Страница 207 из 340
Raul Hilberg is not the only historian testifying to the fact that the Einsatzgruppen organized
and instigated the pogroms, and that they were disappointed by the results. Leo Heiman below,
for example, reaffirms this, and adds the detail that the pogromists had a short attention span
with respect to the German-inspired motive of anti-Semitism, being instead readily diverted by
"looting and plunder." "Lemberg," of course, is Lviv:
The results of diligent Nazi efforts to organize "Ukrainian pogrom mobs" were
disappointing.... According to official German documents introduced by the
prosecution during the Eichma
"Kommando Lemberg" complained to his superiors that "...to rely on local people
to take the law of retribution in their own hands, and themselves carry out
final solution measures against Jews, is hopeless. We organized several action
groups, but they soon degenerated into ordinary pogrom mobs, more interested in
looting and plunder than in energetic and forceful measures against Jews. The
number of Jews eliminated by mobs runs less than two thousand in my area of
operations, and the damage done by mobs to property, as well as the disruption
of order, does not justify this kind of action. I have no choice but to employ
my own men." (Leo Heiman, Ukrainians and the Jews, in Walter Dushnyck,
Ukrainians and Jews: A Symposium, The Ukrainian Congress Committee of American,
New York, 1966, p. 60)
In reading the above Einsatzgruppe report, many question come to mind. Just how would a pogrom
mob be organized? - Might it be staffed entirely by criminals held in custody by the Germans?
What weapons would be given the pogromists? Would it be safe to give incarcerated criminals
weapons and then to release them on their own recognisance? Obviously, they would tend to
escape and then, being armed, would be particularly dangerous to recapture. Wouldn't armed
Germans have to accompany the pogromists in order to steer them to the proper targets, to keep
them from getting out of control, and to make sure that weapons were returned? - In which case,
how much of the killing would be done by the supervising Germans? What was the ethnic
composition of these pogromists? Above I cited Raul Hilberg stating "Only the ethnic Germans in
the area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe," which brings us to the realization that a
pogrom within Ukraine is not necessarily a pogrom perpetrated by Ukrainians, and so brings us
also to the question of how many of the pogromists were Germans, Russians, Poles, or Jews?
Raul Hilberg discusses two motives for the Nazis to incite pogroms in Ukraine, the second of
which will be of particular relevance when we discuss further below the origin of the historical
documentary footage broadcast by 60 Minutes:
Why did the Einsatzgruppen endeavor to start pogroms in the occupied areas?
The reasons which prompted the killing units to activate anti-Jewish outbursts
were partly administrative, partly psychological. The administrative principle
was very simple: every Jew killed in a pogrom was one less burden for the
Einsatzgruppen. A pogrom brought them, as they expressed it, that much closer
to the "cleanup goal".... The psychological consideration was more
interesting. The Einsatzgruppen wanted the population to take a part and a
major part at that - of the responsibility for the killing operations. "It was
not less important, for future purposes," wrote Brigadefuhrer Dr. Stahlecker,
"to establish as an unquestionable fact that the liberated population had
resorted to the most severe measures against the Bolshevist and Jewish enemy,
on its own initiative and without instructions from German authorities." In
short, the pogroms were to become the defensive weapon with which to confront
an accuser, or an element of blackmail that could be used against the local
population. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1961, p. 203)
Two of the conclusions that Raul Hilberg draws concerning pogroms in Ukraine flatly contradict
the Wiesenthal-Safer story of a massive pre-German pogrom in Lviv:
First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen influence, did not
take place; all outbreaks were either organized or inspired by the
Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were implemented within a short time after
the arrival of the killing units. They were not self-perpetuating, nor could
new ones be started after things had settled down. (Raul Hilberg, The
Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312)
Raul Hilberg describes what may have been the chief - or the only Lviv pogrom quite
differently - it occurred after the arrival of the Germans, and it did not involve the killing
of 5,000-6,000 Jews:
The Galician capital of Lvov was the scene of a mass seizure by local
inhabitants. In "reprisal" for the deportation of Ukrainians by the Soviets,
1000 members of the Jewish intelligentsia were driven together and handed over
to the Security Police. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews,
1961, p. 204)
But even this milder version of an anti-Jewish eruption - now a post-German one - is not easy to
credit. The arrest of one thousand targeted individuals within a city is something that can
only be done by a large team of professionals backed by a research staff, weapons,
telecommunications equipment, vehicles. Before anyone would undertake such a daunting task,
furthermore, they would need to be assured that the thousand prisoners would be wanted and that
they could be processed - only an ambivalent gratitude might be expected for having herded a
thousand prisoners through the streets to the local police station which was not expecting them
- and so it is implausible that local inhabitants would act without at the very least
consultation and coordination with the occupying authorities. From what we have discussed
above, we would expect the local inhabitants to be devoid of initiative, able to follow orders
perfunctorily in order to save their lives, but quite unable to muster the resources to round up
one thousand individuals on their own. If any such round-up did occur, then, it would more
plausibly have been at the instigation of, and under the direction of, the German occupiers.
But to return to 60 Minutes, the reality is that the sort of pogrom described by Simon
Wiesenthal - massive in scale and initiated by Ukrainians independently of German instigation
never took place. The most that the Germans could incite a small number of Ukrainians to
contribute - and who knows exactly how large a contribution these few Ukrainians really made
alongside the Germans in such actions - was closer to the following:
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 full of boiling water. The Ukrainian
population retaliated by seizing 130 Jews and beating them to death with
clubs. ... The Ukrainian violence as a whole did not come up to
expectations. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1961, p.
204)
But on the principle that the person readiest to contradict Simon Wiesenthal is Simon Wiesenthal
himself, we turn to other statements that he has made:
The Ukrainian police ... had played a disastrous role in Galicia following the