Страница:
over the 100,000 Jews and deliver for them afterwards one thousand trucks. And
then the deal will proceed step by step. (Adolph Eichmann, quoted in Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1133-1134)
Eichmann's initiative, according to his testimony in Jerusalem, had been
influenced largely by the propensity of rival SS factions to negotiate with the
Jews. He was going to confine the offer to freeing 100,000 Jews, but then
thought that only a major gesture, involving a million, was going to have any
impact. When Himmler approved the scheme, Eichmann was actually surprised.
(Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1134)
However, Joel Brand, attempting to negotiate this exchange, met with no support, either from
representatives of the Allied nations, or from Jewish representatives. When he realized that
the offer would not be accepted, he burst out with:
Do you know what you are doing? That is simply murder! That is mass murder.
... [O]ur best people will be slaughtered! My wife! My mother! My children
will be first! (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p.
1137)
Among the objections was not that the deal would fail, but rather that it was undesirable that
the deal succeed:
"But Mr. Brand," the British host exclaimed, "what shall I do with those
million Jews? Where shall I put them?" (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1985, P. 1140)
The plain fact was that there was no place on earth that would have been ready
to accept the Jews, not even this one million. (Adolph Eichmann in Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1140)
A similar comment was made with respect to the above-mentioned Antonescu Plan:
The British Foreign Office ... was concerned with the "difficulties of
disposing of any considerable number of Jews" in the event of their release
from Axis Europe. ... [W]ithin the Foreign Office there was fear of large-scale
success.... (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, P.
1140)
And a similar reaction with respect to discussions concerning the rescue of Bulgarian Jews:
Hull raised the question of the 60 or 70 thousand Jews that are in Bulgaria and
are threatened with extermination unless we could get them out and, very
urgently, pressed Eden for an answer to the problem. Eden replied that the
whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult and that we should move
very cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like
Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make
similar efforts in Poland and Germany. Hitler might well take us up on any
such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in
the world to handle them. (Harry Hopkins in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews, 1985, P. 1122)
The role played by Jews in the Allied indifference was, to repeat, one of support of inaction:
There is considerable difference of opinion among the Jewish people as to the
policies which should be pursued in rescuing and assisting these unfortunate
people, and no one course of action would be agreeable to all persons
interested in this problem. (American Secretary of State Hull in Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1125)
The Rudolph Vrba Accusation. The reports above of American Jews and world Jews doing little to
save their coreligionists under Nazi occupation, or of even obstructing efforts to save them, or
reports of the Antonescu Offer, or of the Eichmann offer - these do not exhaust the accounts
leading to the conclusion that the Jewish role in saving Jewish lives during World War II fell
short of heroic, and perhaps was typically complicitous or collaborative, and sometimes even
becoming criminally so. Rather, other such accounts can be found, among them the one offered by
Dr. Rudolph Vrba in the Oshawa Times account below. Vrba's accusation standing by itself falls
short of totally convincing, and would need to be bolstered by substantive detail before it was
given full credit. Nevertheless, Vrba's accusation is reproduced below to demonstrate that the
accusations of Jewish non-assistance focus on many events in many parts of the world, and
because it heightens the probability that further investigation would credit some of these
accusations:
Jewish Council Blamed For Deaths of 400,000
FRANKFURT (AP) - A Canadian professor contends that 400,000 jews killed by
the Nazis at the Auschwitz extermination camp could have been saved had the
Budapest Jewish Council warned them in time instead of co-operating with the
Nazis.
Dr. Rudolph Vrba, 43, associate professor of pharmacology at the University
of British Columbia, in an interview gave an account of his escape from
Auschwitz and his efforts to warn the world of the fate threatening more than
1,000,000 Hungarian Jews.
Vrba testified last Friday at the trial here of two former SS (Elite Corps)
colonels charged with the mass murder of Hungarian jews during the war.
Vrba, a native of Czechoslovakia and a Jew by birth, said he was deported
to Maidanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, in June, 1942, and two
weeks later transferred to Auschwitz.
In the spring of 1944, he heard that 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews were to die
at the notorious camp and decided to flee and tell the world about the crime
that was going to be committed.
Together with another prisoner, he hid in early April, 1944, underneath a
pile of construction wood within the outer security zone of the camp which
usually was not closely guarded.
After spending three days in their hideout with hardly any food the two
family [sic] made their getaway and eventually crossed the Slovak border.
In Cadca, Slovakia, he informed the Jewish Council which in turn passed on
the information to the Bratislava and Budapest Jewish councils, Vrba said.
But, he said "The Budapest Jewish Council were co-operating with the Nazi
authorities who promised them that they would allow some 2,000 select Jews to
travel to Switzerland if they hid from the Jewish community the truth about
what was in store for them at Auschwitz."
Thus, he added, Hungarian Jews did not put up any resistance when they were
taken to the Auschwitz death camp, believing that they were merely being
"resettled."
Vrba continued that only after Swiss newspapers June 22, 1944, published
his story about the Hungarian Jews and copies of his report were sent to U.S.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Pope, protests from several
governments, including the U.S., British and Swedish governments, forced the
Hungarian head of government, Admiral Horthy, to stop the deporting of more
Jews from the country.
Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg but changed his name after escaping from
Auschwitz. (Oshawa Times, December 30, 1968)
Jewish help compared to Ukrainian help. And so here we are faced with the following
incongruity. Ukrainians were dying at the hands of the Nazis, were dying fighting the Nazis,
were dying saving Jews - and yet Morley Safer now brands Ukrainians as Nazis. In contrast,
American Jews were not allowing the Jewish Holocaust to interfere with their lifestyles, were
vetoing proposals to assist and rescue European Jews, and yet they are now privileged to accuse
Ukrainians of being Nazis. People who did next to nothing to save the European Jews, people who
obstructed the rescue of European Jews, people who acted while not under threat of death now
turn around and judge those who while under threat of death did not live up to impossibly high
moral standards.
Appropriately did Reb Moshe Shonfeld place on the title page of his book The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals the quotations "Our enemies will
subjugate you" (Vayikra) - "Those enemies will be from within" (Chazal). Reading Reb Shonfeld's
book invites the conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for Nazi collaborators in Ukraine was
misplaced - perhaps it is the case that the largest repository of unprosecuted Nazi
collaborators today is to be found in the state of Israel; and invites consideration of the
further conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for enemies of Judaism in Ukraine is similarly
misplaced - he might instead have looked for the truly dangerous enemies within - for Jews like
Simon Wiesenthal, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Elie Wiesel, Jerzy Kosinski, and - yes - Morley Safer
himself. Their misstatements lower Jewish credibility; their hatred incites a reactionary
anti-Semitism.
In fact, Morley Safer's accusation of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis is not a cry for
justice nor an advancement of historical truth, but is, rather, a weapon sometimes brandished
under political motivation even when the facts do not justify its use, and at other times
sheathed, also for political reasons, even when the facts cry out for its use. Thus, a
Ukrainian may be prosecuted even though the evidence against him is patently fraudulent, as was
the case in the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk (Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall
of a Show-Trial, 1994). A Jewish Zionist, in contrast, may go unprosecuted for very real
collaboration with the Nazis, though he may be unable to avoid final justice imposed through
individual action:
Moldetsky, a leader of the Zionist Workers Party (Poalei Zion), who was
appointed head of the council of elders in Bedzin, and who, over the course of
years, chose thousands of Jews for forced labor and extermination, succeeded in
remaining alive. For the mass deportations, Moldetsky published a decree which
was completely fraudulent and deceiving, in which he said: "Jews, dress up in
your holiday clothes and march joyfully to the gathering places mentioned
above. No one is to remain at home. ..." The Jews, in their innocence,
obeyed him. The result was that people with large families - as well as the
elderly - a total of 8,000, were sent to Auschwitz. The babies were pushed
into sacks by the Nazis.
...
After the war, Moldetsky - by merit of Zionist activities - was
understandably one of the first to receive an immigration certificate to
Palestine. His collaboration in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews did
not make him unfit in the eyes of the officials of the Jewish Agency, who were
distributing the certificates. He went to Eretz Yisroel where, it has been
reported, the revengeful hand of the Jews of Bedzin killed him while he was
taking a trip in the mountains. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, pp. 122-123)
A related demonstration of how the accusation of Nazi collaboration is not levelled impartially,
but is used as a political weapon can be found in the case of Dr. Israel Kastner.
Comparison 2: Ukrainian Cruelty on Behalf of the Nazis Compared to Jewish Cruelty on Behalf of the
Nazis
Morley Safer states, addressing himself to Simon Wiesenthal: "I get the impression from people
that the actions of the Ukrainians, if anything, were worse than the Germans." What can Mr.
Safer possibly mean by such a statement? Does he mean that he knows of a Ukrainian whose
actions are worse than Hitler's, and another Ukrainian whose actions are worse than Himmler's,
and another whose actions are worse than Eichmann's, and so on down the line? Surely, this is
an impossibility, as Ukraine has never been accused either of starting the Second World War or
of engineering the Final Solution. Surely all that Mr. Safer means is that some Ukrainians can
be found who were worse than the average German, or the average Nazi, or even the average member
of the SS. Agreed - undoubtedly such Ukrainians exist, but what of it? Similar deviants exist
in all groups. Relevant here is that every faithful account of the Jewish Holocaust is peppered
with statements such as the following:
Question survivors of the ghettoes and camps. They all certify that the
beatings they received at the hands of the Jewish 'golden youth' were filled
with scorn. They fulfilled their tasks with a zeal and cruelty to a greater
extent than that required by the German commanders. (Y. Efroiken, Sanctity and
Valor of the Jews, in Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:
Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 21)
He [K. Tzetnik] depicts the figure of Eliezer Greenbaum, son of Yitzchak
Greenbaum, who, thanks to his tactics of acting as informant and displaying
cruelty - to an extent which amazed even the Germans - was elevated to the rank
of the bloc commander. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:
Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 21)
Practically all of the kapo officers were academicians - persons with degrees
who behaved like wild beasts and at times were more cruel than the Nazis. (Reb
Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish
War Criminals, 1977, p. 121)
Is it in the interests of historical truth to allude to the Ukrainian beasts without mentioning
the Jewish beasts? Does the depiction of one without the other constitute information or
disinformation, reporting or propaganda? Who commands such bias in the media? Who pays for
it? These are issues worthy of address by a team of intrepid investigative reporters, should
any be found.
Comparison 3: Ukrainians Saving Jews Compared to Jews Saving Ukrainians
Jews have had many opportunities to save Ukrainians. For example, Jews could have saved
Ukrainians during the induced famine of 1932-33, during which Jews fared better than Ukrainians
for several reasons: (1) Jews tended to be urban whereas the famine tended to be rural; (2) Jews
were more affluent, and money buys food even during a famine; (3) Jews received support from
other Jews in the West; (4) Jews occupied positions of authority, and in fact can be said to
have administered the famine. Thus, Jews had ample opportunity to save Ukrainians simply by
giving them food or by sabotaging the food-confiscation process. Or, in the mass deportations
and executions, during which Jews again occupied positions of authority, there was again ample
opportunity for Jews to subvert the process and hide or save Ukrainians.
We have already seen above innumerable cases of Ukrainians saving Jews, but can we now locate a
single case of a Jew saving a Ukrainian? Simon Wiesenthal, for example, had his life saved by
the Ukrainian Bodnar, but did Simon Wiesenthal ever in his long life reciprocate by saving a
Ukrainian? We saw above that an entire Ukrainian family was shot by the Nazis for hiding a
Jewish woman, but can we find a single instance of an entire Jewish family being shot by the
Bolsheviks for hiding a Ukrainian woman? We saw above that the Ukrainian mayor of a town was
shot by the Nazis for helping Jews, but can we find a single instance of a Jewish mayor - and
there were many Jewish mayors in Ukraine - being shot by the Bolsheviks for helping Ukrainians?
We saw above Metropolitan Sheptytsky risking his life and the lives of other Ukrainians by
hiding Jews on church property, but can we find a single instance of a rabbi risking his life
and the lives of other Jews by hiding Ukrainians on synagogue property? We saw above
Metropolitan Sheptytsky writing to Himmler protesting the shooting of Jews, but can we find any
similar case of a rabbi writing to Lazar Kaganovich protesting the starvation of Ukrainians?
One would like to see a statement from Morley Safer as to the justification for this double
standard. When the most rudimentary and obvious comparisons indicate that Ukrainians have been
disposed to Jews much more favorably than Jews have been disposed to Ukrainians, how can Morley
Safer justify concluding the opposite?
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
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
60 Minutes peppered its broadcast with distortions and misrepresentations. Here are nineteen
miscellaneous instances:
(1) Doctoring the sound track to bring out the evil of torchlight parades. The torchlight
marchers are not a clear indication of anything, and without some enhancement, the scene would
have fallen flat, and so 60 Minutes overlaid an exaggerated, rhythmic tramping sound which added
an ominous militaristic flavor to the scene. In fact, given that it is dark and there is no
band and the marchers are not singing, it is impossible for any but local groups of them to keep
in step, and simple leather-soled or rubber-soled shoes could not have made such a sound - it
would have taken cleated boots. The rhythmic tramping superimposed by 60 Minutes continues to
be heard even when the paraders can be seen to be walking more than marching. One can see that
the added sound effects are only imperfectly coordinated with the movements of the feet.
(2) "Adolph Hitler Square". "The place they're marching in was once called Adolph Hitler
Square," Mr. Safer tells us, but does not add that it was so called by the Germans and that it
was not called that either before the Germans came or after they left.
(3) Gratuitous accusation of mimicking. Mr. Safer informs us of the marchers that "Their chants
and banners mimic another more fearsome time."
But this is absolutely gratuitous - neither the chants nor the banners are mimicking anything.
The marchers are not wearing swastika armbands and their banners do not contain Nazi symbols.
They are not chanting "Death to the Jews!" but only "Slava natsiyi!" which means "Glory to the
nation!" and is about as ominous in Ukrainian as "Vive la patrie!" is in French.
Mr. Safer's syllogism here seems to be: The Nazis sometimes held torchlight parades. These
Ukrainians are holding a torchlight parade. Therefore, all Ukrainians are Nazis.
(4) If it sounds like "Nazi," then it must be "Nazi." 60 Minutes broadcast the above-mentioned
"Slava natsiyi!" several times, but never provided a translation. But as "natsiyi" sounds like
"Nazi," this invites the listener who does not know any Slavic languages to think that something
is being said about Naziism, and the context supplied by Morley Safer suggests that this
something is complimentary.
(5) The menace of boy scouts and girl guides. Desperate for any images that to a gullible 60
Minutes audience might be suggestive of undying Naziism within Ukraine, Morley Safer presents
film clips of Ukrainian boy scouts and girl guides.
(6) Censorship through muted translation. When a Ukrainian in Lviv says "A Russian shot my
brother!" 60 Minutes mutes the English translation to the point that it is almost inaudible.
The critical viewer is left wondering whether the operating principle might not be that when a
Ukrainian says something that might win sympathy for Ukrainians, omit it; in the case where the
image has some overriding appeal (that was a pretty craggy Ukrainian, he was pretty excited, and
the lighting was wonderful), then mute the translation to the point of inaudibility.
Furthermore, in the 60 Minutes transcript of The Ugly Face of Freedom, the statement "A Russian
shot my brother!" is entirely omitted, one might imagine following this same principle of
avoiding attracting sympathy to Ukrainians.
(7) Who welcomed the Germans? Mr. Safer says that "The same square greeted Hitler's troops
fifty years ago as liberators," making this seem like another symptom of a Ukrainian addiction
to Naziism.
Of course we understand that it was not the square which greeted Hitler's troops at all, but
rather people in the square, and it was smart on Mr. Safer's part not to draw attention to the
people, because there might follow the natural question of "What people?" and the honest answer
would have to be "All people - Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews." Jews welcomed Hitler's troops?
Yes, so it would appear:
The prevailing conviction [was] that bad things came from Russia and good
things from Germany. The Jews were historically oriented away from Russia and
toward Germany; not Russia but Germany had been their traditional place of
refuge. During October and November, 1939, that conviction, among other
things, drove thousands of Jews from Russian-occupied Poland to German-occupied
Poland. The stream was not stopped until the Germans closed the border.
Similarly, one year later, at the time of Soviet mass deportations in the newly
occupied territories, [there was] widespread unrest among Ukrainians, Poles,
and Jews alike. Almost everyone was waiting for the arrival of the German
army. When the army finally arrived, in the summer of 1941, old Jews in
particular remembered that in the First World War the Germans had come as
quasi-liberators. These Jews did not expect that now the Germans would come as
persecutors and killers. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews,
1961, p. 206)
Upon experiencing the impulse to blame Ukrainians for welcoming the Germans, the impartial
journalist might recognize that all groups had been traumatized by their exposure to Communism,
and all hoped for relief from the Germans.
(8) Chief Rabbi of Ukraine. Although Rabbi Bleich is introduced by 60 Minutes as the "Chief
Rabbi for the Ukraine," he is in fact an American from Brooklyn, New York, perhaps unqualified
to hold such an exulted title for several reasons: (1) Rabbi Bleich is a Hasidic Jew, and so
perhaps not authorized to speak for other Jewish sects. (2) Rabbi Bleich is newly-arrived in
Ukraine carrying his full load of American-engendered prejudices, and seemingly unaware of the
history of Ukraine, or even of the contemporary situation of Jews in Ukraine. (3) Rabbi Bleich,
as of the date of the 60 Minutes broadcast, spoke some Russian, but negligible Ukrainian. Some
Ukrainians might think that one prerequisite for the post of "Chief Rabbi of Ukraine" would be
fluency in Ukrainian.
The title of "Chief Rabbi of Ukraine," then, may be viewed as being self-proclaimed and
presumptuous, and as carrying no standing within Ukraine or anywhere else. In crediting the
title, Morley Safer was just blowing up Rabbi Bleich's credentials to give his words more
weight.
(9) An observation or a hypothetical case? Rabbi Bleich is shown saying, "Obviously, if someone
- you know? - screams 'Let's drown the Russians in Jewish blood!' there isn't too much love lost
there."
Yes, if anyone did scream such a thing, we might safely infer that the screamer was motivated by
a hatred of both Russians and Jews (even though we wouldn't be able to conclude much about
anybody other than the screamer). But in fact Rabbi Bleich does not claim that anybody ever did
scream such a thing. The 60 Minutes viewer is left with the impression that Rabbi Bleich was
reporting something that he witnessed, but his wording commits him to nothing more than
contemplating a hypothetical case.
(10) Lenin's Jewish ancestors. After interviewing the editor of Lviv's daily For a Free
Ukraine, 60 Minutes cuts to Rabbi Bleich saying "There's an article that came out just two weeks
ago where they tried to prove that Lenin was really Jewish...." The impression created is that
this article was published in For a Free Ukraine, and that For a Free Ukraine is a major
newspaper in Western Ukraine's major city.
In fact, however, "there's an article that came out" does not precisely inform us where the
article was published. Perhaps it was published in Ukraine's equivalent of a supermarket
tabloid. Perhaps it wasn't published at all, but only circulated in pamphlets. Perhaps it's
just a rumor and nobody can produce such an article. But even if published in For a Free
Ukraine - so what?
A higher standard of journalism than that exhibited by 60 Minutes would have reported who was
the author of this article, what position he holds in Ukrainian society, how good were his data
and his arguments, where was the article published, about how many people may have read it, does
anyone believe it, does it alter anybody's attitudes toward contemporary Jews even if they do
believe it? - But of course such questions weren't answered, and we are left able to conclude no
more than that Rabbi Bleich wishes us to believe in the existence of a virulent Ukrainian
anti-Semitism.
The Bleich statement is representative of a large number of statements in which events are
referred to obliquely, indirectly, vaguely - and on this basis, the viewer is invited to jump to
some strong conclusion. "I get the impression from people...." says Mr. Safer. Now there's a
lazy substitute for investigative reporting! What people? Why can't we see these people for
ourselves? Perhaps they are just a couple of cronies of Mr. Safer's whose company he prizes
because they are as bigoted as himself. And what do we care what one or two of Mr. Safer's
friends think? 60 Minutes should show its viewers the data on which these people are basing
their conclusions and let the viewers draw their own conclusions. But this is not what 60
Minutes did - its broadcast was short on data and long on instructions on how to feel.
(11) Morley Safer, genetic theorist. Mr. Safer tells us that "The Church and Government of
Ukraine have tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that ... Ukrainians, despite the
allegations, are not genetically anti-Semitic."
Here we see a new escalation in the level of irrationality with Mr. Safer now divulging to us
the existence of the allegation that Ukrainians are genetically anti-Semitic. For an
anti-Semitism which Mr. Safer failed to document, he now suggests a cause from the fairyland of
pseudoscience, and suggests furthermore that the Church and Government of Ukraine have dignified
this charge by denying it. That Ukrainians are pronouncedly anti-Semitic, Mr. Safer takes as a
given requiring no corroborative evidence, and so he shifts attention to speculating as to how
they could have gotten that way.
Perhaps Morley Safer will appreciate how bizarre and inflammatory his statement is when its
direction is reversed: "The World Jewish Congress has tried to ease the growth of
anti-Semitism, suggesting that Jews, despite the allegations, are not genetically predisposed to
usury." Now if Mr. Safer had heard that on Ukrainian television, he could have brought it back
as very good evidence not only of Ukrainian anti-Semitism, but of Ukrainian irrationality as
well - but he didn't hear any such thing during his visit to Ukraine, and he brought back
nothing. To encounter that degree of hatred and that level of irrationality, you have to leave
Ukraine for the United States and tune in to 60 Minutes.
(12) Church of Ukraine. But even while rebutting Mr. Safer's main point, I have been carelessly
adopting his slovenly terminology. "Church of Ukraine"? What "Church of Ukraine"? There is no
"Church of Ukraine" any more than there is a "Church of Canada" or a "Church of the United
States." Ukraine has more than one variety of Orthodox church, more than one variety of
Catholic church, more than one variety of Protestant church; and Ukraine has as well a full
slate of non-Christian religions. It even has agnostics and atheists just like a real
country.
Thus it is not only in his big lies, but also in his small misstatements that Mr. Safer reveals
to us that his perception of Ukraine is uninformed, indeed wholly stereotypical. To him,
perhaps all Ukrainians conform to some archetypal image - wielding a saber, hard-drinking,
pogrom-prone, and Christian (to the question "What kind of Christian?" we almost expect Mr.
Safer to ask "You mean Ukraine has more than one kind?"). And so when Mr. Safer speaks, he does
not report what he has recently observed in Ukraine, but rather reads off from his internal
image. He goes to Ukraine not to study it, not to report on its reality, but merely to provide
a backdrop for the proclamation of his own preconceptions, of his own prejudices so deeply
rooted that confirmation scarcely seems necessary, of his own stereotypes so apparently
unchallengeable that the anticipation that they might be in error does not enter consciousness.
(13) Peasants with nuclear weapons. Mr. Safer states: "Uneducated peasants, deeply
superstitious, in possession of this bizarre anomaly: nuclear weapons capable of mass
destruction thousands of miles away!"
This is one piece of information that I did find both newsworthy and disquieting. Although it
requires us to lay aside data indicating that American education is inferior to Ukrainian, we
cannot but be persuaded that the farmers shown in the broadcast were indeed both uneducated and
deeply superstitious - one look at their weatherbeaten faces and deep wrinkles and I was
convinced.
The information is so alarming and the threat to world stability so great that I expect Mr.
Safer must have immediately telegraphed President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine to inform him that
the uneducated and deeply superstitious peasants had seized control of Ukraine's nuclear
weapons, and to urge him to recapture the weapons and place them back under the control of the
educated and less-deeply-superstitious peasants.
Who can argue with Mr. Safer's syllogism here? - Old and wrinkled people are uneducated and
deeply superstitious. Here is an old and wrinkled person who may or may not be Ukrainian.
Therefore, it is dangerous for Ukraine to have nuclear weapons. Out of respect for Mr. Safer's
personal vulnerability, I will refrain from demonstrating the retargetability of this syllogism.
But to be fair to Mr. Safer, he did not really say that the peasants were in possession of the
nuclear weapons - what he actually said was that they were in possession of an anomaly. This is
an unfamiliar concept, and I cannot get my mind around it - what does it mean to say that
someone is in possession of an anomaly? Perhaps what it means in this case is simply this
that Mr. Safer sensed that even the uncritical 60 Minutes viewer at whom he was aiming his story
wasn't going to believe that the Ukrainian peasants had gotten control of the nuclear weapons,
and so the thing to do was to speak gobbledygook - to suggest that they did but without actually
saying it.
(14) Why leave Ukraine? Mr. Safer suggests that the explanation of Jewish emigration from
Ukraine is anti-Semitism: "The [anti-Semitic] message is clear to Lvov's Jews. They're leaving
as quickly as they can get exit permits."
I can think of an alternative interpretation. It is that given the catastrophic and
deteriorating economic situation in Ukraine, practically everybody in the country wants to
leave, but it is disproportionately Jews who can afford to and who are allowed to. Anybody who
is emigrating from Ukraine today is, in comparison to the average Ukrainian, both wealthy and
influential. Iosef Zissels, co-president of the Association of Jewish Organizations and
Communities of Ukraine as well as co-president of Va'ad (Confederation of Jewish Communities of
the Former Soviet Union) has stated that: "Many Jews are emigrating from Ukraine, not because of
anti-Semitism, but because of the unstable situation in Ukraine. They see instability in
Ukraine, as well as in all the former republics of the Soviet Union, as lasting a long time"
(Ukrainian Weekly, January 26, 1992).
(15) Symon Petliura. Mr. Safer tells us that "Street names have been changed. There is now a
Petliura Street. To Ukrainians, Symon Petliura was a great General, but to Jews, he's the man
who slaughtered 60,000 Jews in 1919."
But that is not what happened and it is irresponsible to broadcast such an accusation.
Of course here as elsewhere, the 60 Minutes numbers may be somewhat inflated - Orest Subtelny
gives us a more moderate range of 35,000 to 50,000 Jewish fatalities (Ukraine: A History, 1994,
p. 363), though even the lower bound of 35,000 is still a horrendous number. The main point,
though, is that in 1919, Ukraine was in a state of civil war. Two Russian armies - the
Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White army - were rampaging through the country, and
both were killing Jews. The White Army, in particular, had an official policy of killing Jews,
proceeded to do so in an organized and methodical manner, and can be credited with the majority
of the victims:
The Ukrainian pogroms differed from those of the Whites in two ways: in
contrast to the premeditated, systematic undertakings of the Russians, they
were spontaneous outbursts of demoralized and often drunken irregulars, and
they were committed against the express orders of the high command. Unlike the
White Russian generals such as Anton Denikin, the Ukrainian socialists,
especially the Social Democratic party to which Petliura belonged, had a long
tradition of friendly relations with Jewish political activists. Therefore,
the Directory renewed Jewish personal-cultural autonomy, attracted prominent
Jews such as Arnold Margolin and Solomon Goldelman into its government,
appropriated large amounts of money for pogrom victims, and even negotiated
with the famous Zionist leader Vladimir Zhabotinsky about the inclusion of
Jewish police units into its army.
But while Petliura's attitudes towards the Jews might have been
well-intentioned, he was unable to control the otamany (the court-martial and
subsequent execution of Semesenko and other partisan leaders did not improve
the situation), and their dreadful deeds were associated with his government.
And because many Jews considered themselves to be Russians, they found it
easier to lay all the blame for the pogroms on Petliura and the Ukrainians
rather than on Denikin and his Russian generals. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A
History, 1994, pp. 363-364).
The Jewish accusation against Petliura is that maybe he could have done more to prevent the
pogroms. Well, maybe and maybe not. In any case, it is not fair for 60 Minutes to describe a
man who implemented vigorous measures to protect Jewish interests and to stop the pogroms - but
maybe could have done more - as "the man who slaughtered 60,000 Jews." Further insight into
Symon Petliura's attitudes may be gleaned from the Petliura page on the Ukrainian Archive.
(16) Blessing the SS. Mr. Safer informs us that "for this reunion [of Galicia Division veterans
in Lviv recently], Cardinal Lubachivsky, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, gave his
blessing, just as a predecessor did to the SS more than 50 years ago." The blessing of this predecessor was likely the blessing of Bishop Kotsylovskyi and was a blessing of the Galicia
Division, which as we have seen above was not quite the same thing as the German SS.
(17) The immaturity of blaming others. Mr. Safer tells us that "Western Ukraine also has a
long, dark history of blaming its poverty, its troubles, on others." Of course, no evidence of
any unusual tendency to blame others is provided - but then the sharing of hatred such as Mr.
Safer's is not an evidentiary matter, but is rather the warm feeling you get when you pass along
a stereotype and your partners in hatred accept the stereotype without asking for evidence.
But we may ask Mr. Safer just what it was that he might have had in mind. Perhaps it was the
Ukrainian Holocaust that Ukraine should accept as its own fault and stop blaming others for?
Perhaps it was the devastation wrought during the Second World War that Ukraine should start
accepting as its own fault? Or maybe it was the eight decades of Moscow's strangulation of
Ukraine's economy that Ukraine has really no one to blame for but itself? Ukraine has so many
such calamities to choose from that it is impossible to guess - perhaps Mr. Safer would be kind
enough to simply tell us precisely which of them he thinks it is that Ukraine should be mature
enough to accept responsibility for having brought upon itself.
(18) Dividing Ukraine. 60 Minutes gave the impression that its story focussed solely on Western
Ukraine, when in fact a portion of it came from Central Ukraine. Rabbi Bleich's full title, for
example, is not "Chief Rabbi for the Ukraine," but rather "Rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine," (where
Kiev is in central Ukraine) and although 60 Minutes gave the impression that he was interviewed
in Lviv, he was in reality interviewed in Kiev. Similarly, while Mr. Safer was in the middle of
interviewing representatives of the Ukrainian Catholic church in Lviv and was saying "The
Cardinal's deputy, Monsignor Dacko, denies traditional anti-Semitism in the Ukraine....", the
viewer was being shown St. Volodymyr's cathedral which unlike Monsignor Dacko was in Kiev and
which unlike Monsignor Dacko is Orthodox rather than Catholic. I suppose that 60 Minutes
committed itself to the scene-setting introduction "... and the West, where we go tonight ...",
and then suppressed the Kiev origin of some of its material so as to give the story the
appearance of having a consistent locale; and perhaps as well 60 Minutes wished to restrict its
smearing to Western Ukrainians so as to promote divisions within the country.
(19) Freedom from slavery is too much freedom (for Ukrainians, anyway). The title of the 60
Minutes broadcast, "The Ugly Face of Freedom" is puzzling. The freedom being referred to must
be the freedom from Russian rule, and so the title suggests that Ukraine would be better off
back within the Russian empire.
But Morley Safer's suggestion is inappropriate for three reasons. First, anti-Semitism is
strong in Russia and weak in Ukraine (Ukraine has no counterpart of either Pamyat or
Zhirinovksy), and so it is unclear how falling back under Russian rule would assist Ukraine in
avoiding anti-Semitism. Second, Ukraine's current problems are more rationally seen as being
the result not of too much freedom, but of too little - specifically, Ukraine's problems are the
result of continuing to be ruled by the old Communist nomenklatura that had originally been
appointed from Moscow and that presently is robbing the country blind while obstructing economic
reform. A weak economy, in turn, affects Ukrainian-Jewish relations by inviting scapegoating
from each group against the other and by promoting Jewish emigration out of Ukraine. Thus, it
is not too much freedom, but rather the absence of freedom from rule by Moscow's appointees that
most stands in the way of good Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Third, it is surprising to hear an
American objecting to freedom from slavery. Some 60 Minutes viewers will notice that Mr. Safer
objects to it on behalf of other people and not on behalf of Americans. I expect that if anyone
were to argue that American anti-Semitism or America's low quality of education or America's
high crime rate is the result of America having broken away from England, Mr. Safer would not
agree. I expect also that if England had been guilty of the horrific crimes against America
that Russia has been guilty of against Ukraine, Mr. Safer would find the suggestion odious. In
fact, Mr. Safer's suggestion is as odious to Ukrainians as would be the suggestion that Israel
would be better off under German rule would be odious to Jews. No, Mr. Safer's suggestion is
more odious - this because Berlin today is not ruled by former Nazis, whereas Moscow today is
ruled by people who just a few years ago were ardent Communists and who today continue to be
ardent imperialists.
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
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Is there any? Of course there is. Anti-Semitism is universal. Ukraine has some, just as does
the United States or Canada or Israel. But is there more anti-Semitism in Ukraine than
elsewhere? 60 Minutes said so - as much as said that Ukraine leads the world in anti-Semitism
but failed to provide any evidence of this, and in fact does not seem to be aware of how to go
about obtaining such evidence.
The American Jewish Committee did a better job - it sponsored a survey in 1992 about attitudes
toward Jews in the republics of the former Soviet Union, and its findings do not support 60
Minutes' allegations:
Based on the total of anti-Jewish responses to items appearing in the
questionnaire, the rank order of the states from most hostile to least hostile
toward Jews in 1992 is as follows: Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania,
Azerbaijan, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Moldova and Estonia. (Ukrainian Weekly,
June 21, 1992, p. 6)
Worthy of note, too, is that between 1990 and 1992, attitudes toward Jews became more negative
in all of the above republics, with the exception of Ukraine and Moldova, in which two republics
the attitudes became more positive. The failure of Ukraine to rank high on anti-Jewish
responses in this survey should have been noted by 60 Minutes, as should the improvement in
attitudes from 1990 to 1992. Instead of applauding the reality of favorable Ukrainian attitudes
then the deal will proceed step by step. (Adolph Eichmann, quoted in Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1133-1134)
Eichmann's initiative, according to his testimony in Jerusalem, had been
influenced largely by the propensity of rival SS factions to negotiate with the
Jews. He was going to confine the offer to freeing 100,000 Jews, but then
thought that only a major gesture, involving a million, was going to have any
impact. When Himmler approved the scheme, Eichmann was actually surprised.
(Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1134)
However, Joel Brand, attempting to negotiate this exchange, met with no support, either from
representatives of the Allied nations, or from Jewish representatives. When he realized that
the offer would not be accepted, he burst out with:
Do you know what you are doing? That is simply murder! That is mass murder.
... [O]ur best people will be slaughtered! My wife! My mother! My children
will be first! (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p.
1137)
Among the objections was not that the deal would fail, but rather that it was undesirable that
the deal succeed:
"But Mr. Brand," the British host exclaimed, "what shall I do with those
million Jews? Where shall I put them?" (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1985, P. 1140)
The plain fact was that there was no place on earth that would have been ready
to accept the Jews, not even this one million. (Adolph Eichmann in Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1140)
A similar comment was made with respect to the above-mentioned Antonescu Plan:
The British Foreign Office ... was concerned with the "difficulties of
disposing of any considerable number of Jews" in the event of their release
from Axis Europe. ... [W]ithin the Foreign Office there was fear of large-scale
success.... (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, P.
1140)
And a similar reaction with respect to discussions concerning the rescue of Bulgarian Jews:
Hull raised the question of the 60 or 70 thousand Jews that are in Bulgaria and
are threatened with extermination unless we could get them out and, very
urgently, pressed Eden for an answer to the problem. Eden replied that the
whole problem of the Jews in Europe is very difficult and that we should move
very cautiously about offering to take all Jews out of a country like
Bulgaria. If we do that, then the Jews of the world will be wanting us to make
similar efforts in Poland and Germany. Hitler might well take us up on any
such offer and there simply are not enough ships and means of transportation in
the world to handle them. (Harry Hopkins in Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews, 1985, P. 1122)
The role played by Jews in the Allied indifference was, to repeat, one of support of inaction:
There is considerable difference of opinion among the Jewish people as to the
policies which should be pursued in rescuing and assisting these unfortunate
people, and no one course of action would be agreeable to all persons
interested in this problem. (American Secretary of State Hull in Raul Hilberg,
The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 1125)
The Rudolph Vrba Accusation. The reports above of American Jews and world Jews doing little to
save their coreligionists under Nazi occupation, or of even obstructing efforts to save them, or
reports of the Antonescu Offer, or of the Eichmann offer - these do not exhaust the accounts
leading to the conclusion that the Jewish role in saving Jewish lives during World War II fell
short of heroic, and perhaps was typically complicitous or collaborative, and sometimes even
becoming criminally so. Rather, other such accounts can be found, among them the one offered by
Dr. Rudolph Vrba in the Oshawa Times account below. Vrba's accusation standing by itself falls
short of totally convincing, and would need to be bolstered by substantive detail before it was
given full credit. Nevertheless, Vrba's accusation is reproduced below to demonstrate that the
accusations of Jewish non-assistance focus on many events in many parts of the world, and
because it heightens the probability that further investigation would credit some of these
accusations:
Jewish Council Blamed For Deaths of 400,000
FRANKFURT (AP) - A Canadian professor contends that 400,000 jews killed by
the Nazis at the Auschwitz extermination camp could have been saved had the
Budapest Jewish Council warned them in time instead of co-operating with the
Nazis.
Dr. Rudolph Vrba, 43, associate professor of pharmacology at the University
of British Columbia, in an interview gave an account of his escape from
Auschwitz and his efforts to warn the world of the fate threatening more than
1,000,000 Hungarian Jews.
Vrba testified last Friday at the trial here of two former SS (Elite Corps)
colonels charged with the mass murder of Hungarian jews during the war.
Vrba, a native of Czechoslovakia and a Jew by birth, said he was deported
to Maidanek concentration camp near Lublin, Poland, in June, 1942, and two
weeks later transferred to Auschwitz.
In the spring of 1944, he heard that 1,000,000 Hungarian Jews were to die
at the notorious camp and decided to flee and tell the world about the crime
that was going to be committed.
Together with another prisoner, he hid in early April, 1944, underneath a
pile of construction wood within the outer security zone of the camp which
usually was not closely guarded.
After spending three days in their hideout with hardly any food the two
family [sic] made their getaway and eventually crossed the Slovak border.
In Cadca, Slovakia, he informed the Jewish Council which in turn passed on
the information to the Bratislava and Budapest Jewish councils, Vrba said.
But, he said "The Budapest Jewish Council were co-operating with the Nazi
authorities who promised them that they would allow some 2,000 select Jews to
travel to Switzerland if they hid from the Jewish community the truth about
what was in store for them at Auschwitz."
Thus, he added, Hungarian Jews did not put up any resistance when they were
taken to the Auschwitz death camp, believing that they were merely being
"resettled."
Vrba continued that only after Swiss newspapers June 22, 1944, published
his story about the Hungarian Jews and copies of his report were sent to U.S.
President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Pope, protests from several
governments, including the U.S., British and Swedish governments, forced the
Hungarian head of government, Admiral Horthy, to stop the deporting of more
Jews from the country.
Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg but changed his name after escaping from
Auschwitz. (Oshawa Times, December 30, 1968)
Jewish help compared to Ukrainian help. And so here we are faced with the following
incongruity. Ukrainians were dying at the hands of the Nazis, were dying fighting the Nazis,
were dying saving Jews - and yet Morley Safer now brands Ukrainians as Nazis. In contrast,
American Jews were not allowing the Jewish Holocaust to interfere with their lifestyles, were
vetoing proposals to assist and rescue European Jews, and yet they are now privileged to accuse
Ukrainians of being Nazis. People who did next to nothing to save the European Jews, people who
obstructed the rescue of European Jews, people who acted while not under threat of death now
turn around and judge those who while under threat of death did not live up to impossibly high
moral standards.
Appropriately did Reb Moshe Shonfeld place on the title page of his book The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals the quotations "Our enemies will
subjugate you" (Vayikra) - "Those enemies will be from within" (Chazal). Reading Reb Shonfeld's
book invites the conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for Nazi collaborators in Ukraine was
misplaced - perhaps it is the case that the largest repository of unprosecuted Nazi
collaborators today is to be found in the state of Israel; and invites consideration of the
further conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for enemies of Judaism in Ukraine is similarly
misplaced - he might instead have looked for the truly dangerous enemies within - for Jews like
Simon Wiesenthal, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Elie Wiesel, Jerzy Kosinski, and - yes - Morley Safer
himself. Their misstatements lower Jewish credibility; their hatred incites a reactionary
anti-Semitism.
In fact, Morley Safer's accusation of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis is not a cry for
justice nor an advancement of historical truth, but is, rather, a weapon sometimes brandished
under political motivation even when the facts do not justify its use, and at other times
sheathed, also for political reasons, even when the facts cry out for its use. Thus, a
Ukrainian may be prosecuted even though the evidence against him is patently fraudulent, as was
the case in the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk (Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall
of a Show-Trial, 1994). A Jewish Zionist, in contrast, may go unprosecuted for very real
collaboration with the Nazis, though he may be unable to avoid final justice imposed through
individual action:
Moldetsky, a leader of the Zionist Workers Party (Poalei Zion), who was
appointed head of the council of elders in Bedzin, and who, over the course of
years, chose thousands of Jews for forced labor and extermination, succeeded in
remaining alive. For the mass deportations, Moldetsky published a decree which
was completely fraudulent and deceiving, in which he said: "Jews, dress up in
your holiday clothes and march joyfully to the gathering places mentioned
above. No one is to remain at home. ..." The Jews, in their innocence,
obeyed him. The result was that people with large families - as well as the
elderly - a total of 8,000, were sent to Auschwitz. The babies were pushed
into sacks by the Nazis.
...
After the war, Moldetsky - by merit of Zionist activities - was
understandably one of the first to receive an immigration certificate to
Palestine. His collaboration in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews did
not make him unfit in the eyes of the officials of the Jewish Agency, who were
distributing the certificates. He went to Eretz Yisroel where, it has been
reported, the revengeful hand of the Jews of Bedzin killed him while he was
taking a trip in the mountains. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, pp. 122-123)
A related demonstration of how the accusation of Nazi collaboration is not levelled impartially,
but is used as a political weapon can be found in the case of Dr. Israel Kastner.
Comparison 2: Ukrainian Cruelty on Behalf of the Nazis Compared to Jewish Cruelty on Behalf of the
Nazis
Morley Safer states, addressing himself to Simon Wiesenthal: "I get the impression from people
that the actions of the Ukrainians, if anything, were worse than the Germans." What can Mr.
Safer possibly mean by such a statement? Does he mean that he knows of a Ukrainian whose
actions are worse than Hitler's, and another Ukrainian whose actions are worse than Himmler's,
and another whose actions are worse than Eichmann's, and so on down the line? Surely, this is
an impossibility, as Ukraine has never been accused either of starting the Second World War or
of engineering the Final Solution. Surely all that Mr. Safer means is that some Ukrainians can
be found who were worse than the average German, or the average Nazi, or even the average member
of the SS. Agreed - undoubtedly such Ukrainians exist, but what of it? Similar deviants exist
in all groups. Relevant here is that every faithful account of the Jewish Holocaust is peppered
with statements such as the following:
Question survivors of the ghettoes and camps. They all certify that the
beatings they received at the hands of the Jewish 'golden youth' were filled
with scorn. They fulfilled their tasks with a zeal and cruelty to a greater
extent than that required by the German commanders. (Y. Efroiken, Sanctity and
Valor of the Jews, in Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:
Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 21)
He [K. Tzetnik] depicts the figure of Eliezer Greenbaum, son of Yitzchak
Greenbaum, who, thanks to his tactics of acting as informant and displaying
cruelty - to an extent which amazed even the Germans - was elevated to the rank
of the bloc commander. (Reb Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse:
Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals, 1977, p. 21)
Practically all of the kapo officers were academicians - persons with degrees
who behaved like wild beasts and at times were more cruel than the Nazis. (Reb
Moshe Shonfeld, The Holocaust Victims Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish
War Criminals, 1977, p. 121)
Is it in the interests of historical truth to allude to the Ukrainian beasts without mentioning
the Jewish beasts? Does the depiction of one without the other constitute information or
disinformation, reporting or propaganda? Who commands such bias in the media? Who pays for
it? These are issues worthy of address by a team of intrepid investigative reporters, should
any be found.
Comparison 3: Ukrainians Saving Jews Compared to Jews Saving Ukrainians
Jews have had many opportunities to save Ukrainians. For example, Jews could have saved
Ukrainians during the induced famine of 1932-33, during which Jews fared better than Ukrainians
for several reasons: (1) Jews tended to be urban whereas the famine tended to be rural; (2) Jews
were more affluent, and money buys food even during a famine; (3) Jews received support from
other Jews in the West; (4) Jews occupied positions of authority, and in fact can be said to
have administered the famine. Thus, Jews had ample opportunity to save Ukrainians simply by
giving them food or by sabotaging the food-confiscation process. Or, in the mass deportations
and executions, during which Jews again occupied positions of authority, there was again ample
opportunity for Jews to subvert the process and hide or save Ukrainians.
We have already seen above innumerable cases of Ukrainians saving Jews, but can we now locate a
single case of a Jew saving a Ukrainian? Simon Wiesenthal, for example, had his life saved by
the Ukrainian Bodnar, but did Simon Wiesenthal ever in his long life reciprocate by saving a
Ukrainian? We saw above that an entire Ukrainian family was shot by the Nazis for hiding a
Jewish woman, but can we find a single instance of an entire Jewish family being shot by the
Bolsheviks for hiding a Ukrainian woman? We saw above that the Ukrainian mayor of a town was
shot by the Nazis for helping Jews, but can we find a single instance of a Jewish mayor - and
there were many Jewish mayors in Ukraine - being shot by the Bolsheviks for helping Ukrainians?
We saw above Metropolitan Sheptytsky risking his life and the lives of other Ukrainians by
hiding Jews on church property, but can we find a single instance of a rabbi risking his life
and the lives of other Jews by hiding Ukrainians on synagogue property? We saw above
Metropolitan Sheptytsky writing to Himmler protesting the shooting of Jews, but can we find any
similar case of a rabbi writing to Lazar Kaganovich protesting the starvation of Ukrainians?
One would like to see a statement from Morley Safer as to the justification for this double
standard. When the most rudimentary and obvious comparisons indicate that Ukrainians have been
disposed to Jews much more favorably than Jews have been disposed to Ukrainians, how can Morley
Safer justify concluding the opposite?
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
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
60 Minutes peppered its broadcast with distortions and misrepresentations. Here are nineteen
miscellaneous instances:
(1) Doctoring the sound track to bring out the evil of torchlight parades. The torchlight
marchers are not a clear indication of anything, and without some enhancement, the scene would
have fallen flat, and so 60 Minutes overlaid an exaggerated, rhythmic tramping sound which added
an ominous militaristic flavor to the scene. In fact, given that it is dark and there is no
band and the marchers are not singing, it is impossible for any but local groups of them to keep
in step, and simple leather-soled or rubber-soled shoes could not have made such a sound - it
would have taken cleated boots. The rhythmic tramping superimposed by 60 Minutes continues to
be heard even when the paraders can be seen to be walking more than marching. One can see that
the added sound effects are only imperfectly coordinated with the movements of the feet.
(2) "Adolph Hitler Square". "The place they're marching in was once called Adolph Hitler
Square," Mr. Safer tells us, but does not add that it was so called by the Germans and that it
was not called that either before the Germans came or after they left.
(3) Gratuitous accusation of mimicking. Mr. Safer informs us of the marchers that "Their chants
and banners mimic another more fearsome time."
But this is absolutely gratuitous - neither the chants nor the banners are mimicking anything.
The marchers are not wearing swastika armbands and their banners do not contain Nazi symbols.
They are not chanting "Death to the Jews!" but only "Slava natsiyi!" which means "Glory to the
nation!" and is about as ominous in Ukrainian as "Vive la patrie!" is in French.
Mr. Safer's syllogism here seems to be: The Nazis sometimes held torchlight parades. These
Ukrainians are holding a torchlight parade. Therefore, all Ukrainians are Nazis.
(4) If it sounds like "Nazi," then it must be "Nazi." 60 Minutes broadcast the above-mentioned
"Slava natsiyi!" several times, but never provided a translation. But as "natsiyi" sounds like
"Nazi," this invites the listener who does not know any Slavic languages to think that something
is being said about Naziism, and the context supplied by Morley Safer suggests that this
something is complimentary.
(5) The menace of boy scouts and girl guides. Desperate for any images that to a gullible 60
Minutes audience might be suggestive of undying Naziism within Ukraine, Morley Safer presents
film clips of Ukrainian boy scouts and girl guides.
(6) Censorship through muted translation. When a Ukrainian in Lviv says "A Russian shot my
brother!" 60 Minutes mutes the English translation to the point that it is almost inaudible.
The critical viewer is left wondering whether the operating principle might not be that when a
Ukrainian says something that might win sympathy for Ukrainians, omit it; in the case where the
image has some overriding appeal (that was a pretty craggy Ukrainian, he was pretty excited, and
the lighting was wonderful), then mute the translation to the point of inaudibility.
Furthermore, in the 60 Minutes transcript of The Ugly Face of Freedom, the statement "A Russian
shot my brother!" is entirely omitted, one might imagine following this same principle of
avoiding attracting sympathy to Ukrainians.
(7) Who welcomed the Germans? Mr. Safer says that "The same square greeted Hitler's troops
fifty years ago as liberators," making this seem like another symptom of a Ukrainian addiction
to Naziism.
Of course we understand that it was not the square which greeted Hitler's troops at all, but
rather people in the square, and it was smart on Mr. Safer's part not to draw attention to the
people, because there might follow the natural question of "What people?" and the honest answer
would have to be "All people - Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews." Jews welcomed Hitler's troops?
Yes, so it would appear:
The prevailing conviction [was] that bad things came from Russia and good
things from Germany. The Jews were historically oriented away from Russia and
toward Germany; not Russia but Germany had been their traditional place of
refuge. During October and November, 1939, that conviction, among other
things, drove thousands of Jews from Russian-occupied Poland to German-occupied
Poland. The stream was not stopped until the Germans closed the border.
Similarly, one year later, at the time of Soviet mass deportations in the newly
occupied territories, [there was] widespread unrest among Ukrainians, Poles,
and Jews alike. Almost everyone was waiting for the arrival of the German
army. When the army finally arrived, in the summer of 1941, old Jews in
particular remembered that in the First World War the Germans had come as
quasi-liberators. These Jews did not expect that now the Germans would come as
persecutors and killers. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews,
1961, p. 206)
Upon experiencing the impulse to blame Ukrainians for welcoming the Germans, the impartial
journalist might recognize that all groups had been traumatized by their exposure to Communism,
and all hoped for relief from the Germans.
(8) Chief Rabbi of Ukraine. Although Rabbi Bleich is introduced by 60 Minutes as the "Chief
Rabbi for the Ukraine," he is in fact an American from Brooklyn, New York, perhaps unqualified
to hold such an exulted title for several reasons: (1) Rabbi Bleich is a Hasidic Jew, and so
perhaps not authorized to speak for other Jewish sects. (2) Rabbi Bleich is newly-arrived in
Ukraine carrying his full load of American-engendered prejudices, and seemingly unaware of the
history of Ukraine, or even of the contemporary situation of Jews in Ukraine. (3) Rabbi Bleich,
as of the date of the 60 Minutes broadcast, spoke some Russian, but negligible Ukrainian. Some
Ukrainians might think that one prerequisite for the post of "Chief Rabbi of Ukraine" would be
fluency in Ukrainian.
The title of "Chief Rabbi of Ukraine," then, may be viewed as being self-proclaimed and
presumptuous, and as carrying no standing within Ukraine or anywhere else. In crediting the
title, Morley Safer was just blowing up Rabbi Bleich's credentials to give his words more
weight.
(9) An observation or a hypothetical case? Rabbi Bleich is shown saying, "Obviously, if someone
- you know? - screams 'Let's drown the Russians in Jewish blood!' there isn't too much love lost
there."
Yes, if anyone did scream such a thing, we might safely infer that the screamer was motivated by
a hatred of both Russians and Jews (even though we wouldn't be able to conclude much about
anybody other than the screamer). But in fact Rabbi Bleich does not claim that anybody ever did
scream such a thing. The 60 Minutes viewer is left with the impression that Rabbi Bleich was
reporting something that he witnessed, but his wording commits him to nothing more than
contemplating a hypothetical case.
(10) Lenin's Jewish ancestors. After interviewing the editor of Lviv's daily For a Free
Ukraine, 60 Minutes cuts to Rabbi Bleich saying "There's an article that came out just two weeks
ago where they tried to prove that Lenin was really Jewish...." The impression created is that
this article was published in For a Free Ukraine, and that For a Free Ukraine is a major
newspaper in Western Ukraine's major city.
In fact, however, "there's an article that came out" does not precisely inform us where the
article was published. Perhaps it was published in Ukraine's equivalent of a supermarket
tabloid. Perhaps it wasn't published at all, but only circulated in pamphlets. Perhaps it's
just a rumor and nobody can produce such an article. But even if published in For a Free
Ukraine - so what?
A higher standard of journalism than that exhibited by 60 Minutes would have reported who was
the author of this article, what position he holds in Ukrainian society, how good were his data
and his arguments, where was the article published, about how many people may have read it, does
anyone believe it, does it alter anybody's attitudes toward contemporary Jews even if they do
believe it? - But of course such questions weren't answered, and we are left able to conclude no
more than that Rabbi Bleich wishes us to believe in the existence of a virulent Ukrainian
anti-Semitism.
The Bleich statement is representative of a large number of statements in which events are
referred to obliquely, indirectly, vaguely - and on this basis, the viewer is invited to jump to
some strong conclusion. "I get the impression from people...." says Mr. Safer. Now there's a
lazy substitute for investigative reporting! What people? Why can't we see these people for
ourselves? Perhaps they are just a couple of cronies of Mr. Safer's whose company he prizes
because they are as bigoted as himself. And what do we care what one or two of Mr. Safer's
friends think? 60 Minutes should show its viewers the data on which these people are basing
their conclusions and let the viewers draw their own conclusions. But this is not what 60
Minutes did - its broadcast was short on data and long on instructions on how to feel.
(11) Morley Safer, genetic theorist. Mr. Safer tells us that "The Church and Government of
Ukraine have tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that ... Ukrainians, despite the
allegations, are not genetically anti-Semitic."
Here we see a new escalation in the level of irrationality with Mr. Safer now divulging to us
the existence of the allegation that Ukrainians are genetically anti-Semitic. For an
anti-Semitism which Mr. Safer failed to document, he now suggests a cause from the fairyland of
pseudoscience, and suggests furthermore that the Church and Government of Ukraine have dignified
this charge by denying it. That Ukrainians are pronouncedly anti-Semitic, Mr. Safer takes as a
given requiring no corroborative evidence, and so he shifts attention to speculating as to how
they could have gotten that way.
Perhaps Morley Safer will appreciate how bizarre and inflammatory his statement is when its
direction is reversed: "The World Jewish Congress has tried to ease the growth of
anti-Semitism, suggesting that Jews, despite the allegations, are not genetically predisposed to
usury." Now if Mr. Safer had heard that on Ukrainian television, he could have brought it back
as very good evidence not only of Ukrainian anti-Semitism, but of Ukrainian irrationality as
well - but he didn't hear any such thing during his visit to Ukraine, and he brought back
nothing. To encounter that degree of hatred and that level of irrationality, you have to leave
Ukraine for the United States and tune in to 60 Minutes.
(12) Church of Ukraine. But even while rebutting Mr. Safer's main point, I have been carelessly
adopting his slovenly terminology. "Church of Ukraine"? What "Church of Ukraine"? There is no
"Church of Ukraine" any more than there is a "Church of Canada" or a "Church of the United
States." Ukraine has more than one variety of Orthodox church, more than one variety of
Catholic church, more than one variety of Protestant church; and Ukraine has as well a full
slate of non-Christian religions. It even has agnostics and atheists just like a real
country.
Thus it is not only in his big lies, but also in his small misstatements that Mr. Safer reveals
to us that his perception of Ukraine is uninformed, indeed wholly stereotypical. To him,
perhaps all Ukrainians conform to some archetypal image - wielding a saber, hard-drinking,
pogrom-prone, and Christian (to the question "What kind of Christian?" we almost expect Mr.
Safer to ask "You mean Ukraine has more than one kind?"). And so when Mr. Safer speaks, he does
not report what he has recently observed in Ukraine, but rather reads off from his internal
image. He goes to Ukraine not to study it, not to report on its reality, but merely to provide
a backdrop for the proclamation of his own preconceptions, of his own prejudices so deeply
rooted that confirmation scarcely seems necessary, of his own stereotypes so apparently
unchallengeable that the anticipation that they might be in error does not enter consciousness.
(13) Peasants with nuclear weapons. Mr. Safer states: "Uneducated peasants, deeply
superstitious, in possession of this bizarre anomaly: nuclear weapons capable of mass
destruction thousands of miles away!"
This is one piece of information that I did find both newsworthy and disquieting. Although it
requires us to lay aside data indicating that American education is inferior to Ukrainian, we
cannot but be persuaded that the farmers shown in the broadcast were indeed both uneducated and
deeply superstitious - one look at their weatherbeaten faces and deep wrinkles and I was
convinced.
The information is so alarming and the threat to world stability so great that I expect Mr.
Safer must have immediately telegraphed President Leonid Kuchma of Ukraine to inform him that
the uneducated and deeply superstitious peasants had seized control of Ukraine's nuclear
weapons, and to urge him to recapture the weapons and place them back under the control of the
educated and less-deeply-superstitious peasants.
Who can argue with Mr. Safer's syllogism here? - Old and wrinkled people are uneducated and
deeply superstitious. Here is an old and wrinkled person who may or may not be Ukrainian.
Therefore, it is dangerous for Ukraine to have nuclear weapons. Out of respect for Mr. Safer's
personal vulnerability, I will refrain from demonstrating the retargetability of this syllogism.
But to be fair to Mr. Safer, he did not really say that the peasants were in possession of the
nuclear weapons - what he actually said was that they were in possession of an anomaly. This is
an unfamiliar concept, and I cannot get my mind around it - what does it mean to say that
someone is in possession of an anomaly? Perhaps what it means in this case is simply this
that Mr. Safer sensed that even the uncritical 60 Minutes viewer at whom he was aiming his story
wasn't going to believe that the Ukrainian peasants had gotten control of the nuclear weapons,
and so the thing to do was to speak gobbledygook - to suggest that they did but without actually
saying it.
(14) Why leave Ukraine? Mr. Safer suggests that the explanation of Jewish emigration from
Ukraine is anti-Semitism: "The [anti-Semitic] message is clear to Lvov's Jews. They're leaving
as quickly as they can get exit permits."
I can think of an alternative interpretation. It is that given the catastrophic and
deteriorating economic situation in Ukraine, practically everybody in the country wants to
leave, but it is disproportionately Jews who can afford to and who are allowed to. Anybody who
is emigrating from Ukraine today is, in comparison to the average Ukrainian, both wealthy and
influential. Iosef Zissels, co-president of the Association of Jewish Organizations and
Communities of Ukraine as well as co-president of Va'ad (Confederation of Jewish Communities of
the Former Soviet Union) has stated that: "Many Jews are emigrating from Ukraine, not because of
anti-Semitism, but because of the unstable situation in Ukraine. They see instability in
Ukraine, as well as in all the former republics of the Soviet Union, as lasting a long time"
(Ukrainian Weekly, January 26, 1992).
(15) Symon Petliura. Mr. Safer tells us that "Street names have been changed. There is now a
Petliura Street. To Ukrainians, Symon Petliura was a great General, but to Jews, he's the man
who slaughtered 60,000 Jews in 1919."
But that is not what happened and it is irresponsible to broadcast such an accusation.
Of course here as elsewhere, the 60 Minutes numbers may be somewhat inflated - Orest Subtelny
gives us a more moderate range of 35,000 to 50,000 Jewish fatalities (Ukraine: A History, 1994,
p. 363), though even the lower bound of 35,000 is still a horrendous number. The main point,
though, is that in 1919, Ukraine was in a state of civil war. Two Russian armies - the
Bolshevik Red Army and the anti-Bolshevik White army - were rampaging through the country, and
both were killing Jews. The White Army, in particular, had an official policy of killing Jews,
proceeded to do so in an organized and methodical manner, and can be credited with the majority
of the victims:
The Ukrainian pogroms differed from those of the Whites in two ways: in
contrast to the premeditated, systematic undertakings of the Russians, they
were spontaneous outbursts of demoralized and often drunken irregulars, and
they were committed against the express orders of the high command. Unlike the
White Russian generals such as Anton Denikin, the Ukrainian socialists,
especially the Social Democratic party to which Petliura belonged, had a long
tradition of friendly relations with Jewish political activists. Therefore,
the Directory renewed Jewish personal-cultural autonomy, attracted prominent
Jews such as Arnold Margolin and Solomon Goldelman into its government,
appropriated large amounts of money for pogrom victims, and even negotiated
with the famous Zionist leader Vladimir Zhabotinsky about the inclusion of
Jewish police units into its army.
But while Petliura's attitudes towards the Jews might have been
well-intentioned, he was unable to control the otamany (the court-martial and
subsequent execution of Semesenko and other partisan leaders did not improve
the situation), and their dreadful deeds were associated with his government.
And because many Jews considered themselves to be Russians, they found it
easier to lay all the blame for the pogroms on Petliura and the Ukrainians
rather than on Denikin and his Russian generals. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A
History, 1994, pp. 363-364).
The Jewish accusation against Petliura is that maybe he could have done more to prevent the
pogroms. Well, maybe and maybe not. In any case, it is not fair for 60 Minutes to describe a
man who implemented vigorous measures to protect Jewish interests and to stop the pogroms - but
maybe could have done more - as "the man who slaughtered 60,000 Jews." Further insight into
Symon Petliura's attitudes may be gleaned from the Petliura page on the Ukrainian Archive.
(16) Blessing the SS. Mr. Safer informs us that "for this reunion [of Galicia Division veterans
in Lviv recently], Cardinal Lubachivsky, head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, gave his
blessing, just as a predecessor did to the SS more than 50 years ago." The blessing of this predecessor was likely the blessing of Bishop Kotsylovskyi and was a blessing of the Galicia
Division, which as we have seen above was not quite the same thing as the German SS.
(17) The immaturity of blaming others. Mr. Safer tells us that "Western Ukraine also has a
long, dark history of blaming its poverty, its troubles, on others." Of course, no evidence of
any unusual tendency to blame others is provided - but then the sharing of hatred such as Mr.
Safer's is not an evidentiary matter, but is rather the warm feeling you get when you pass along
a stereotype and your partners in hatred accept the stereotype without asking for evidence.
But we may ask Mr. Safer just what it was that he might have had in mind. Perhaps it was the
Ukrainian Holocaust that Ukraine should accept as its own fault and stop blaming others for?
Perhaps it was the devastation wrought during the Second World War that Ukraine should start
accepting as its own fault? Or maybe it was the eight decades of Moscow's strangulation of
Ukraine's economy that Ukraine has really no one to blame for but itself? Ukraine has so many
such calamities to choose from that it is impossible to guess - perhaps Mr. Safer would be kind
enough to simply tell us precisely which of them he thinks it is that Ukraine should be mature
enough to accept responsibility for having brought upon itself.
(18) Dividing Ukraine. 60 Minutes gave the impression that its story focussed solely on Western
Ukraine, when in fact a portion of it came from Central Ukraine. Rabbi Bleich's full title, for
example, is not "Chief Rabbi for the Ukraine," but rather "Rabbi of Kiev and Ukraine," (where
Kiev is in central Ukraine) and although 60 Minutes gave the impression that he was interviewed
in Lviv, he was in reality interviewed in Kiev. Similarly, while Mr. Safer was in the middle of
interviewing representatives of the Ukrainian Catholic church in Lviv and was saying "The
Cardinal's deputy, Monsignor Dacko, denies traditional anti-Semitism in the Ukraine....", the
viewer was being shown St. Volodymyr's cathedral which unlike Monsignor Dacko was in Kiev and
which unlike Monsignor Dacko is Orthodox rather than Catholic. I suppose that 60 Minutes
committed itself to the scene-setting introduction "... and the West, where we go tonight ...",
and then suppressed the Kiev origin of some of its material so as to give the story the
appearance of having a consistent locale; and perhaps as well 60 Minutes wished to restrict its
smearing to Western Ukrainians so as to promote divisions within the country.
(19) Freedom from slavery is too much freedom (for Ukrainians, anyway). The title of the 60
Minutes broadcast, "The Ugly Face of Freedom" is puzzling. The freedom being referred to must
be the freedom from Russian rule, and so the title suggests that Ukraine would be better off
back within the Russian empire.
But Morley Safer's suggestion is inappropriate for three reasons. First, anti-Semitism is
strong in Russia and weak in Ukraine (Ukraine has no counterpart of either Pamyat or
Zhirinovksy), and so it is unclear how falling back under Russian rule would assist Ukraine in
avoiding anti-Semitism. Second, Ukraine's current problems are more rationally seen as being
the result not of too much freedom, but of too little - specifically, Ukraine's problems are the
result of continuing to be ruled by the old Communist nomenklatura that had originally been
appointed from Moscow and that presently is robbing the country blind while obstructing economic
reform. A weak economy, in turn, affects Ukrainian-Jewish relations by inviting scapegoating
from each group against the other and by promoting Jewish emigration out of Ukraine. Thus, it
is not too much freedom, but rather the absence of freedom from rule by Moscow's appointees that
most stands in the way of good Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Third, it is surprising to hear an
American objecting to freedom from slavery. Some 60 Minutes viewers will notice that Mr. Safer
objects to it on behalf of other people and not on behalf of Americans. I expect that if anyone
were to argue that American anti-Semitism or America's low quality of education or America's
high crime rate is the result of America having broken away from England, Mr. Safer would not
agree. I expect also that if England had been guilty of the horrific crimes against America
that Russia has been guilty of against Ukraine, Mr. Safer would find the suggestion odious. In
fact, Mr. Safer's suggestion is as odious to Ukrainians as would be the suggestion that Israel
would be better off under German rule would be odious to Jews. No, Mr. Safer's suggestion is
more odious - this because Berlin today is not ruled by former Nazis, whereas Moscow today is
ruled by people who just a few years ago were ardent Communists and who today continue to be
ardent imperialists.
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
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Is there any? Of course there is. Anti-Semitism is universal. Ukraine has some, just as does
the United States or Canada or Israel. But is there more anti-Semitism in Ukraine than
elsewhere? 60 Minutes said so - as much as said that Ukraine leads the world in anti-Semitism
but failed to provide any evidence of this, and in fact does not seem to be aware of how to go
about obtaining such evidence.
The American Jewish Committee did a better job - it sponsored a survey in 1992 about attitudes
toward Jews in the republics of the former Soviet Union, and its findings do not support 60
Minutes' allegations:
Based on the total of anti-Jewish responses to items appearing in the
questionnaire, the rank order of the states from most hostile to least hostile
toward Jews in 1992 is as follows: Uzbekistan, Belarus, Kazakhstan, Lithuania,
Azerbaijan, Russia, Latvia, Ukraine, Moldova and Estonia. (Ukrainian Weekly,
June 21, 1992, p. 6)
Worthy of note, too, is that between 1990 and 1992, attitudes toward Jews became more negative
in all of the above republics, with the exception of Ukraine and Moldova, in which two republics
the attitudes became more positive. The failure of Ukraine to rank high on anti-Jewish
responses in this survey should have been noted by 60 Minutes, as should the improvement in
attitudes from 1990 to 1992. Instead of applauding the reality of favorable Ukrainian attitudes