ГУЛаг Палестины - Лев Гунин

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)

The question that I would be interested in hearing your views on, then, Mr.

Wiesenthal, is whether the assertion you made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face

of Freedom of October 23, 1994 may have been diametrically opposite to the truth

specifically, that whereas you held out that during the interval prior to the

occupation of Lviv by German forces Ukrainians were slaughtering Jews by the thousands,

in reality during this same interval it may have been closer to the truth to say that

Jews were slaughtering Ukrainians by the thousands.

Sincerely yours,

Lubomyr Prytulak

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Wiesenthal Letter 21 Sep 14/97 Altered dates of death

September 14, 1997

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

In connection with the possibility of a massive, pre-German Lviv pogrom, Morley

Safer (in his 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994)

inserted into the pre-German interval two events which gave the viewer the impression

that the pre-German pogrom in question was well-documented and incapable of being

doubted: (1) the arrest of your mother, and (2) the shooting of your mother-in-law:

SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian militia,

the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here.

LUBACHIVSKY: It is not true!

SAFER: It's horribly true to Simon Wiesenthal - like thousands of Lvov

Jews, his mother was led to her death by the Ukrainian police.

These are remnants of a film the Germans made of Ukrainian

brutality. The German high command described the Ukrainian behavior as

'praiseworthy.'

WIESENTHAL: My wife's mother was shot to death because she could not go

so fast.

SAFER: She couldn't keep up with the rest of the prisoners.

WIESENTHAL. Yes. She was shot to death by a Ukrainian policeman

because she couldn't walk fast.

SAFER: It was the Lvov experience that compelled Wiesenthal to seek out

the guilty, to bring justice.

The above passage starts by mentioning Lviv prior to arrival of the Germans, and it

ends with a reference to "the Lvov experience," which invites the viewer to imagine

that the events bracketed in Mr. Safer's discourse by these two references happened

during that same pre-German interval. Specifically, Mr. Safer gives the distinct and

unmistakable impression that the pre-German anti-Jewish activities on the part of

Ukrainians cannot be doubted because among the events that occurred during these

activities were the arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law.

However, examining your biographies for confirmation of these two events - the

arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law - turns up the following

(it will help at this point to recollect that Lviv was occupied by the Germans on June

30, 1941):

In August [1942] the SS was loading elderly Jewish women into a goods

truck at Lvov station. One of them was Simon Wiesenthal's mother, then

sixty-three. ... His wife's mother was shortly afterwards shot dead

by a Ukrainian police auxiliary on the steps of her house. (Peter

Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.

8)

"My mother was in August 1942 taken by a Ukrainian policeman," Simon

says, lapsing swiftly into the present tense as immediacy takes hold.

... Around the same time, Cyla Wiesenthal [Mr. Wiesenthal's wife]

learned that, back in Buczacz, her mother had been shot to death by a

Ukrainian policeman as she was being evicted from her home. (Alan

Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 41)

We see, therefore, that Morley Safer seems to have advanced the date of arrest of your

mother as well as the shooting of your mother-in-law by more than a year in order to

lend credibility to the claim of Ukrainian-initiated actions against Jews prior to the

German occupation of Lviv.

As this error appears to be Mr. Safer's and not your own, I do not ask you to

account for it. However, I do ask if you at any time subsequent to the 60 Minutes

broadcast became aware of Mr. Safer's error, and if so, if you as a result asked him to

issue a correction?

Also, if you are only now for the first time learning of Mr. Safer's error, I

wonder if you could tell me if you now intend to ask Mr. Safer to issue a correction?

Sincerely yours,

Lubomyr Prytulak

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Wiesenthal Letter 23 Sep 23/97 The pious executioners

September 23, 1997

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

I wonder if you are aware that during the German occupation of Lviv, the Greek

Catholic church, headed by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, was courageous and outspoken

in defense of Jews? Here are four quotations which provide some details as to the role

played by Sheptytsky, and which demonstrate that this role is widely acknowledged:

There is little doubt as to the almost saintly role of Ukrainian

(Greek) Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Sheptytsky,

Archbishop of L'viv and head of the church, was widely known as being

sympathetic to the Jews. ... The elderly metropolitan wrote directly

to SS commander Heinrich Himmler in the winter of 1942 demanding an end

to the final solution and, equally important to him, an end to the use

of Ukrainian militia and police in anti-Jewish action. His letter

elicited a sharp rebuke, but Sheptytsky persisted even though the death

penalty was threatened to those who gave comfort to Jews. In November

1942 he issued a pastoral letter to be read in all churches under his

authority. It condemned murder. Although Jews were not specifically

mentioned, his intent was crystal clear.

We can never know how many Ukrainians were moved by Sheptytsky's

appeal. Certainly the church set an example. With Sheptytsky's tacit

approval, his church hid a number of Jews throughout western Ukraine,

150 Jews alone in and around his L'viv headquarters. Perhaps some of

his parishioners were among those brave and precious few "righteous

gentiles" who risked an automatic death penalty for themselves and

their families by harbouring a Jew under their roof.

The towering humanity of Sheptytsky remains an inspiration today.

(Harold Troper Morton Weinfeld, Old Wounds, 1988, pp. 17-18)

He [Sheptytsky] dispatched a lengthy handwritten letter dated August

29-31, 1942 to the Pope, in which he referred to the government of the

German occupants as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical

than that of the Bolsheviks. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims,

Bystanders, 1992, p. 267)

One of those saved by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was Lviv's Rabbi

Kahane whose son is currently the marshal commander of the Israeli Air

Force. (Ukrainian Weekly, June 21, 1992, p. 9)

Sheptitsky himself hid fifteen Jews, including Rabbi Kahane, in his own

residence in Lvov, a building frequently visited by German officials.

(Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 410)

However, despite the widespread agreement that the Catholic church headed by

Sheptytsky was outspoken and courageous in its defense of Jews, you have consistently

portrayed Christianity in general, and the Catholic church in Lviv in 1941 in

particular, as being virulently anti-Semitic. I refer, for example, to your fable of

the alcoholic priest in Western Ukraine who incites a pogrom (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal

File, 1993, p. 24), which fable I have already brought to your attention in my letter

to you of December 8, 1994; and I refer as well to your story of the Ukrainians who you

say almost executed you:

As the shots and shouts of the boisterous Ukrainians drew closer to

Wiesenthal, he heard a new sound: church bells. The Ukrainians heard

it, too. Good Orthodox Catholics all, they laid down their arms for

evening mass.

Wiesenthal and his friend had stood five or six bullets away from

extinction. (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, Constable, London, 1993,

p. 36)

Now if it is the case as we have just seen above that the Catholic church

unambiguously and unequivocally stood for the defense of Jews, then we would expect

devout Catholics to not be among the executioners of Jews. Conversely, given that

someone is among the executioners of Jews, we would expect him not to be a devout

Catholic. Your portrayal of sadistic executioners as being simultaneously devout

Catholics is incongruous and elicits incredulity.

But your story goes beyond the incongruous to the grotesque. You portray a team

of executioners who have been repeatedly drinking vodka - and may therefore be depicted

as drunk. You say that they have also just been shooting prisoners in the back of the

neck, and then lifting the bodies from the floor and placing them into makeshift

coffins - therefore, the executioners are also covered with blood. Assuming that these

executioners did not have a place to shower and had not brought with them a change of

clothing, and assuming that the church bells are signaling the imminent commencement of

mass so as not to leave time for showering and changing, then I have trouble conjuring

up a credible image of these executioners arriving at the church for mass. To accept

your image requires us to accept that the appearance of drunk and blood-spattered

executioners at a mass would not attract notice and repugnance - a supposition which is

erroneous and offensive. And it requires us also to accept that the mind set of

executioners engaged in genocide is so similar to Christians engaged in devotion, that

they make the transition instantaneously and seamlessly - another supposition which is

erroneous and offensive.

Mr. Wiesenthal, I entreat you to either explain and defend your bizarre story, or

else to withdraw it.

Yours truly,

Lubomyr Prytulak

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Wiesenthal Letter 24 Jan 18/98 Reversing victim and victimizer

The caption at the top of the photographs shown below is from LIFE magazine, 11Jun45, p. 50. The caption in German

and Latin at the bottom of the Simon Wiesenthal drawing below was, of course, included with the drawing in Simon

Wiesenthal's KZ Mauthausen, 1946, p. 64. This caption says:

The Gallows

The Marquis de Sade would have been in ecstasy if he could have seen the gallows in a

KZ [concentration camp]. His faithful successors the SS-hangmen had daily execution

fever. It provided some variety, beyond the eternal, monotonous shootings and

beatings. Something one could photograph with pleasure. They placed bets for rounds

of beer on how long the offender could hold out. He must not die too quickly. When

he threatened that, he was bound, and when he had somewhat recovered, it continued

... to the greater glory of the devil!

I refer to Simon Wiesenthal's drawing as a "1946" drawing because that was the date of publication of the book in

which the drawing appeared. A reader using a recent version of a NetScape browser can click here to be taken to a

discussion of the Lviv pogrom referred to in the letter below. A reader using an Internet Explorer browser can go to

the top of the page which contains that discussion by clicking here, and once on that page, can click "What happened

in Lviv?" to arrive at the same discussion of the Lviv pogrom.

January 18, 1998

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

In the course of the October 24, 1993 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, you leveled the accusation,

echoed by Morley Safer, that immediately prior to the occupation of Lviv by German forces in 1941, Ukrainians killed

some 5 to 6 thousand Jews. I have already brought to your attention evidence that your accusation is unfounded, and

that the more likely reality is that during approximately that same interval, the NKVD - dominated by Jews - killed

approximately that same number of Ukrainians. This evidence was presented to you in five letters, dated September 8,

9, 12, 13, and 14, 1997.

That the NKVD was dominated by Jews is not an irrelevancy which I am introducing gratuitously, but, rather, is germane

in that it offers a motive for your reversal of the truth. That is, it is possible that your reason for falsely

portraying Ukrainians killing Jews is to cover up the reality that Jews were killing Ukrainians, and to make any claim

on behalf of the latter seem implausible should it ever be put forward.

What I ask you in the present letter is whether you had not begun a comparable reversing of victim and victimizer

earlier in your career - almost five decades earlier, as a matter of fact - and on a smaller scale?

Specifically, I am enclosing copies of two similar, and yet contrasting, images:

Three LIFE magazine photographs, 1945

Enclosed you will find a photocopy of three photographs from LIFE magazine (June 11, 1945, p. 50) which appear at the

end of a photo essay titled "FIRING SQUAD: Army executes three German spies who were caught in U.S. uniforms." The

story appears on three pages - 47, 48, and 50. There are a total of nine, mutually-consistent photographs in the

essay. The first paragraph of the story is: