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to avoid criticism of their methods by passers-by. Their psychic balance was
jeopardized enough, especially in the field, and any sympathy extended to the
victim was bound to result in additional psychological as well as operational
complications. ... Any rumors or stories carried from the scene were an
irritant and a threat to the perpetrator.
Precautions were consequently plentiful. In Germany, Jews were sometimes
moved out in the early morning hours before there was traffic in the streets.
Furniture vans without windows were used to take Jews to trains. Loading might
be pla
German administrators would order the Polish population to stay indoors and
keep the windows closed with blinds drawn during roundups of Jews, even though
such a directive was notice of an impending action. Shooting sites, as in Babi
Yar in Kiev, were selected to be at least beyond hearing distance of local
residents. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 215)
(4) Public executions would create witnesses able to later testify as to Nazi culpability, and
gunfire in a city would attract attention.
(5) In allowing impulsive killing, mistakes would be made, non-Jews or non-Communists killed.
(6) In an arrest, it would hardly be worthwhile to inform the police participants as to the
perhaps many purposes of the arrest or the final disposition of those arrested; in some cases,
therefore, those arrested, or some among those arrested, might be slated not for extermination
but for interrogation: they might have useful information, they might have monetary assets that
needed to be ascertained or confiscated, they might have rare skills which could be put into the
service of the Nazis - and so permitting the impulsive killing of any of the arrested would
interfere with these plans.
(7) Perhaps among those arrested might be informants who would be questioned and released, and
so again none of those being arrested should be impulsively killed.
(8) An impulsive execution would create the problem of what to do with the body of someone
impulsively executed in the street - to leave the body in the street would be unacceptable, and
yet to send a truck to pick it up would consume scarce resources.
(9) An impulsive execution might lead to blood being splattered over the participants, or might
lead to a bullet passing through the intended victim and hitting an unintended target.
(10) Anyone so trigger-happy as to shoot a woman for walking too slowly posed a danger to
everyone, even to his German superiors, and so would not be tolerated within the German forces.
(11) The Germans viewed the optimal executioner as one who found killing distasteful, but killed
dutifully upon command. Anyone who enjoyed killing, within which category must fall anyone who
killed on impulse, was a degenerate and had a corrupting influence on those around him, most
importantly on Germans who after the war would be expected to return to Germany and resume
civilian life. With respect to German perso
The Germans sought to avoid damage to "the soul" ... in the prohibition of
unauthorized killings. A sharp line was drawn between killings pursuant to
order and killings induced by desire. In the former case a man was thought to
have overcome the "weakness" of "Christian morality"; in the latter case he was
overcome by his own baseness. That was why in the occupied USSR both the army
and the civil administration sought to restrain their perso
the shooting parties at the killing sites. [In the case of the SS,] if
selfish, sadistic, or sexual motives [for an unauthorized killing] were found,
punishment was to be imposed for murder or for manslaughter, in accordance with
the facts. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, pp.
1009-1010)
The killing of the Jews was regarded as historical necessity. The soldier had
to "understand" this. If for any reason he was instructed to help the SS and
Police in their task, he was expected to obey orders. However, if he killed a
Jew spontaneously, voluntarily, or without instruction, merely because he
wanted to kill, then he committed an abnormal act, worthy perhaps of an
"Eastern European" (such as a Romanian) but dangerous to the discipline and
prestige of the German army. Herein lay the crucial difference between the man
who "overcame" himself to kill and one who wantonly committed atrocities. The
former was regarded as a good soldier and a true Nazi; the latter was a person
without self-control, who would be a danger to his community after his return
home. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 326)
Every unauthorized shooting of local inhabitants, including Jews, by individual
soldiers ... is disobedience and therefore to be punished by disciplinary
means, or - if necessary - by court martial. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
the European Jews, 1985, p. 327)
Although avoiding damage to the Slavic soul would not have had the same high priority to the
Nazis as avoiding damage to the German soul, nevertheless, it would have been more difficult to
keep Germans from wanton killing if that same wanton killing had been permitted to their Slavic
auxiliaries.
For these many reasons, then, and in view of Mr. Wiesenthal's overall lack of credibility, one
may well wonder whether his mother-in-law really met her end in the ma
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
Nazi Propaganda Film
Historical documentary footage was shown to 60 Minutes viewers and identified as Ukrainians
abusing Jews, and the impression was created that German cameramen happened to come across these
spontaneous outrages and filmed them as they were taking place. This too is a falsification.
The truth is that when the Germans entered Lviv, they made a propaganda film - they gathered up
a handful of street thugs and staged scenes in which mistresses of the recently-fled NKVD were
stripped and "wallowed in the gutter" and collaborators of the recently-fled Communist regime,
some of whom were probably Jewish, were humiliated and roughed up in the street. That several
of the victims are shown naked or half-naked suggests that this was just such a humiliation, and
not an arrest. Certainly, as German cameramen were present, the action must have taken place
after the arrival of the Germans, and as German soldiers are seen to be in attendance, the
action ca
interpreted as a pogrom, as the civilians are unarmed and no wounding or killing is recorded; in
fact, in footage 60 Minutes chose not to show, the women can be seen dressing themselves and
leaving the scene:
Several women suspected for collaborating with the NKVD were rounded up by
street gangs organized by the Nazis, stripped naked, then thrown into the