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has been the reality of Ukraine since 1994.
As in earlier letters, I fault you for not reporting such incidents as are in the above
table that took place before 1994, and I fault you for precipitating such incidents that
took place after 1994. Thus, to the blood that is already on your hands, I add the
blood of Borys Derevyanko. You had the opportunity in your 1994 broadcast to come out
on the side of the victims against the butchers, but you preferred to side with the
butchers against the victims, and Borys Derevyanko has been one of the casualties of
your decision.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney,
Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 2082 hits since 04Jul99
Morley Safer Letter 13 04Jul99 The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny
Thus, it is possible that you contributed to Maksym Tsarenko losing his hands, and to
Volodymyr Katelnytsky together with his mother, and Borys Derevyanko, losing their
lives.
Additional information on the Lviv massacre can be found in Alfred M. de Zayas, The
Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945.
July 4, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
You Broadcast to 30 Million 60 Minutes
Viewers that in the Days Prior to German
Occupation, Ukrainians Killed Jews
In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you joined with
Simon Wiesenthal in charging that in the days preceding the arrival of German forces
in June 1941, Lviv Ukrainians killed thousands of Jews:
SAFER: He [Simon Wiesenthal] remembers that even before the
Germans arrived, Ukrainian police went on a 3-day killing spree.
WIESENTHAL: And in this 3 days in Lvov alone between 5 and 6
thousand Jews was killed.
[...]
SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian
militia, the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here.
Some 60 Minutes viewers may have been struck by the observation that while the 60
Minutes expert witness - Simon Wiesenthal - claimed that the number of Jews killed
was "between 5 and 6 thousand" in three days, you - supposedly the neutral
interviewer - chose to reduce the number killed to "3,000" and the duration of the
killing to two days - but without informing the viewer on what grounds you did so.
One wonders what reason you would have had for undermining the testimony of your
chief - and only - witness. One wonders what superior authority you discovered for
your revised statistic, and why you did not bring this superior authority forward to
testify in front of the CBS cameras instead of Simon Wiesenthal whose testimony you
apparently distrusted and chose to contradict. And one wonders that you could have
such low regard for the intelligence of 60 Minutes viewers that you would broadcast
discrepant accounts without explaining the discrepancy.
However, I Can't Find Anyone Else
Substantiating the Wiesenthal-Safer
Pre-German Lviv Pogrom
In my reading, I have yet to come across a single account which supports the
Wiesenthal-Safer claim of anywhere from 3,000 Jews killed in 2 days to 5,000-6,000
Jews killed in 3 days in Lviv during the pre-German interval. Had the
Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom taken place, then it would have been one of the biggest
pogroms of the war, and possibly the very biggest, and thus obligatory to describe
in every history of the Holocaust, if not in every history of the Second World War.
What I found, in contrast, was statements contradicting the possibility of the
Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom, most notably the following three made by Raul Hilberg:
From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as
follows:
Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to
take active steps against the Jews. This may be
explained by the fear of many people that the Red
Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has
been pointed out to us. Older people have remarked
that they had already experienced in 1918 the
sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet
the fear psychosis, and in order to destroy the
myth [...] which, in the eyes of many Ukrainians,
places the Jew in the position of the wielder of
political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several
occasions marched Jews before their execution
through the city. Also, care was taken to have
Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews.
This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the
desired effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once
more that the inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden
Jews. The Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist
terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the area were busily working
for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1961, p. 202)
The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the
unfolding spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the
whole no impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such utter
ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the
Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still threatening to
return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a
potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen
influence, did not take place; all outbreaks were either organized
or inspired by the Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were
implemented within a short time after the arrival of the killing
units. They were not self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be
started after things had settled down. (Raul Hilberg, The
Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312)
Fearing that substantiation for the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom did exist somewhere
and that I had merely overlooked it, I made enquiry to leading Holocaust historian,
Raul Hilberg, on 15Sep97. Professor Hilberg was good enough in his reply of 15Dec97
to outline for me instances that he knew of anti-Jewish activity conducted in that
area at that time, and none of these instances gave credence to the Wiesenthal-Safer
Lviv pogrom.
Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom was
a fabrication is unearthed upon trying to substantiate it in Simon Wiesenthal's own
writing. In one place, Simon Wiesenthal has the anti-Jewish activity postdating the
arrival of the Germans, and mentions neither the number of fatalities nor the
duration:
The Ukrainian police ... had played a disastrous role in Galicia
following the entry of the German troops at the end of June and the
beginning of July 1941. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance,
1989, p. 34, emphasis added)
And later in the same account, Simon Wiesenthal does mention a Lviv pogrom of three
day's duration, but again without mentioning the number of fatalities, and again
unambiguously placing it after the German occupation:
Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the
retreating Soviets. This gave rise to one of the craziest
accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic
population the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that
all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it
was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities committed
by the Soviets.
All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of
opinion. It is said that after their arrival they gave the
Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews.
(Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis
added)
Also, whereas on your 60 Minutes broadcast you gave the impression that Simon
Wiesenthal was making his appearance on 60 Minutes in the role of an eyewitness to
the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv Pogrom, or at least as a researcher who had documented it,
yet in the quotation immediately above, Simon Wiesenthal's use of "It is said that"
gives the contrasting impression that he is no more than passing along a rumor
concerning events that he has neither witnessed nor verified.
In conclusion, the Wiesenthal-Safer story of a massive pre-German Lviv pogrom is not
supported in historical writing, and is even contradicted by other testimony, some
of it leading Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg's, and some of it your own expert
witness Simon Wiesenthal's. Thus, unless you are able to substantiate the
Wiesenthal-Safer pre-German Lviv pogrom, you will invite the conclusion that it
never took place, and that your implanting it into the minds of 30 million 60
Minutes viewers constituted an attempt on the part of two individuals Simon
Wiesenthal and yourself - to fabricate a piece of history.
In Fact, the Consensus Seems to be that in
the Days Prior to German Occupation, it
was the NKVD that was Killing Ukrainians
In contrast to what appears to be a lack of substantiation of the Wiesenthal-Safer
story that in the days prior to German occupation Ukrainians were murdering Jews, I
do in my reading keep stumbling across quite a different story - that in the days
prior to German occupation, it was the NKVD that was murdering Ukrainians. Below
are 22 such statements. These statements were discovered not through any systematic
or exhaustive search, but rather only through casual reading. A systematic and
exhaustive search would turn up a much larger number of such statements.
In order to demonstrate that the NKVD had a general policy of killing Ukrainians
prior to retreating, of which the Lviv massacre was but a single instance, I include
descriptions of such killings in several locations.
"NKVD," in case you are interested, is an acronym for the Russian "Narodny
Komisariat Vnutrenikh Del," which translates as "National Commissariat of Internal
Affairs," and which bland title gives no hint of the NKVD's true role.
Please note that the block quotation immediately below is attributable to Simon
Wiesenthal, and that in it he demonstrates an awareness of the NKVD massacre of
Ukrainians, such that omitting mention of this massacre on your 23Oct94 60 Minutes
broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, must be considered not an oversight, but a
willful suppression of relevant information:
(1) Thousands of detainees were shot dead.
When the German attack came on 22 June the Soviets had no time to
take with them the people they had locked up. So they simply
killed them. Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells
by the retreating Soviets. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not
Vengeance, 1989, p. 35)
(2) The NKVD burned prisons with prisoners in them.
While the movement to the East was taking place, the NKVD carried
out mass arrests and executions, chiefly of Ukrainians - especially
those who tried to avoid evacuation. In the jails most prisoners
whose period of imprisonment was more than three years were shot;
others were evacuated if possible. In several cities the NKVD
burned prisons with prisoners in them. (Volodymyr Kubijovyc,
editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto
Press, Toronto, 1963, Volume I, p. 878, Vsevolod Holubnychy and H.
M. wrote this section)
(3) Succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political prisoners.
The Bolsheviks succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political
prisoners in Western Ukraine before and after the outbreak of
hostilities (massacres took place in the prisons in Lviv, Zolochiv,
Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, etc.). (Volodymyr Kubijovyc, editor, Ukraine:
A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
Volume 1, p. 886)
(4) Mainly members of the city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia.
Before fleeing the German advance the Soviet occupational regime
murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly members of the
city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume
3, p. 222)
(5) NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse.
The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for thousands
of political prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Unable to
evacuate them in time, the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en
masse during the week of 22-29 June 1941, regardless of whether
they were incarcerated for major or minor offenses. Major
massacres occurred in Lviv, Sambir, and Stanyslaviv in Galicia,
where about 10,000 prisoners died, and in Rivne and Lutsk in
Volhynia, where another 5000 perished. Coming on the heels of the
mass deportations and growing Soviet terror, these executions added
greatly to the West Ukrainians' abhorrence of the Soviets. (Orest
Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 461)
(6) Liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck.
Right after the entry we were shown 2,400 dead bodies of Ukrainians
liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck at the city jail
of Lemberg [Lviv] by the Soviets prior to their marching off.
(Hans Frank, In the Face of the Gallows, p. 406)
(7) The city stank.
In Lvov, several thousand prisoners had been held in three jails.
When the Germans arrived on 29 June, the city stank, and the
prisons were surrounded by terrified relatives. Unimaginable
atrocities had occurred inside. The prisons looked like
abattoirs. It had taken the NKVD a week to complete their gruesome
task before they fled. (Gwyneth Hughes and Simon Welfare, Red
Empire: The Forbidden History of the USSR, 1990, p. 133)
(8) Many of them were found mutilated.
We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great
number of Lemberg [Lviv] citizens, Ukrainians and Polish
inhabitants of other towns and villages had been killed in this
prison and in other prisons. Furthermore, there were many corpses
of German men and officers, among them many Air Corps officers, and
many of them were found mutilated. There was a great bitterness
and excitement among the Lemberg population against the Jewish
sector of the population. (Erwin Schulz, from May until 26
September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a subunit of
Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust:
Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982,
Volume 18, p. 18)
(9) The killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000.
On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the
killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000. It has
been determined without any doubt that the arrests and killings had
taken place under the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with
the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg. That was
the reason why there was such an excitement against the Jewish
population on the part of the Lemberg citizens. (Erwin Schulz,
from May until 26 September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a
subunit of Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The
Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New
York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18)
(10) Hardly 20% of Ukrainian intelligentsia has remained.
Chief of Einsatzgruppe B reports that Ukrainian insurrection
movements were bloodily suppressed by the NKVD on June 25, 1941 in
Lvov. About 3,000 were shot by NKVD. Prison burning. Hardly 20%
of Ukrainian intelligentsia has remained. (Operational Situation
Report USSR No. 10, July 2, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel
Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports:
Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign
Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New
York, 1989, p. 2)
(11) The corpses are dreadfully mutilated.
Location: Lvov
According to reliable information, the Russians, before
withdrawing, shot 30,000 inhabitants. The corpses piled up and
burned at the GPU prisons are dreadfully mutilated. The population
is greatly excited: 1,000 Jews have already been forcefully
gathered together. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 11, July
3, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The
Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi
Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943,
Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 4)
(12) The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered
Ukrainians.
Location: Zviahel (Novograd-Volynski)
[...]
Before leaving, the Bolsheviks, together with the Jews,
murdered several Ukrainians; as an excuse, they used the attempted
Ukrainian uprising of June 25, 1941, which tried to free their
prisoners.
According to reliable information, about 20,000 Ukrainians have
disappeared from Lvov, 80% of them belonging to the intelligentsia.
The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered
Ukrainians. According to a moderate estimate, in Lvov alone
3-4,000 persons were either killed or deported.
In Dobromil, 82 dead bodies were found, 4 of them Jews. The
latter were former Bolsheviki informers who had been killed because
of their complicity in this act. Near Dobromil an obsolete salt
mine pit was discovered. It was completely filled with dead
bodies. In the immediate neighborhood, there is a 6X15m mass
grave. The number of those murdered in the Dobromil area is
estimated to be approximately several hundred.
In Sambor on June 26, 1941, about 400 Ukrainians were shot by
the Bolsheviks. An additional 120 persons were murdered on June
27, 1941. The remaining 80 prisoners succeeded in overpowering the
Soviet guards, and fled. [...]
As early as 1939, a larger number of Ukrainians was shot, and
1,500 Ukrainians as well as 500 Poles were deported to the east.
Russians and Jews committed these murders in very cruel ways.
Bestial mutilations were daily occurrences. Breasts of women and
genitals of men were cut off. Jews have also nailed children to
the wall and then murdered them. Killing was carried out by shots
in the back of the neck. Hand grenades were frequently used for
these murders.
In Dobromil, women and men were killed with blows by a hammer
used to stun cattle before slaughter.
In many cases, the prisoners must have been tortured cruelly:
bones were broken, etc. In Sambor, the prisoners were gagged and
thus prevented from screaming during torture and murder. The Jews,
some of whom also held official positions, in addition to their
economic supremacy, and who served in the entire Bolshevik police,
were always partners in these atrocities.
Finally, it was established that seven [German] pilots who had
been captured were murdered. Three of them were found in a Russian
military hospital where they had been murdered in bed by shots in
the abdomen. [...]
[...] Prior to their withdrawal, the Bolsheviks shot 2,800 out
of 4,000 Ukrainians imprisoned in the Lutsk prison. According to
the statement of 19 Ukrainians who survived the slaughter with more
or less serious injuries, the Jews again played a decisive part in
the arrests and shooting. [...]
The investigations at Zlochev proved that the Russians, prior
to their withdrawal, arrested and murdered indiscriminately a total
of 700 Ukrainians, but, nevertheless, included the entire [local]
Ukrainian intelligentsia. (Operational Situation Report USSR No.
24, July 16, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel
Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches
of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July
1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 29-33)
(13) Ukrainians thrown into cauldrons of boiling water.
Location: Pleskau [Pskov] [...]
The population is in general convinced that it is mostly the
Jews who should be held responsible for the atrocities that are
committed everywhere. [...]
As it was learned that the Russians before they left have
either deported the Ukrainian intelligentsia, or executed them,
that is, murdered them, it is assumed that in the last days before
the retreat of the Russians, about 100 influential Ukrainians were
murdered [in Pleskau]. So far the bodies have not been found - a
search has been initiated.
About 100-150 Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians in
Kremenets. Some of these Ukrainians are said to have been thrown
into cauldrons of boiling water. This has been deduced from the
fact that the bodies were found without skin when they were
exhumed. [...]
[...] Before leaving Dubno, the Russians, as they had done in
Lvov, committed extensive mass-murder.
[...] Before their flight [from Tarnopol], as in Lvov and
Dubno, the Russians went on a rampage there. Disinterments
revealed 10 bodies of German soldiers. Almost all of them had
their hands tied behind their backs with wire. The bodies revealed
traces of extremely cruel mutilations such as gouged eyes, severed
tongues and limbs.
The number of Ukrainians who were murdered by the Russians,
among them women and children, is set finally at 600. Jews and
Poles were spared by the Russians. The Ukrainians estimate the
total number of [Tarnopol] victims since the occupation of the
Ukraine by the Russians at about 2,000. The planned deportation of
the Ukrainians already started in 1939. There is hardly a family
in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not
disappeared. [...] The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is
destroyed. Since the beginning of the war, 160 members of the
Ukrainian intelligentsia were either murdered or deported.
Inhabitants of the town had observed a column of about 1,000
civilians driven out of town by police and army early in the
morning of July 1, 1941.
As in Lvov, torture chambers were discovered in the cellars of
the Court of Justice. Apparently, hot and cold showers were also
used here (as in Lemberg [Lviv]) for torture, as several bodies
were found, totally naked, their skin burst and torn in many
places. A grate was found in another room, made of wire and set
above the ground about 1m in height, traces of ashes were found
underneath. A Ukrainian engineer, who was also to be murdered but
saved his life by smearing the blood of a dead victim over his
face, reports that one could also hear screams of pain from women
and girls. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 28, July 20,
1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The
Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi
Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943,
Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p.38-40)
(14) Had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away.
F. Fedorenko
MY TESTIMONY
When the bolsheviks retreated before the German onslaught in
the Second World War they took care in advance not to leave any
prisoners behind when the Germans arrived.
The prisoners were driven, en masse, under heavy NKVD guard
deep into Russia or Siberia, day and night. Many of them were so
tired that they could go no further. These were shot without
compunction where they fell. Terrible things happened then.
Sometimes, wives recognized their husbands among the evacuees, as
the prisoners were being driven through the villages. There was
great despair when they saw their loved ones taken under the
muzzles of automatic guns, to far, unknown places.
The villagers took care of those who did not die at once from
the NKVD bullets, but this was a very dangerous thing to do before
all the bolsheviks cleared out.
But the NKVD could not evacuate all the prisoners, there were
so many arrests, and jails were replenished constantly. In such a
case the NKVD, before making a hasty retreat, would murder the
prisoners in their cells.
I recall that when the Germans came, in the fall of 1941, to a
little town, Chornobil, on the Prypyat River, 62 miles west of
Kiev, 52 corpses of recently murdered people, slightly covered with
earth, were found in the prison yard.
These corpses had their hands tied at the back with wire; some
had their backs flayed, others had gouged eyes or nails driven into
their heels; still others had their noses, ears, tongues and even
genitals cut away. Instruments of torture which the communists
used were found in the dungeon of the prison.
Many of the tortured people were identified because they were
mostly farmers from the local collectives who had been arrested by
the NKVD for some unknown reason.
For instance, one girl (whose name I cannot recall now) from
the village of Zallissya, a mile and a quarter from Chornobil, was
arrested because one day she failed to go to dig trenches. All
were compelled at that time, to dig anti-tank trenches. The girl
was sick but there was no doctor to examine her and the NKVD
arrested her, never to return.
Two days later, when the Germans arrived, she was found among
the fifty-two corpses. (F. Fedorenko, My Testimony, in The Black
Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of
Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 97-98)
(15) Executed 180 persons.
Andriy Vodopyan
CRIME IN STALINE
In this city in the NKVD prison factory the communists executed
180 persons and buried them in two holes dug in the prison yard.
The corpses were liberally treated with unslaked lime, especially
the faces.
My brother was sentenced to three months in jail for coming
late to work. After serving 18 days in the factory prison he was
set free, and a month later was drafted to the Red Army because
this was in July 1941.
Later, his wife and my mother found him among the corpses,
identifying him by the left hand finger, underwear and papers he
had on him.
This atrocity came to light when prisoners who remained alive
were liberated. They had also a very close call. Six days before
the arrival of the German troops they heard muffled shots.
The prison was secretly mined by NKVD agents in preparation for
the German invaders. (Andriy Vodopyan, Crime in Staline, in The
Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of
Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 121)
(16) Had their breasts cut off.
Yuriy Dniprovy
INNOCENT VICTIMS
In the little town of Zolotnyky in the Ternopil region the
bolsheviks murdered a captain of the former Ukrainian Galician Army
(UHA) of 1918-1922, Mr. Dankiw, and clerks of the Ukrainian
cooperative store, the sisters Magdalene, Sophia and Clementine
Husar from the suburb of Vaha. Clementine and Magdalene were
tortured in a beastly manner and had their breasts cut off.
Other people executed at that time were: Slavko Demyd, Yosyp
Vozny, Vasyl Burbela, Zynoviy Kushniryna, Pavlo Kushniryna and a
non-commissioned officer of the UHA, Mr. Tsiholsky. (Yuriy
Dniprovy, Innocent Victims, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A
White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist
Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 122)
(17) The chopped bones and flesh of the victims fell into the sewers.
P. K.
THE INFERNAL DEVICE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS
(By an eyewitness)
In the year 1942, when the Red Army, harassed by the German
divisions, retreated from Katerynodar (Krasnodar), the regional
NKVD division evacuated all the prisoners and sent them in the
direction of Novorossiysk. The railway line between Katerynodar
and the station of Krymska was jammed by nearly two hundred freight
boxcars filled to capacity with political prisoners.
Suspecting that all these prisoners might fall into German
hands the Russian NKVD men, as a precautionary measure, poured
gasoline on the cars and let them burn.
Thus a few thousand people perished in inhuman torture merely
because they were suspected of anti-communism.
When the Germans entered Katerynodar they found in the regional
divisional building of the NKVD in Sinny Bazar, a horrible torture
chamber. In the vault of this building there was a dark passage
which ended with a wooden platform which dipped down at a sharp
angle. Right underneath it there was a machine which resembled a
straw chopper. It was a disk equipped with a system of big knives
that revolved at great speed. It was powered by a motor.
After questioning, the innocent victims were driven by the NKVD
agents towards the wooden platform and rolled under the knives of
the hellish meatchopper. The chopped bones and flesh of the
victims fell into the sewers and were carried away with a stream of
sewage into the river Kuban.
Having discovered this horrible place, the Germans gave
permission to all who wished to view this inhuman device.
Thousands of people visited the place, among them the author of
these lines.
Other nations direct their talents towards the discovery of
better medicines, new materials, better means of communication to
make living conditions better. The Russian people are using all
their talents for the production of machines and new methods of
mass murder and torture. (P. K., The infernal device of the
Russian Communists (by an eyewitness), in The Black Deeds of the
Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 123-124)
(18) Some had nails driven into their skulls.
M. Kowal
BOLSHEVIK MURDERS
I am Michael Kowal, from the town of Kaminka Strumylova in the
Lviw Region in Ukraine. During the communist occupation of Western
Ukraine I personally witnessed three arrests in my native town on
June 22, 1941, those of Bohdan Mulkevich, and Michael Mulkevich who
lived on Zamok Street, and Michael Mulkevich's blacksmith
apprentice, presumably from the village of Rymaniw in the same
Region. They were suspected of disloyalty to the communist regime.
After the communist retreat from Kaminska-Strumylova they were
found in the town prison with 33 other victims, murdered in a
horribly sadistic manner. All the corpses were tied together with
barbed wire and all bore signs of terrible beatings. Some had
nails driven into their skulls. None of them had been shot to
death. Their bodies, nude and badly mauled, were practically
unrecognizable to their relatives.
Bohdan Mulkevish's wife recognized her husband, but, trying to
verify her identification by his gold teeth, found them missing.
All the bodies were taken away for interment.
That Same day 19 other bodies were discovered near the village
of Todan about 9 or 10 kilometers from Kaminka-Strumylova. They
were tied to trees and their chests were pierced with bayonets.
These were all identified by relatives and taken away for burial.
(M. Kowal, Bolshevik Murders, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A
White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist
Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
(19) Shot the children in cold blood.
Andriy Vodopyan
A RAVINE FILLED WITH THE BODIES OF CHILDREN
I was serving in the Soviet Russian Army. Our artillery unit
was retreating before the Germans in the direction of Yeletsk. On
September 18, 1941, our unit came to a wide ravine situated about
14 miles from Chartsysk station, and about 60 miles from the city
of Staline. The ravine stretched from the station of Chartsysk to
the station of Snizhy. When we approached the ravine we were taken
aback by a horrible sight. The whole ravine was filled with the
bodies of children. They were lying in different positions. Most
of them were from 14 to 16 years of age. They were dressed in
black, and we recognized them as students of the F.S.U., a
well-known trade and craft school. We counted 370 bodies
altogether. All of them had been killed by machine gun fire.
This group of children was being evacuated from Staline when
the Germans neared the city. The children had marched 60 miles,
and, exhausted and unable to continue walking, asked for
transportation. The officers in charge promised to send them
trucks. Instead of trucks, a detachment of the Russian political
police (NKVD) arrived, and shot the children in cold blood with
machine guns. This ravine, filled with hundreds of bodies of slain
children, moved even the soldiers, accustomed as they were to the
sight of death. (Andriy Vodopyan, A Ravine Filled With the Bodies
of Children, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the
Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
(20) Throwing hand-grenades into the crowded cells.
Rev. J. Chyrva was imprisoned in 1941 when the Russian Communist armies were withdrawing from the city of Riwne. He happened to be
cast into one of those jails in which the communists, fleeing from
advancing German armies, attempted to rid themselves of as many
prisoners as possible by throwing hand-grenades into the crowded
cells. When the first grenade was thrown into the cell where Rev.
J. Chyrva was kept, he was the first to fall - his foot shattered.
On him fell many mutilated bodies, covering him, thus saving his
life. Later, when people came into the cell, they found all the
prisoners dead with the exception of Rev. J. Chyrva. He is alive
today, a witness of that horrible manslaughter. (Rev. Lev Buchak,
Persecution of Ukrainian Protestants under the Soviet Rule, in S.
O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book,
Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror,
Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
(21) Exhumed corpses were found without skin.
The Bolsheviks had arrested thousands of Ukrainian patriots, and
prior to their retreat, they killed them savagely. For some reason
even highly regarded Jewish authors understate the number of
Ukrainian victims of Bolshevik terror. Gerald Reitlinger gives a
figure of three to four thousand in Lviv alone. Hilberg speaks of
"the Bolsheviks deporting Ukrainians," but he does not furnish any
overall figures. But on the basis of a German document (RSHA
IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR no. 28, 20 July 1941, No-2943),
which I was unable to verify, he recounts one particularly horrible
episode:
In Kremenets 100-150 Ukrainians had been killed by the
Soviets. When some of the exhumed corpses were found
without skin, rumors circulated that the Ukrainians
had been thrown into kettles of boiling water. The
Ukrainian population retaliated by seizing 130 Jews
and beating them to death with clubs.
He also quotes the French collaborator Dr. Frederic as saying that
the Bolsheviks killed eighteen thousand Ukrainian political
prisoners in Lviv and its outskirts alone.
Basing his remarks on an anonymous article entitled "The
Ethnocide of Ukrainians in the USSR," in the dissident journal
Ukrainian Herald, Issue 7-8, the Ukrainian-American publicist Lew
Shankowsky gives the following number of victims of Bolshevik
terror in Galicia and Volhynia: as many as forty thousand killed in
the prisons of Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Dubno, Ternopil, Stanyslaviv
(now Ivano-Frankivsk), Stryi, Drohobych, Sambir, Zolochiv and other
towns and settlements. The fact of the matter is that, justifiably
or not, some Ukrainians felt that some Jews were in the employ of
the Stalinist secret police, the NKVD. For instance, it was
pointed out to me by a resident of Western Ukraine that a high NKVD
official in Lviv, a certain Barvinsky, was Jewish, despite his
Ukrainian name. (Yaroslav Bilinsky, Methodological Problems and
Philosophical Issues in the Study of Jewish-Ukrainian Relations
During the Second World War, pp. 373-394, in Howard Aster and Peter
J. Potichnyj (eds.), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical
Perspective, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton,
1990, footnotes deleted)
(22) From 15,000 to 40,000 prisoners were killed
In their hasty and often panic-stricken retreat, the Soviet
authorities were not about to evacuate the thousands of prisoners
they had arrested, mostly during their last months of rule in
western Ukraine. Their solution, implemented at the end of June
and in early July 1941, was to kill all inmates regardless of
whether they had committed minor or major crimes or were being held
for political reasons. According to estimates, from 15,000 to
40,000 prisoners were killed during the Soviet retreat from eastern
Galicia and western Volhynia. (Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of
Ukraine, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1996, p. 624)
However, the Membership of this NKVD was
Predominantly Jewish
What was the membership of this NKVD that we see above being so repeatedly blamed
for the massacre of Ukrainians in the days before occupation by German forces? In
my analysis of data presented by Yuri Shapoval, I arrive at the conclusion that the
senior membership in Ukraine of the organization one of whose names became the NKVD
was as follows:
Out of every 10 senior members of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine:
6 were Jewish,
2 were Russian,
1 was Ukrainian, and
1 was other.
Statements made by others support the conclusion that the NKVD was predominantly a
Jewish organization. For example, Yoram Sheftel, Ivan Demjanjuk's Israeli defense
attorney, reports that in connection with his visit to the Simferopol, Ukraine, KGB
headquarters in 1990, a plaque memorializing the "KGB" dead of the war showed that
all thirty of the thirty names were Jewish:
On the right-hand wall was a stone memorial plaque engraved with
the names of about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in
the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets call World War II. I was
shocked and angry as I read the names: the first was Polonski and
the last Levinstein, and all those between were ones like
Zalmonowitz, Geller and Kagan - all Jews. The best of Jewish youth
in Russia, the cradle of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to
the Red Devil. (The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a
Show-Trial, Victor Gollancz, London, 1994, p. 301)
Of course Sheftel's sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative
of the entire NKVD in Ukraine; however the Jewish domination of the entire NKVD is
not a rare or dubious hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than
one direction:
As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were
there so many Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators - including
many of the most terrible? It's a painful question for me but I
cannot evade it. (Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The
KGB and its Hold on Russia, Past, Present and Future, 1994, p. 147)
Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery
especially in the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and
the NKVD.... It is difficult to suggest a satisfactory reason for
the prevalence of Jews in the Cheka. It may be that having
suffered at the hand of the former Russian authorities they wanted
to seize the reins of real power in the new state for themselves.
(Leonard Shapiro, The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary
Movement, Slavonic and East European Review, 1961, 40, p. 165)
But if in the pre-German interval Ukrainians were being killed by the NKVD, and if
the NKVD was disproportionately, or even overwhelmingly, Jewish, then one might
summarize by saying that in the pre-German interval, Ukrainians were being killed by
Jews.
I Expand My Summary Table Once Again
The table which I have been developing in my letters to you of 30Jun99 and 01Jul99
can now be elaborated with the uppermost entry:
Date of my letter
Subject of my letter
Date of Attack
Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom
04Jul99
The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny
Summer 1941
15May99
Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk?
April 1979
30Jun99
Who murdered Vadim Boyko?
February 14, 1992
Violence that you might have caused by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom
09Apr99
Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko?
Summer 1995
17May99
Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?
July 7-8, 1997
01Jul99
Who murdered Borys Derevyanko?
August 11, 1997
The new "The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny" entry in the table above is of particular
importance not only because of the large number of victims involved, but also
because it demonstrates your going beyond the fault of overlooking Ukrainians being
victimized, to the greater fault of replacing the real killing of a large number of
Ukrainians by Jews with an imaginary killing of a large number of Jews by
Ukrainians.
And I Find My Earlier Conclusions
Strengthened
What a convincing broadcast your The Ugly Face of Freedom would have been if all the
instances in the above table had been ones of Jews or Russians being tortured and
mutilated and murdered by Ukrainians, instead of the other way around! However, in
your broadcast you documented not a single such story featuring Ukrainians
As in earlier letters, I fault you for not reporting such incidents as are in the above
table that took place before 1994, and I fault you for precipitating such incidents that
took place after 1994. Thus, to the blood that is already on your hands, I add the
blood of Borys Derevyanko. You had the opportunity in your 1994 broadcast to come out
on the side of the victims against the butchers, but you preferred to side with the
butchers against the victims, and Borys Derevyanko has been one of the casualties of
your decision.
Lubomyr Prytulak
cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney,
Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal.
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER 2082 hits since 04Jul99
Morley Safer Letter 13 04Jul99 The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny
Thus, it is possible that you contributed to Maksym Tsarenko losing his hands, and to
Volodymyr Katelnytsky together with his mother, and Borys Derevyanko, losing their
lives.
Additional information on the Lviv massacre can be found in Alfred M. de Zayas, The
Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945.
July 4, 1999
Morley Safer
60 Minutes, CBS Television
51 W 52nd Street
New York, NY
USA 10019
Morley Safer:
You Broadcast to 30 Million 60 Minutes
Viewers that in the Days Prior to German
Occupation, Ukrainians Killed Jews
In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you joined with
Simon Wiesenthal in charging that in the days preceding the arrival of German forces
in June 1941, Lviv Ukrainians killed thousands of Jews:
SAFER: He [Simon Wiesenthal] remembers that even before the
Germans arrived, Ukrainian police went on a 3-day killing spree.
WIESENTHAL: And in this 3 days in Lvov alone between 5 and 6
thousand Jews was killed.
[...]
SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian
militia, the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here.
Some 60 Minutes viewers may have been struck by the observation that while the 60
Minutes expert witness - Simon Wiesenthal - claimed that the number of Jews killed
was "between 5 and 6 thousand" in three days, you - supposedly the neutral
interviewer - chose to reduce the number killed to "3,000" and the duration of the
killing to two days - but without informing the viewer on what grounds you did so.
One wonders what reason you would have had for undermining the testimony of your
chief - and only - witness. One wonders what superior authority you discovered for
your revised statistic, and why you did not bring this superior authority forward to
testify in front of the CBS cameras instead of Simon Wiesenthal whose testimony you
apparently distrusted and chose to contradict. And one wonders that you could have
such low regard for the intelligence of 60 Minutes viewers that you would broadcast
discrepant accounts without explaining the discrepancy.
However, I Can't Find Anyone Else
Substantiating the Wiesenthal-Safer
Pre-German Lviv Pogrom
In my reading, I have yet to come across a single account which supports the
Wiesenthal-Safer claim of anywhere from 3,000 Jews killed in 2 days to 5,000-6,000
Jews killed in 3 days in Lviv during the pre-German interval. Had the
Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom taken place, then it would have been one of the biggest
pogroms of the war, and possibly the very biggest, and thus obligatory to describe
in every history of the Holocaust, if not in every history of the Second World War.
What I found, in contrast, was statements contradicting the possibility of the
Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom, most notably the following three made by Raul Hilberg:
From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as
follows:
Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to
take active steps against the Jews. This may be
explained by the fear of many people that the Red
Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has
been pointed out to us. Older people have remarked
that they had already experienced in 1918 the
sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet
the fear psychosis, and in order to destroy the
myth [...] which, in the eyes of many Ukrainians,
places the Jew in the position of the wielder of
political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several
occasions marched Jews before their execution
through the city. Also, care was taken to have
Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews.
This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the
desired effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once
more that the inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden
Jews. The Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist
terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the area were busily working
for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1961, p. 202)
The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the
unfolding spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the
whole no impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such utter
ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the
Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still threatening to
return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a
potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the
European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen
influence, did not take place; all outbreaks were either organized
or inspired by the Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were
implemented within a short time after the arrival of the killing
units. They were not self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be
started after things had settled down. (Raul Hilberg, The
Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312)
Fearing that substantiation for the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom did exist somewhere
and that I had merely overlooked it, I made enquiry to leading Holocaust historian,
Raul Hilberg, on 15Sep97. Professor Hilberg was good enough in his reply of 15Dec97
to outline for me instances that he knew of anti-Jewish activity conducted in that
area at that time, and none of these instances gave credence to the Wiesenthal-Safer
Lviv pogrom.
Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom was
a fabrication is unearthed upon trying to substantiate it in Simon Wiesenthal's own
writing. In one place, Simon Wiesenthal has the anti-Jewish activity postdating the
arrival of the Germans, and mentions neither the number of fatalities nor the
duration:
The Ukrainian police ... had played a disastrous role in Galicia
following the entry of the German troops at the end of June and the
beginning of July 1941. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance,
1989, p. 34, emphasis added)
And later in the same account, Simon Wiesenthal does mention a Lviv pogrom of three
day's duration, but again without mentioning the number of fatalities, and again
unambiguously placing it after the German occupation:
Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the
retreating Soviets. This gave rise to one of the craziest
accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic
population the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that
all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it
was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities committed
by the Soviets.
All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of
opinion. It is said that after their arrival they gave the
Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews.
(Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis
added)
Also, whereas on your 60 Minutes broadcast you gave the impression that Simon
Wiesenthal was making his appearance on 60 Minutes in the role of an eyewitness to
the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv Pogrom, or at least as a researcher who had documented it,
yet in the quotation immediately above, Simon Wiesenthal's use of "It is said that"
gives the contrasting impression that he is no more than passing along a rumor
concerning events that he has neither witnessed nor verified.
In conclusion, the Wiesenthal-Safer story of a massive pre-German Lviv pogrom is not
supported in historical writing, and is even contradicted by other testimony, some
of it leading Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg's, and some of it your own expert
witness Simon Wiesenthal's. Thus, unless you are able to substantiate the
Wiesenthal-Safer pre-German Lviv pogrom, you will invite the conclusion that it
never took place, and that your implanting it into the minds of 30 million 60
Minutes viewers constituted an attempt on the part of two individuals Simon
Wiesenthal and yourself - to fabricate a piece of history.
In Fact, the Consensus Seems to be that in
the Days Prior to German Occupation, it
was the NKVD that was Killing Ukrainians
In contrast to what appears to be a lack of substantiation of the Wiesenthal-Safer
story that in the days prior to German occupation Ukrainians were murdering Jews, I
do in my reading keep stumbling across quite a different story - that in the days
prior to German occupation, it was the NKVD that was murdering Ukrainians. Below
are 22 such statements. These statements were discovered not through any systematic
or exhaustive search, but rather only through casual reading. A systematic and
exhaustive search would turn up a much larger number of such statements.
In order to demonstrate that the NKVD had a general policy of killing Ukrainians
prior to retreating, of which the Lviv massacre was but a single instance, I include
descriptions of such killings in several locations.
"NKVD," in case you are interested, is an acronym for the Russian "Narodny
Komisariat Vnutrenikh Del," which translates as "National Commissariat of Internal
Affairs," and which bland title gives no hint of the NKVD's true role.
Please note that the block quotation immediately below is attributable to Simon
Wiesenthal, and that in it he demonstrates an awareness of the NKVD massacre of
Ukrainians, such that omitting mention of this massacre on your 23Oct94 60 Minutes
broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, must be considered not an oversight, but a
willful suppression of relevant information:
(1) Thousands of detainees were shot dead.
When the German attack came on 22 June the Soviets had no time to
take with them the people they had locked up. So they simply
killed them. Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells
by the retreating Soviets. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not
Vengeance, 1989, p. 35)
(2) The NKVD burned prisons with prisoners in them.
While the movement to the East was taking place, the NKVD carried
out mass arrests and executions, chiefly of Ukrainians - especially
those who tried to avoid evacuation. In the jails most prisoners
whose period of imprisonment was more than three years were shot;
others were evacuated if possible. In several cities the NKVD
burned prisons with prisoners in them. (Volodymyr Kubijovyc,
editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto
Press, Toronto, 1963, Volume I, p. 878, Vsevolod Holubnychy and H.
M. wrote this section)
(3) Succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political prisoners.
The Bolsheviks succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political
prisoners in Western Ukraine before and after the outbreak of
hostilities (massacres took place in the prisons in Lviv, Zolochiv,
Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, etc.). (Volodymyr Kubijovyc, editor, Ukraine:
A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto,
Volume 1, p. 886)
(4) Mainly members of the city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia.
Before fleeing the German advance the Soviet occupational regime
murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly members of the
city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume
3, p. 222)
(5) NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse.
The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for thousands
of political prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Unable to
evacuate them in time, the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en
masse during the week of 22-29 June 1941, regardless of whether
they were incarcerated for major or minor offenses. Major
massacres occurred in Lviv, Sambir, and Stanyslaviv in Galicia,
where about 10,000 prisoners died, and in Rivne and Lutsk in
Volhynia, where another 5000 perished. Coming on the heels of the
mass deportations and growing Soviet terror, these executions added
greatly to the West Ukrainians' abhorrence of the Soviets. (Orest
Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 461)
(6) Liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck.
Right after the entry we were shown 2,400 dead bodies of Ukrainians
liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck at the city jail
of Lemberg [Lviv] by the Soviets prior to their marching off.
(Hans Frank, In the Face of the Gallows, p. 406)
(7) The city stank.
In Lvov, several thousand prisoners had been held in three jails.
When the Germans arrived on 29 June, the city stank, and the
prisons were surrounded by terrified relatives. Unimaginable
atrocities had occurred inside. The prisons looked like
abattoirs. It had taken the NKVD a week to complete their gruesome
task before they fled. (Gwyneth Hughes and Simon Welfare, Red
Empire: The Forbidden History of the USSR, 1990, p. 133)
(8) Many of them were found mutilated.
We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great
number of Lemberg [Lviv] citizens, Ukrainians and Polish
inhabitants of other towns and villages had been killed in this
prison and in other prisons. Furthermore, there were many corpses
of German men and officers, among them many Air Corps officers, and
many of them were found mutilated. There was a great bitterness
and excitement among the Lemberg population against the Jewish
sector of the population. (Erwin Schulz, from May until 26
September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a subunit of
Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust:
Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982,
Volume 18, p. 18)
(9) The killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000.
On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the
killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000. It has
been determined without any doubt that the arrests and killings had
taken place under the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with
the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg. That was
the reason why there was such an excitement against the Jewish
population on the part of the Lemberg citizens. (Erwin Schulz,
from May until 26 September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a
subunit of Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The
Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New
York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18)
(10) Hardly 20% of Ukrainian intelligentsia has remained.
Chief of Einsatzgruppe B reports that Ukrainian insurrection
movements were bloodily suppressed by the NKVD on June 25, 1941 in
Lvov. About 3,000 were shot by NKVD. Prison burning. Hardly 20%
of Ukrainian intelligentsia has remained. (Operational Situation
Report USSR No. 10, July 2, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel
Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports:
Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign
Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New
York, 1989, p. 2)
(11) The corpses are dreadfully mutilated.
Location: Lvov
According to reliable information, the Russians, before
withdrawing, shot 30,000 inhabitants. The corpses piled up and
burned at the GPU prisons are dreadfully mutilated. The population
is greatly excited: 1,000 Jews have already been forcefully
gathered together. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 11, July
3, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The
Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi
Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943,
Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 4)
(12) The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered
Ukrainians.
Location: Zviahel (Novograd-Volynski)
[...]
Before leaving, the Bolsheviks, together with the Jews,
murdered several Ukrainians; as an excuse, they used the attempted
Ukrainian uprising of June 25, 1941, which tried to free their
prisoners.
According to reliable information, about 20,000 Ukrainians have
disappeared from Lvov, 80% of them belonging to the intelligentsia.
The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered
Ukrainians. According to a moderate estimate, in Lvov alone
3-4,000 persons were either killed or deported.
In Dobromil, 82 dead bodies were found, 4 of them Jews. The
latter were former Bolsheviki informers who had been killed because
of their complicity in this act. Near Dobromil an obsolete salt
mine pit was discovered. It was completely filled with dead
bodies. In the immediate neighborhood, there is a 6X15m mass
grave. The number of those murdered in the Dobromil area is
estimated to be approximately several hundred.
In Sambor on June 26, 1941, about 400 Ukrainians were shot by
the Bolsheviks. An additional 120 persons were murdered on June
27, 1941. The remaining 80 prisoners succeeded in overpowering the
Soviet guards, and fled. [...]
As early as 1939, a larger number of Ukrainians was shot, and
1,500 Ukrainians as well as 500 Poles were deported to the east.
Russians and Jews committed these murders in very cruel ways.
Bestial mutilations were daily occurrences. Breasts of women and
genitals of men were cut off. Jews have also nailed children to
the wall and then murdered them. Killing was carried out by shots
in the back of the neck. Hand grenades were frequently used for
these murders.
In Dobromil, women and men were killed with blows by a hammer
used to stun cattle before slaughter.
In many cases, the prisoners must have been tortured cruelly:
bones were broken, etc. In Sambor, the prisoners were gagged and
thus prevented from screaming during torture and murder. The Jews,
some of whom also held official positions, in addition to their
economic supremacy, and who served in the entire Bolshevik police,
were always partners in these atrocities.
Finally, it was established that seven [German] pilots who had
been captured were murdered. Three of them were found in a Russian
military hospital where they had been murdered in bed by shots in
the abdomen. [...]
[...] Prior to their withdrawal, the Bolsheviks shot 2,800 out
of 4,000 Ukrainians imprisoned in the Lutsk prison. According to
the statement of 19 Ukrainians who survived the slaughter with more
or less serious injuries, the Jews again played a decisive part in
the arrests and shooting. [...]
The investigations at Zlochev proved that the Russians, prior
to their withdrawal, arrested and murdered indiscriminately a total
of 700 Ukrainians, but, nevertheless, included the entire [local]
Ukrainian intelligentsia. (Operational Situation Report USSR No.
24, July 16, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel
Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches
of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July
1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 29-33)
(13) Ukrainians thrown into cauldrons of boiling water.
Location: Pleskau [Pskov] [...]
The population is in general convinced that it is mostly the
Jews who should be held responsible for the atrocities that are
committed everywhere. [...]
As it was learned that the Russians before they left have
either deported the Ukrainian intelligentsia, or executed them,
that is, murdered them, it is assumed that in the last days before
the retreat of the Russians, about 100 influential Ukrainians were
murdered [in Pleskau]. So far the bodies have not been found - a
search has been initiated.
About 100-150 Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians in
Kremenets. Some of these Ukrainians are said to have been thrown
into cauldrons of boiling water. This has been deduced from the
fact that the bodies were found without skin when they were
exhumed. [...]
[...] Before leaving Dubno, the Russians, as they had done in
Lvov, committed extensive mass-murder.
[...] Before their flight [from Tarnopol], as in Lvov and
Dubno, the Russians went on a rampage there. Disinterments
revealed 10 bodies of German soldiers. Almost all of them had
their hands tied behind their backs with wire. The bodies revealed
traces of extremely cruel mutilations such as gouged eyes, severed
tongues and limbs.
The number of Ukrainians who were murdered by the Russians,
among them women and children, is set finally at 600. Jews and
Poles were spared by the Russians. The Ukrainians estimate the
total number of [Tarnopol] victims since the occupation of the
Ukraine by the Russians at about 2,000. The planned deportation of
the Ukrainians already started in 1939. There is hardly a family
in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not
disappeared. [...] The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is
destroyed. Since the beginning of the war, 160 members of the
Ukrainian intelligentsia were either murdered or deported.
Inhabitants of the town had observed a column of about 1,000
civilians driven out of town by police and army early in the
morning of July 1, 1941.
As in Lvov, torture chambers were discovered in the cellars of
the Court of Justice. Apparently, hot and cold showers were also
used here (as in Lemberg [Lviv]) for torture, as several bodies
were found, totally naked, their skin burst and torn in many
places. A grate was found in another room, made of wire and set
above the ground about 1m in height, traces of ashes were found
underneath. A Ukrainian engineer, who was also to be murdered but
saved his life by smearing the blood of a dead victim over his
face, reports that one could also hear screams of pain from women
and girls. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 28, July 20,
1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The
Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi
Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943,
Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p.38-40)
(14) Had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away.
F. Fedorenko
MY TESTIMONY
When the bolsheviks retreated before the German onslaught in
the Second World War they took care in advance not to leave any
prisoners behind when the Germans arrived.
The prisoners were driven, en masse, under heavy NKVD guard
deep into Russia or Siberia, day and night. Many of them were so
tired that they could go no further. These were shot without
compunction where they fell. Terrible things happened then.
Sometimes, wives recognized their husbands among the evacuees, as
the prisoners were being driven through the villages. There was
great despair when they saw their loved ones taken under the
muzzles of automatic guns, to far, unknown places.
The villagers took care of those who did not die at once from
the NKVD bullets, but this was a very dangerous thing to do before
all the bolsheviks cleared out.
But the NKVD could not evacuate all the prisoners, there were
so many arrests, and jails were replenished constantly. In such a
case the NKVD, before making a hasty retreat, would murder the
prisoners in their cells.
I recall that when the Germans came, in the fall of 1941, to a
little town, Chornobil, on the Prypyat River, 62 miles west of
Kiev, 52 corpses of recently murdered people, slightly covered with
earth, were found in the prison yard.
These corpses had their hands tied at the back with wire; some
had their backs flayed, others had gouged eyes or nails driven into
their heels; still others had their noses, ears, tongues and even
genitals cut away. Instruments of torture which the communists
used were found in the dungeon of the prison.
Many of the tortured people were identified because they were
mostly farmers from the local collectives who had been arrested by
the NKVD for some unknown reason.
For instance, one girl (whose name I cannot recall now) from
the village of Zallissya, a mile and a quarter from Chornobil, was
arrested because one day she failed to go to dig trenches. All
were compelled at that time, to dig anti-tank trenches. The girl
was sick but there was no doctor to examine her and the NKVD
arrested her, never to return.
Two days later, when the Germans arrived, she was found among
the fifty-two corpses. (F. Fedorenko, My Testimony, in The Black
Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of
Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 97-98)
(15) Executed 180 persons.
Andriy Vodopyan
CRIME IN STALINE
In this city in the NKVD prison factory the communists executed
180 persons and buried them in two holes dug in the prison yard.
The corpses were liberally treated with unslaked lime, especially
the faces.
My brother was sentenced to three months in jail for coming
late to work. After serving 18 days in the factory prison he was
set free, and a month later was drafted to the Red Army because
this was in July 1941.
Later, his wife and my mother found him among the corpses,
identifying him by the left hand finger, underwear and papers he
had on him.
This atrocity came to light when prisoners who remained alive
were liberated. They had also a very close call. Six days before
the arrival of the German troops they heard muffled shots.
The prison was secretly mined by NKVD agents in preparation for
the German invaders. (Andriy Vodopyan, Crime in Staline, in The
Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of
Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 121)
(16) Had their breasts cut off.
Yuriy Dniprovy
INNOCENT VICTIMS
In the little town of Zolotnyky in the Ternopil region the
bolsheviks murdered a captain of the former Ukrainian Galician Army
(UHA) of 1918-1922, Mr. Dankiw, and clerks of the Ukrainian
cooperative store, the sisters Magdalene, Sophia and Clementine
Husar from the suburb of Vaha. Clementine and Magdalene were
tortured in a beastly manner and had their breasts cut off.
Other people executed at that time were: Slavko Demyd, Yosyp
Vozny, Vasyl Burbela, Zynoviy Kushniryna, Pavlo Kushniryna and a
non-commissioned officer of the UHA, Mr. Tsiholsky. (Yuriy
Dniprovy, Innocent Victims, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A
White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist
Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 122)
(17) The chopped bones and flesh of the victims fell into the sewers.
P. K.
THE INFERNAL DEVICE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS
(By an eyewitness)
In the year 1942, when the Red Army, harassed by the German
divisions, retreated from Katerynodar (Krasnodar), the regional
NKVD division evacuated all the prisoners and sent them in the
direction of Novorossiysk. The railway line between Katerynodar
and the station of Krymska was jammed by nearly two hundred freight
boxcars filled to capacity with political prisoners.
Suspecting that all these prisoners might fall into German
hands the Russian NKVD men, as a precautionary measure, poured
gasoline on the cars and let them burn.
Thus a few thousand people perished in inhuman torture merely
because they were suspected of anti-communism.
When the Germans entered Katerynodar they found in the regional
divisional building of the NKVD in Sinny Bazar, a horrible torture
chamber. In the vault of this building there was a dark passage
which ended with a wooden platform which dipped down at a sharp
angle. Right underneath it there was a machine which resembled a
straw chopper. It was a disk equipped with a system of big knives
that revolved at great speed. It was powered by a motor.
After questioning, the innocent victims were driven by the NKVD
agents towards the wooden platform and rolled under the knives of
the hellish meatchopper. The chopped bones and flesh of the
victims fell into the sewers and were carried away with a stream of
sewage into the river Kuban.
Having discovered this horrible place, the Germans gave
permission to all who wished to view this inhuman device.
Thousands of people visited the place, among them the author of
these lines.
Other nations direct their talents towards the discovery of
better medicines, new materials, better means of communication to
make living conditions better. The Russian people are using all
their talents for the production of machines and new methods of
mass murder and torture. (P. K., The infernal device of the
Russian Communists (by an eyewitness), in The Black Deeds of the
Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 123-124)
(18) Some had nails driven into their skulls.
M. Kowal
BOLSHEVIK MURDERS
I am Michael Kowal, from the town of Kaminka Strumylova in the
Lviw Region in Ukraine. During the communist occupation of Western
Ukraine I personally witnessed three arrests in my native town on
June 22, 1941, those of Bohdan Mulkevich, and Michael Mulkevich who
lived on Zamok Street, and Michael Mulkevich's blacksmith
apprentice, presumably from the village of Rymaniw in the same
Region. They were suspected of disloyalty to the communist regime.
After the communist retreat from Kaminska-Strumylova they were
found in the town prison with 33 other victims, murdered in a
horribly sadistic manner. All the corpses were tied together with
barbed wire and all bore signs of terrible beatings. Some had
nails driven into their skulls. None of them had been shot to
death. Their bodies, nude and badly mauled, were practically
unrecognizable to their relatives.
Bohdan Mulkevish's wife recognized her husband, but, trying to
verify her identification by his gold teeth, found them missing.
All the bodies were taken away for interment.
That Same day 19 other bodies were discovered near the village
of Todan about 9 or 10 kilometers from Kaminka-Strumylova. They
were tied to trees and their chests were pierced with bayonets.
These were all identified by relatives and taken away for burial.
(M. Kowal, Bolshevik Murders, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A
White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist
Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
(19) Shot the children in cold blood.
Andriy Vodopyan
A RAVINE FILLED WITH THE BODIES OF CHILDREN
I was serving in the Soviet Russian Army. Our artillery unit
was retreating before the Germans in the direction of Yeletsk. On
September 18, 1941, our unit came to a wide ravine situated about
14 miles from Chartsysk station, and about 60 miles from the city
of Staline. The ravine stretched from the station of Chartsysk to
the station of Snizhy. When we approached the ravine we were taken
aback by a horrible sight. The whole ravine was filled with the
bodies of children. They were lying in different positions. Most
of them were from 14 to 16 years of age. They were dressed in
black, and we recognized them as students of the F.S.U., a
well-known trade and craft school. We counted 370 bodies
altogether. All of them had been killed by machine gun fire.
This group of children was being evacuated from Staline when
the Germans neared the city. The children had marched 60 miles,
and, exhausted and unable to continue walking, asked for
transportation. The officers in charge promised to send them
trucks. Instead of trucks, a detachment of the Russian political
police (NKVD) arrived, and shot the children in cold blood with
machine guns. This ravine, filled with hundreds of bodies of slain
children, moved even the soldiers, accustomed as they were to the
sight of death. (Andriy Vodopyan, A Ravine Filled With the Bodies
of Children, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the
Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian
Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
(20) Throwing hand-grenades into the crowded cells.
Rev. J. Chyrva was imprisoned in 1941 when the Russian Communist armies were withdrawing from the city of Riwne. He happened to be
cast into one of those jails in which the communists, fleeing from
advancing German armies, attempted to rid themselves of as many
prisoners as possible by throwing hand-grenades into the crowded
cells. When the first grenade was thrown into the cell where Rev.
J. Chyrva was kept, he was the first to fall - his foot shattered.
On him fell many mutilated bodies, covering him, thus saving his
life. Later, when people came into the cell, they found all the
prisoners dead with the exception of Rev. J. Chyrva. He is alive
today, a witness of that horrible manslaughter. (Rev. Lev Buchak,
Persecution of Ukrainian Protestants under the Soviet Rule, in S.
O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book,
Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror,
Toronto, 1953, p. 529)
(21) Exhumed corpses were found without skin.
The Bolsheviks had arrested thousands of Ukrainian patriots, and
prior to their retreat, they killed them savagely. For some reason
even highly regarded Jewish authors understate the number of
Ukrainian victims of Bolshevik terror. Gerald Reitlinger gives a
figure of three to four thousand in Lviv alone. Hilberg speaks of
"the Bolsheviks deporting Ukrainians," but he does not furnish any
overall figures. But on the basis of a German document (RSHA
IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR no. 28, 20 July 1941, No-2943),
which I was unable to verify, he recounts one particularly horrible
episode:
In Kremenets 100-150 Ukrainians had been killed by the
Soviets. When some of the exhumed corpses were found
without skin, rumors circulated that the Ukrainians
had been thrown into kettles of boiling water. The
Ukrainian population retaliated by seizing 130 Jews
and beating them to death with clubs.
He also quotes the French collaborator Dr. Frederic as saying that
the Bolsheviks killed eighteen thousand Ukrainian political
prisoners in Lviv and its outskirts alone.
Basing his remarks on an anonymous article entitled "The
Ethnocide of Ukrainians in the USSR," in the dissident journal
Ukrainian Herald, Issue 7-8, the Ukrainian-American publicist Lew
Shankowsky gives the following number of victims of Bolshevik
terror in Galicia and Volhynia: as many as forty thousand killed in
the prisons of Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Dubno, Ternopil, Stanyslaviv
(now Ivano-Frankivsk), Stryi, Drohobych, Sambir, Zolochiv and other
towns and settlements. The fact of the matter is that, justifiably
or not, some Ukrainians felt that some Jews were in the employ of
the Stalinist secret police, the NKVD. For instance, it was
pointed out to me by a resident of Western Ukraine that a high NKVD
official in Lviv, a certain Barvinsky, was Jewish, despite his
Ukrainian name. (Yaroslav Bilinsky, Methodological Problems and
Philosophical Issues in the Study of Jewish-Ukrainian Relations
During the Second World War, pp. 373-394, in Howard Aster and Peter
J. Potichnyj (eds.), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical
Perspective, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton,
1990, footnotes deleted)
(22) From 15,000 to 40,000 prisoners were killed
In their hasty and often panic-stricken retreat, the Soviet
authorities were not about to evacuate the thousands of prisoners
they had arrested, mostly during their last months of rule in
western Ukraine. Their solution, implemented at the end of June
and in early July 1941, was to kill all inmates regardless of
whether they had committed minor or major crimes or were being held
for political reasons. According to estimates, from 15,000 to
40,000 prisoners were killed during the Soviet retreat from eastern
Galicia and western Volhynia. (Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of
Ukraine, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1996, p. 624)
However, the Membership of this NKVD was
Predominantly Jewish
What was the membership of this NKVD that we see above being so repeatedly blamed
for the massacre of Ukrainians in the days before occupation by German forces? In
my analysis of data presented by Yuri Shapoval, I arrive at the conclusion that the
senior membership in Ukraine of the organization one of whose names became the NKVD
was as follows:
Out of every 10 senior members of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine:
6 were Jewish,
2 were Russian,
1 was Ukrainian, and
1 was other.
Statements made by others support the conclusion that the NKVD was predominantly a
Jewish organization. For example, Yoram Sheftel, Ivan Demjanjuk's Israeli defense
attorney, reports that in connection with his visit to the Simferopol, Ukraine, KGB
headquarters in 1990, a plaque memorializing the "KGB" dead of the war showed that
all thirty of the thirty names were Jewish:
On the right-hand wall was a stone memorial plaque engraved with
the names of about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in
the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets call World War II. I was
shocked and angry as I read the names: the first was Polonski and
the last Levinstein, and all those between were ones like
Zalmonowitz, Geller and Kagan - all Jews. The best of Jewish youth
in Russia, the cradle of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to
the Red Devil. (The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a
Show-Trial, Victor Gollancz, London, 1994, p. 301)
Of course Sheftel's sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative
of the entire NKVD in Ukraine; however the Jewish domination of the entire NKVD is
not a rare or dubious hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than
one direction:
As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were
there so many Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators - including
many of the most terrible? It's a painful question for me but I
cannot evade it. (Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The
KGB and its Hold on Russia, Past, Present and Future, 1994, p. 147)
Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery
especially in the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and
the NKVD.... It is difficult to suggest a satisfactory reason for
the prevalence of Jews in the Cheka. It may be that having
suffered at the hand of the former Russian authorities they wanted
to seize the reins of real power in the new state for themselves.
(Leonard Shapiro, The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary
Movement, Slavonic and East European Review, 1961, 40, p. 165)
But if in the pre-German interval Ukrainians were being killed by the NKVD, and if
the NKVD was disproportionately, or even overwhelmingly, Jewish, then one might
summarize by saying that in the pre-German interval, Ukrainians were being killed by
Jews.
I Expand My Summary Table Once Again
The table which I have been developing in my letters to you of 30Jun99 and 01Jul99
can now be elaborated with the uppermost entry:
Date of my letter
Subject of my letter
Date of Attack
Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom
04Jul99
The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny
Summer 1941
15May99
Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk?
April 1979
30Jun99
Who murdered Vadim Boyko?
February 14, 1992
Violence that you might have caused by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom
09Apr99
Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko?
Summer 1995
17May99
Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?
July 7-8, 1997
01Jul99
Who murdered Borys Derevyanko?
August 11, 1997
The new "The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny" entry in the table above is of particular
importance not only because of the large number of victims involved, but also
because it demonstrates your going beyond the fault of overlooking Ukrainians being
victimized, to the greater fault of replacing the real killing of a large number of
Ukrainians by Jews with an imaginary killing of a large number of Jews by
Ukrainians.
And I Find My Earlier Conclusions
Strengthened
What a convincing broadcast your The Ugly Face of Freedom would have been if all the
instances in the above table had been ones of Jews or Russians being tortured and
mutilated and murdered by Ukrainians, instead of the other way around! However, in
your broadcast you documented not a single such story featuring Ukrainians