ГУЛаг Палестины

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 co

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 Eichma

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

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 ca

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)

More recently, I have compiled statistics from data presented by Shapoval which suggests that

out of every ten leading members of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine, 6 were Jewish, 2 Russian, 1

Ukrainian, and 1 other.

Now within this historical context - the Ukrainian Holocaust eight years previously, the

21-month Communist reign of terror, and the recent slaughter of Ukrainians by the retreating

Communists - would it be surprising if upon the arrival of the Germans, these Western Ukrainians

had felt liberated by the Germans and at the same time vengeful toward the Communists, and would

it be surprising if among their first actions was the seeking out and punishment of any

perpetrators and collaborators who had not been able to flee with the retreating Communists?

No, it would not be surprising - and yet that is not what happened.

Zero Retribution

Prior to the arrival of the Germans, there was no anti-Jewish or anti-Communist violence. If

any impulse for vengeance existed, then it was inhibited - the Ukrainian population had been

decimated, deprived of its leadership, throttled into submission. For all they knew, the

Communists who had just left might return that very same day and resume the slaughter, starting

first with any who had dared to lift a vengeful hand. For all they knew, this was just the calm

before a new storm, just a few hours' respite while names were taken for the next round of NKVD

executions. And the last person to lift a hand against would be a Jew because the Jew had

traditionally occupied the position of authority:

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 picture painted by Raul Hilberg is not at all the one of Ukrainians enthusiastically

slaughtering Jews that was painted by Morley Safer in his 60 Minutes broadcast:

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)