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whip like the negroes." (Andrew Gregorovich, World War II in Ukraine, Forum,
No. 92, Spring 1995, p. 15)
If Morley Safer wishes to proclaim to the 60 Minutes audience that Ukrainians were enthusiastic
Nazis, then he should simultaneously explain how Ukrainians were able to maintain their
enthusiasm as 2.3 million of them were being shipped off to forced labor in Germany:
By early 1942, Koch's police had to stage massive manhunts, rounding up young
Ukrainians in bazaars or as they emerged from churches or cinemas and shipping
them to Germany. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 469)
If Morley Safer insists on a
then he should explain to these viewers how Ukrainians were able to maintain their devotion when
the Kiev soccer team - Dynamo - beat German teams five games in a row, and then received the
German reward:
Most of the team members were arrested and executed in Babyn Yar, but they are
not forgotten. There is a monument to them in Kiev and their heroism inspired
the film Victory starring Sylvester Stallone and Pele. (Andrew Gregorovich,
World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring 1995, p. 21)
If Morley Safer will not swerve from his position that Ukrainians were keen on Naziism, then he
should explain how Ukrainians were able to maintain their kee
starved:
Koch drastically limited the flow of foodstuffs into the cities, arguing that
Ukrainian urban centers were basically useless. In the long run, the Nazis
intended to transform Ukraine into a totally agrarian country and, in the short
run, Germany needed the food that Ukrainian urban dwellers consumed. As a
result, starvation became commonplace and many urban dwellers were forced to
move to the countryside. Kiev, for example, lost about 60% of its population.
Kharkiv, which had a population of 700,000 when the Germans arrived, saw
120,000 of its inhabitants shipped to Germany as laborers; 30,000 were executed
and about 80,000 starved to death.... (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History,
1994, p. 469)
Among the first actions of the Nazis upon occupying a new city was to plunder it of its
intellectual and cultural treasures, material as well as human, and yet somehow - if we are to
believe Morley Safer - being so plundered failed to dampen the enthusiasm of the Ukrainians for
Naziism:
Co. 4 in which I was employed seized in Kiev the library of the medical
research institute. All equipment, scientific staff, documentation and books
were shipped out to Germany.
We appropriated rich trophies in the library of the Ukrainian Academy of
Sciences which possessed singular manuscripts of Persian, Abyssinian and
Chinese writings, Russian and Ukrainian chronicles, incunabula by the first
printer Ivan Fedorov, and rare editions of Shevchenko, Mickiewicz, and Ivan
Franko.
Expropriated and sent to Berlin were many exhibits from Kiev's Museums of
Ukrainian Art, Russian Art, Western and Oriental Art and the Taras Shevchenko
Museum.
As soon as the troops seize a big city, there arrive in their wake team
leaders with all kinds of specialists to scan museums, art galleries,
exhibitions, cultural and art institutions, evaluate their state and
expropriate everything of value. (Report by SS-Oberstrumfuehrer Ferster,
November 10, 1942, in Kondufor, History Teaches a Lesson, p. 176, in Andrew
Gregorovich, World War II in Ukraine, Forum, No. 92, Spring, 1995, p. 23)
Only genetic programming could explain how - according to Morley Safer anyway - Ukrainians could
have been among the most loyal of Nazis when their intelligentsia were being decimated and they
were being treated as Untermenschen:
Heinrich Himmler, the chief of the SS, proposed that "the entire Ukrainian
intelligentsia should be decimated." Koch believed that three years of grade
school was more than enough education for Ukrainians. He even went so far as
to curtail medical services in order to undermine "the biological power of the
Ukrainians." German-only shops, restaurants, and sections of trolley cars were
established to emphasize the superiority of the Germans and the racial
inferiority of the Ukrainian Untermenschen. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A
History, 1994, p. 469)
There must not be a more advanced education for the non-German population
of the east than four years of primary school.
This primary education has the following objective only: doing simple
arithmetic up to 500, writing one's name, learning that it was God's command
that the Germans must be obeyed, and that one had to be honest, diligent, and
obedient. I don't consider reading skills necessary. Except for this school,
no other kind of school must be allowed in the east....
The [remaining inferior] population will be at our call as a slave people
without leaders, and each year will provide Germany with migrant workers and
workers for special projects ... and, while themselves lacking all culture,
they will be called upon under the strict, purposeful, and just rule of the
German nation to contribute to [Germany's] eternal cultural achievements and
monuments.... (Himmler, May 1941, in Ha
History of Germany, 1914-1945, Oxford University Press, New York, 1964, p. 263)
The notion proposed by 60 Minutes that Ukrainians were as one with the Nazis - or if we are to
believe Mr. Safer, more Nazi than the Nazis themselves - is a colossal fiction based on colossal
prejudice:
A graphic indication of the extremes of Nazi brutality experienced in Ukraine
was that for one village that was destroyed and its inhabitants executed in
France and Czechoslovakia, 250 villages and their inhabitants suffered such a
fate in Ukraine. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, pp. 479-480)
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division
Quality of Translation
Ukrainian Homogeneity
Were Ukrainians Nazis?
Simon Wiesenthal
What Happened in Lviv?
Nazi Propaganda Film
Collective Guilt
Paralysis of the Comparative
Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
Simon Wiesenthal
Discovered Under the Floorboards
In reading Simon Wiesenthal's biography, one ca
this account of how he was discovered underneath the floorboards:
In early June 1944, during a drinking bout in a neighbouring house, a chief
inspector of the German railways was beaten and robbed by his Polish
companions. A house-to-house police search was ordered. Simon reburied
himself several times and was in his makeshift coffin on Tuesday, 13 June 1944,
when more than eight months of cramped and perilous "freedom" came to an end.
As the Gestapo entered the courtyard of the house, the Polish partisans fled,
leaving Wiesenthal trapped beneath the earth "in a position where I couldn't
even make use of my weapon." (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, pp. 52-53)
To remember not only that it was the 13th of June, but that it was a Tuesday - how impressive!
And how appropriate that Mr. Wiesenthal be credited with a photographic memory:
He is helped by his phenomenal memory: Wiesenthal is able to quote telephone