ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

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)

Andriy Vodopyan

CRIME IN STALINE

In this ciy 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)

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 breats 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)

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)

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 th 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 fro 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)

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)

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)

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)

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)

Was the Ukrainian perception of disproportionate Jewish participation in the Soviet secret

police accurate? Observations such as the following suggest that perhaps it was: Yoram Sheftel,

Ivan Demjanjuk's Israeli defense attorney, reports the following in connection with his visit to

the Simferopol, Ukraine, KGB headquarters in 1990:

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

about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in the Great Patriotic War,

as the Soviets call World War II. I was shocked and angry as I read the names:

the first was Polonski and the last Levinstein, and all those between were ones

like Zalmonowitz, Geller and Kagan - all Jews. The best of Jewish youth in

Russia, the cradle of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to the Red Devil.

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

Curious wording, incidentally. In the eyes of Sheftel, this plaque does not list torturers and

butchers, it lists "youth." These torturers and butchers are not chosen from the "worst" of

Jews, but from the "best." And whereas a Ukrainian might tend to the view that the members of

the NKVD were the Red Devil, Sheftel views them as merely having sold their souls to some

hypothetical Red Devil residing elsewhere. Sheftel, it seems, extends his sympathy not to the

victims of the torturers and butchers, but to the torturers and butchers themselves, who after

all are merely "the best of Jewish youth" led astray by some "Red Devil" - in other words, to be

viewed not as falling among the victimizers, but among the victims. I suppose that there exist

even today apologists who might speak of Adolf Eichmann as an instance of the best of German

youth who had sold his soul to the Nazi Devil.

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

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