppression of information may be those with the most to hide.
Salem's Was Not the Last Witch Hunt
Surely the above data convinces us that many of the horrors that we all despise - that even Mr.
Safer might profess to despise - are being realized as contemporary actualities. Slanderous and
unfounded allegations. Anonymous letters of accusation. Government agencies investigating
people for no other reason than that someone has submitted their names. McCarthyism. A witch
hunt. Individuals accused of having committed war crimes while they were still in diapers. And
instead of standing back from this mass hysteria or exposing it, 60 Minutes has chosen instead
to play a contributory role.
The Deschenes Commission cites 31 newspaper accounts between 1971 and 1986 of Nazi war criminals
residing in Canada, and points out that this list is not exhaustive. Decades of coverage of
such sensational accusations leaves a permanent impression on the minds of the public, while the
Deschenes Commission refutation takes place only once, and does not carry the same lurid
appeal. The net effect is a propaganda victory for the false accusers. 60 Minutes is making
its contribution to this phenomenon - its false accusations in "The Ugly Face of Freedom" were
long and sensational and will be remembered by many, its retraction will be short and dull and
will be remembered by few. 60 Minutes hands Ukrainophobes another victory.
Letters to Simon Wiesenthal
I have written a number of letters to Simon Wiesenthal asking for his clarification on the
issues raised above, and on other issues relating to his credibility and to his calumniation of
Ukraine. These letters can be found by clicking the above link. Other material relating to
Simon Wiesenthal can be found scattered throughout the UKAR site, and can be located using the
Internal Search Engine whose link can be found on the Home Page. One item particularly worth
mentioning might be my sixth letter to Michael Jordan, Chairman of Westinghouse. Following
examination of any of these materials, clicking BACK on your browser will return you to this
location (if your browsing trail has not been too long).
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division
Quality of Translation
Ukrainian Homogeneity
Were Ukrainians Nazis?
Simon Wiesenthal
What Happened in Lviv?
Nazi Propaganda Film
Collective Guilt
Paralysis of the Comparative
Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
What Happened in Lviv?
According to Simon Wiesenthal on the 60 Minutes broadcast, in three days following the
evacuation of the Communist forces and before the arrival of the German troops, Ukrainian police
killed between five and six thousand 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 curious 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, the interviewer - Morley Safer chose to reduce that number
killed to "3,000" and the duration of the killing to two days - but without informing the viewer
on what grounds he did so.
Let us begin our examination of this claim by reviewing the historical context.
Historical Context of the Lviv Pogrom
Eight Years Previously. Although Western Ukraine was spared the induced famine of 1932-1933 in
which some six million Ukrainians perished, Western Ukrainians were nevertheless aware of the
famine in adjacent Soviet Ukraine and aware that it was administered at the top by Lazar
Kaganovich, a Jew, and was supported at the bottom by cadres, many said to be Jewish, who moved
from village to village confiscating grain and livestock.
During the previous 21 months. Western Ukraine was annexed by Soviet forces in 1939 for a
period of 21 months until the Germans arrived in 1941. What was the experience of Western
Ukrainians under Russian communism? It was traumatic. On top of suppression of culture and
confiscation of property, there was terror:
The most widespread and feared measure was deportation. Without warning,
without trial, even without formal accusation, thousands of alleged "enemies of
the people" were arrested, packed into cattle cars, and shipped to Siberia and
Kazakhstan to work as slave laborers under horrible conditions. Many of these
deportees, including entire families, perished. ... According to Metropolitan
Andrei Sheptytsky, the Soviets deported about 400,000 Ukrainians from Galicia
alone. ... West Ukrainians found their first exposure to the Soviet system to
be a generally negative experience and many concluded that "Bolshevik" rule had