ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

the Park Avenue Synagogue. The letter is reprinted here with the permission of Rabbi Lincoln, who last year traveled

to western Ukraine.

Park Avenue Synagogue

50 East 87 Street

New York, N.Y. 10125

Mr. Jeffrey Fager, Producer

CBS "60 Minutes"

524 West 57th Street

New York, NY 10019

Dear Sir:

I feel that your program on Lviv and Ukrainians was most unfair.

To show boy scouts and say they are Nazis marching, to translate "Zhyd" as kike (in western Ukraine Zhyd is the

word for Jew), to infer that the word for nation - "natsiya" - might mean Nazi etc., etc. - is most upsetting to many

of us who know today's Ukraine.

It really is time for us to enjoy the resurgence of Jewish life in Ukraine after the horrors of the German

occupation and communism, and to appreciate the heroic efforts of the Ukrainian people and government to assist the

Jewish community in all their endeavors.

The history of Jewish-Ukrainian relations often tragic is a complicated one, but you would have done well to have

informed the public of the better aspects of those contacts. For instance, Ukraine was the sole independent nation

that had complete Jewish national autonomy (1917) and had Yiddish-speaking ministers in the government representing

the rights of minorities.

Today, when Russian Jews send their children to Ukraine for safe keeping in times of danger, no good can come

from distortions such as those portrayed in your program.

Yours faithfully,

Rabbi David H. Lincoln

HOME DISINFORMATION POLAND 8359 hits since 04-Feb-1998

Jerzy Kosinski: Grand Calumniator of Poland

Jerzy Kosinski

who the world understood to have been To Hell and Back

The Audie Murphy of the Holocaust

turned out to be little better than the

Grand Calumniator of Poland

Holocaust Witness Jerzy Kosinski

Jerzy Kosinski was once to Poland what Simon Wiesenthal is today to Ukraine. Jerzy Kosinski was the grand calumniator of Poland;

Simon Wiesenthal is the grand calumniator of Ukraine. The Poles have been successful in discrediting their grand calumniator; the Ukrainians

are too timid to attempt to discredit Simon Wiesenthal. The present web page is dedicated to understanding Jerzy Kosinski, to

congratulating the Poles, and to giving courage to Ukrainians.

Who was Jerzy Kosinski? Jerzy Kosinski was born Jerzy Lewinkopf to Mojzesz (Moses) Lewinkopf and Elzbieta Lewinkopf (maiden name

Elzbieta Wanda Weinreich). Six significant dates in Jerzy Kosinski's life were:

1933 born in Lodz, Poland

1959 entered USA on a student visa

1960 published The Future is Ours, Comrade, under pseudonym Joseph Novak

1968 won the National Book Award for The Painted Bird

1982 veracity challenged in Village Voice article, "Jerzy Kosinski's Tainted Words"

1991 committed suicide

Biographer James Park Sloan

I quote from two sources by the same author. I quote below from two sources, both written by James Park Sloan: (1) the magazine

article, Kosinski's War, The New Yorker, October 10, 1994; and (2) the book, Jerzy Kosinski: A Biography, Dutton, United States, 1996. The

first source provides the first two excerpts below, in blue, which by themselves present the chief features of the Kosinski story. The reader

interested only in a broad outline need not read beyond these first two quotations. The second source provides a number of further

excerpts shown in green, which serve to flesh in a fuller picture. The analogy to Audie Murphy in the above title was taken from p. 227 of

this second source. Audie Murphy was the most decorated American soldier in WW II who went on to become a movie star, and played

himself in the autobiographical war film, To Hell and Back.

Who is James Park Sloan? The dust jacket of the Sloan book informs us of the following:

JAMES PARK SLOAN is a professor of English at the University of Illinois at Chicago, a prize-winning

novelist, and a widely published short story writer and critic. He knew Jerzy Kosinski for over twenty years

before Kosinski's death.

A Personal Experience

I recollect, by the way, many years ago talking to a New York Jewish lawyer about Kosinski's book The Painted Bird, partly on the basis of

which this lawyer held the deep conviction that Poles were pretty close to sub-human. When he told me about Kosinski's description of

eyeballs being torn out as an incident that would not be clearly out of place in a Polish household, I replied - to his discomfort - that such

a scene would be about as typical in a Polish household as it would be in an American one. When I added that the only Poles that I had ever

known were intelligent, civilized, and cultured he did not reply, but his manner suggested that I had told him something that was a patent

impossibility.

What's the Relevance?

Why is so much attention given to Jerzy Kosinski below, even to the point of touching on his sexual deviance and other character defects?

As already mentioned above, Kosinski provides a precedent of a calumniator of a Slavic peoples who has been successfully and thoroughly

discredited, and whose example thus may give Ukrainians courage to similarly discredit their many calumniators, chief among whom is Simon

Wiesenthal. Beyond that, however, the Kosinski biography provides unusually detailed information which brings to the fore several

generalizations which may assist in the understanding of the phenomenon of anti-Ukrainian calumny.

The Gang of Ten

Let us begin. Heading the list of anti-Ukrainian calumniators are the following nine: Yitzhak Arad, Dov Ben-Meir, Yaakov Bleich, Alan

Dershowitz, Sol Littman, Morley Safer, Neal Sher, Elie Wiesel, and Simon Wiesenthal. If we expand this list to include prominent calumniators

of Slavs, Jerzy Kosinski makes it a list of ten. In order to express my disapproval of these individuals, and in order to encourage in Slavs in

general, and in Ukrainians in particular, an attitude of bold intolerance toward their misdeeds, I propose that they be called "the gang of ten,"

as I myself do below.

Incidentally, the link to Sol Littman above will take the reader to the very section in "The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes" that deals with Littman,

but only when using a Netscape browser - readers relying on other browsers will have to use CTRL+F to get down to the section titled "Sol

Littman's Mengele Scare."

Examining the gang of ten, it is possible to arrive at several generalizations, the chief of which may be the following:

(1) The gang of ten is Jewish. One notices immediately that all ten of these calumniators of the Slavs are Jewish. This

observation reminds us that in examining those who were responsible for the 23Oct94 60 Minutes story, The Ugly Face of Freedom, seven

out of seven of those in the chain of command proved to be Jews (three being common to both lists).

But are there any non-Jewish calumniators? Of course there are, and where I find them, I impartially include them on the Ukrainian Archive.

Trouble is, I don't find many, and their calumniation does not rank as high. One of these is University of Toronto historian Robert Magocsi,

and another is Harvard University historian Omeljan Pritsak. Offhand, I can't think of any others. But while Magocsi and Pritsak distort, they

cannot compare with any of the gang of ten (or with any of the CBS gang of seven). The really egregious calumniation comes only from

Jews.

Henryk Sienkiewicz. Henryk Sienkiewicz (among my favorite novelists for his Quo Vadis) comes to mind as a Polish calumniator of Ukraine

(in his novel about Bohdan Khmelnytsky, With Fire and Sword), but he is not discussed on the Ukrainian Archive primarily because he is not

contemporary, and also because, like Magocsi and Pritsak, he is more subtle. The Ukrainian Archive restricts attention to contemporaries

whose calumniation is egregious.

The Ukrainian archive does not focus on Jews. It has been more than once remarked that the Ukrainian Archive focuses on Jews, which

is incorrect - which is no more than an additional calumniation of Ukrainians. The truth is that the Ukrainian Archive focuses on

calumniators, and it incidentally happens that the chief of these are Jews. If the leading calumniators of Ukraine had proven to be Czechs or

Poles or Romanians or Hungarians or Russians or Germans or Armenians or Iranians or Palestinians or Chinese or whatever, I would have

impartially and disinterestedly featured them instead of Jews. If someone can bring to my attention prominent contemporary non-Jewish

calumniators of Ukraine that I have been overlooking, I will gladly give them generous representation on the Ukrainian Archive, and if such

non-Jewish calumniators overwhelm the Jewish calumniators by their numbers, then all the better. The prominence of Jews on the Ukrainian

Archive is not to be explained by looking into my psyche, it is to be explained by examining the characteristics of calumniators of Ukraine. It

is not for me to justify why Jews appear so frequently on the pages of the Ukrainian Archive, it is for Jews to explain why no Gentiles can be

found whose anti-Slavic calumnies are able to compete with those of the Jews in the gang of ten (or with those of the Jews in the CBS gang

of seven).

(2) The gang of ten is prominent. One notices too that these are not ten obscure Jews, but highly placed ones. Their

names are recognizable. They constitute a Jewish leadership. They hold high office within the Jewish community, or within society

generally. Two have been spoken of as candidates for Nobel prizes. They frequently appear on television or are quoted in the media or are

cited in the discussion of Jewish affairs. Perhaps the only other Jews who equal or exceed them in prominence fall into three categories: (i)

Jews functioning in a non-Jewish capacity, as for example musicians and scientists; (ii) North American Jewish politicians, particularly

Congressmen, Senators, or Mayors in the United States, but again functioning only in small part as Jewish representatives; and (iii) Israeli

politicians and military leaders. However, restricting our attention to Jews who live in, or who are influential in, North America, and to those

who appear expressly as representatives of Jewish interests, the gang of ten constitutes a dominant clan. They set the agenda for

Jewish-Slavic dialogue. Even the one who lives in Austria (Simon Wiesenthal), and the two who live in Israel (Yitzhak Arad and Dov

Ben-Meir), are able to make their presence felt in North America either during their visits, or in being covered by the media, or by means of

their court room testimony either in Israel or in North America. American Jews such as Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein are also highly

prominent, and do speak on Jewish affairs, but speak primarily of the State of Israel, and - unfortunately - have little to say about the

Slavic world. Overwhelmingly, the Jews who step forward to speak on the Slavs do so only to calumniate. Whereas individual Jews have

occasionally stepped forward to defend Ukrainians, I know of none who does so on an ongoing basis the way that the gang of ten defames

Ukrainians on an ongoing basis.

Raul Hilberg. Jewish historian Raul Hilberg deserves mention as falling in a class by himself. I do not agree with everything he says, but in

cases where I disagree, I do not regard Hilberg as guilty of calumny, but only as falling within the range of responsible but divergent opinion

which is to be expected upon any historical question. Raul Hilberg has amply demonstrated that he is ready to be guided by the evidence to

conclusions without regard to whether they are palatable to Jews or Germans or Ukrainians or other involved parties.

(3) The gang of ten is typified by deception. I understand calumniation to mean damaging utterances characterized

by untruth. An utterance that is true, I do not characterize as calumny no matter how damaging. To not mince words, then, the gang of

ten is a pack of liars. The most fantastic, the most childish, the most palpably untrue statements spew from their lips in profusion, as is

amply documented on the Ukrainian Archive. They suppress evidence, they create historical events out of thin air, they contradict

themselves from one recitation to the next.

(4) The gang of ten enjoys impunity for lying. When the deceptions of any of these calumniators are brought to

their attention, or to public attention, the refutations are ignored. The ten calumniators appear to be able to say whatever untruths they

want with little fear of punishment or censure or even embarrassment. They rarely have to correct their misstatements, or to retract them,

or to apologize for them. Of the ten, only Jerzy Kosinski has lost his impunity, but he did nevertheless enjoy a large measure of impunity over

many years of his professional calumniation. The generalization, therefore, is not that the gang of ten enjoy absolute and permanent

impunity, but only that they enjoy surprising measures of impunity over surprising intervals of time.

(5) The gang of ten is typified by modest intellectual capacity. On the whole, the members of the gang of

ten have the minds of children. This is demonstrated primarily in their lying which is primitive and palpable, and which is not merely

occasional, but which permeates their thinking. On top of that, their speech and their writing tends to be illogical to the point of

incoherence. They are strangers to the ideal of being constrained by logic. They don't know the facts, and they don't rely on facts. In not

a single case have I come across anything any of them might have said or written touching on Ukrainian-Jewish relations that one would be

forced to admire - or so much as respect - for its reasoning or its data or its expression. Given their prominence and their power, their

academic and intellectual accomplishments, on the whole, are unimpressive. The bulk of their writing would get C's or worse if submitted in

freshman courses in history or political science or journalism. The only one of the ten to achieve an unambiguous distinction outside his

calumniation activities is Alan Dershowitz - Harvard law professor, media star, defender of O. J. Simpson. He alone among the ten must be

acknowledged to have substantial academic qualifications and to show flashes of intelligence and wit. However, restricting myself to his

statements on Ukrainians or Palestinians, I find Dershowitz's thinking fully as primitive and as childishly self-serving and as duplicitous as that