ГУЛаг Палестины

One wonders what reason you would have had for undermining the testimony of your

chief - and only - witness. One wonders what superior authority you discovered for

your revised statistic, and why you did not bring this superior authority forward to

testify in front of the CBS cameras instead of Simon Wiesenthal whose testimony you

apparently distrusted and chose to contradict. And one wonders that you could have

such low regard for the intelligence of 60 Minutes viewers that you would broadcast

discrepant accounts without explaining the discrepancy.

However, I Can't Find Anyone Else

Substantiating the Wiesenthal-Safer

Pre-German Lviv Pogrom

In my reading, I have yet to come across a single account which supports the

Wiesenthal-Safer claim of anywhere from 3,000 Jews killed in 2 days to 5,000-6,000

Jews killed in 3 days in Lviv during the pre-German interval. Had the

Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom taken place, then it would have been one of the biggest

pogroms of the war, and possibly the very biggest, and thus obligatory to describe

in every history of the Holocaust, if not in every history of the Second World War.

What I found, in contrast, was statements contradicting the possibility of the

Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom, most notably the following three made by Raul Hilberg:

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 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)

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)

Fearing that substantiation for the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom did exist somewhere

and that I had merely overlooked it, I made enquiry to leading Holocaust historian,

Raul Hilberg, on 15Sep97. Professor Hilberg was good enough in his reply of 15Dec97

to outline for me instances that he knew of anti-Jewish activity conducted in that

area at that time, and none of these instances gave credence to the Wiesenthal-Safer

Lviv pogrom.

Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom was

a fabrication is unearthed upon trying to substantiate it in Simon Wiesenthal's own

writing. In one place, Simon Wiesenthal has the anti-Jewish activity postdating the

arrival of the Germans, and mentions neither the number of fatalities nor the

duration:

The Ukrainian police ... had played a disastrous role in Galicia

following the entry of the German troops at the end of June and the

begi

1989, p. 34, emphasis added)

And later in the same account, Simon Wiesenthal does mention a Lviv pogrom of three

day's duration, but again without mentioning the number of fatalities, and again

unambiguously placing it after the German occupation:

Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the

retreating Soviets. This gave rise to one of the craziest

accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic

population the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that

all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it

was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities committed

by the Soviets.

All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of

opinion. It is said that after their arrival they gave the

Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews.

(Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis

added)

Also, whereas on your 60 Minutes broadcast you gave the impression that Simon

Wiesenthal was making his appearance on 60 Minutes in the role of an eyewitness to

the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv Pogrom, or at least as a researcher who had documented it,

yet in the quotation immediately above, Simon Wiesenthal's use of "It is said that"

gives the contrasting impression that he is no more than passing along a rumor

concerning events that he has neither witnessed nor verified.

In conclusion, the Wiesenthal-Safer story of a massive pre-German Lviv pogrom is not

supported in historical writing, and is even contradicted by other testimony, some

of it leading Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg's, and some of it your own expert

witness Simon Wiesenthal's. Thus, unless you are able to substantiate the

Wiesenthal-Safer pre-German Lviv pogrom, you will invite the conclusion that it

never took place, and that your implanting it into the minds of 30 million 60

Minutes viewers constituted an attempt on the part of two individuals Simon

Wiesenthal and yourself - to fabricate a piece of history.

In Fact, the Consensus Seems to be that in

the Days Prior to German Occupation, it

was the NKVD that was Killing Ukrainians

In contrast to what appears to be a lack of substantiation of the Wiesenthal-Safer

story that in the days prior to German occupation Ukrainians were murdering Jews, I

do in my reading keep stumbling across quite a different story - that in the days

prior to German occupation, it was the NKVD that was murdering Ukrainians. Below

are 22 such statements. These statements were discovered not through any systematic

or exhaustive search, but rather only through casual reading. A systematic and

exhaustive search would turn up a much larger number of such statements.

In order to demonstrate that the NKVD had a general policy of killing Ukrainians

prior to retreating, of which the Lviv massacre was but a single instance, I include

descriptions of such killings in several locations.