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translator on one occasion at least, offered a translation in ungrammatical English, making the
Ukrainian appear uneducated or unintelligent - specifically, the Ukrainian "We Ukrainians do not
have to rely on..." was rendered into the English "We Ukrainians not have to rely on...."
Since "zhyd" is currently held to be derogatory in much of Ukraine, any speaker of contemporary
Ukrainian who wishes to give no offense may choose to view it as derogatory in all of Ukraine,
and switch to "yevrei" in all contexts and in all parts of the country. The fact that a Western
Ukrainian old enough to have escaped thorough Russification has not as yet made this switch,
however, is not evidence of his anti-Semitism, and his use of "zhyd" cannot rightly be taken to
be derogatory. In non-Russified Western Ukrainian, there is only one word for Jew, and that is
"zhyd," and there is no word corresponding to the derogatory "kike" or "yid" or "hebe" of
English.
A further discussion of the use of "zhyd" vs "yevrei" can be found within the Ukrainian Archive
in a discussion of the Sion-Osnova Controversy.
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
Ukrainian Homogeneity
In his every statement, Mr. Safer reveals that he starts from the assumption that Ukrainians are
homogeneously anti-Semitic and Nazi in their inclinations. In doing so, Mr. Safer does not stop
to wonder how it is that Ukrainians can be so entirely different in this respect from all other
peoples. Take Americans, for instance. Surely we all agree that among Americans, there are
some who would pitch in and help if they saw Nazis killing Jews, and others who would risk their
lives - and give their lives - to stop that very same killing, and of course the great bulk in
the middle who would consider immediate self-interest first, and look the other way and pretend
to see nothing. But Ukrainians, if we are to believe Mr. Safer, are a people apart - exhibiting
no such heterogeneity, clones one of another, genetically programmed to hate Jews.
To suggest such a thing is, of course, preposterous. The obvious reality is that Ukrainians do
exhibit a normal degree of heterogeneity. Had 60 Minutes wanted to, it could have found plenty
of evidence of this: (1) Since the city of Lviv was featured in the 60 Minutes broadcast, 60
Minutes could have mentioned - in fact, it was duty-bound to mention the heroism of
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky's effort on behalf of Jews. (2) Since 60 Minutes was throwing
blanket condemnations over Ukrainians collectively not only for being the world's greatest
anti-Semites, but for the most extreme war crimes and crimes against humanity, it was incumbent
on 60 Minutes to notice the vast number of instances that can be found of Ukrainian sacrifices
to save Jews. (3) Since the city of Lviv was featured on the 60 Minutes broadcast, as were
Ukrainian auxiliary police units, as was Simon Wiesenthal, 60 Minutes should have mentioned that
in the city of Lviv, just such a Ukrainian police auxiliary by the name of Bodnar risked his
life - possibly sacrificed his life - to save the life of Simon Wiesenthal himself.
Let us consider each of these points in turn.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky
There is little doubt as to the almost saintly role of Ukrainian (Greek)
Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Sheptytsky, Archbishop of L'viv and
head of the church, was widely known as being sympathetic to the Jews. ...
The elderly metropolitan wrote directly to SS commander Heinrich Himmler in the
winter of 1942 demanding an end to the final solution and, equally important to
him, an end to the use of Ukrainian militia and police in anti-Jewish action.
His letter elicited a sharp rebuke, but Sheptytsky persisted even though the
death penalty was threatened to those who gave comfort to Jews. In November
1942 he issued a pastoral letter to be read in all churches under his
authority. It condemned murder. Although Jews were not specifically
mentioned, his intent was crystal clear.
We can never know how many Ukrainians were moved by Sheptytsky's appeal.
Certainly the church set an example. With Sheptytsky's tacit approval, his
church hid a number of Jews throughout western Ukraine, 150 Jews alone in and
around his L'viv headquarters. Perhaps some of his parishioners were among
those brave and precious few "righteous gentiles" who risked an automatic death
penalty for themselves and their families by harbouring a Jew under their roof.
The towering humanity of Sheptytsky remains an inspiration today. (Harold
Troper Morton Weinfeld, Old Wounds, 1988, pp. 17-18)
Raul Hilberg adds concerning Sheptytsky:
He dispatched a lengthy handwritten letter dated August 29-31, 1942 to the
Pope, in which he referred to the government of the German occupants as a
regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks.
(Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 267)
Unbiased reporting might have mentioned such details as the following:
One of those saved by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was Lviv's Rabbi Kahane
whose son is currently the marshal commander of the Israeli Air Force.
(Ukrainian Weekly, June 21, 1992, p. 9)
Sheptitsky himself hid fifteen Jews, including Rabbi Kahane, in his own
residence in Lvov, a building frequently visited by German officials. (Martin
Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 410)
Vast Ukrainian Sacrifices to Save Jews
And Sheptytsky's actions are not unique - Ukrainians risking their lives and giving their lives
to save Jews was not a rare occurrence. In the first Jewish Congress of Ukraine held in Kiev in
1992, "48 awards were handed out to Ukrainians and people of other nationalities who had rescued
Jews during the second world war" (Ukrainian Weekly, November 8, 1992, p. 2). References to
specific cases are not hard to find:
Prof. Weiss [head of the Israeli Knesset] reminisced about Ukraine, the country
of his childhood, and gratefully acknowledged he owed his life to two Ukrainian
women who hid him from the Nazis during World War II. (Ukrainian Weekly,
December 13, 1992, p. 8)
In the Volhynian town of Hoszcza a Ukrainian farmer, Fiodor Kalenczuk, hid a
Jewish grain merchant, Pessah Kranzberg, his wife, their ten-year-old daughter
and their daughter's young friend, for seventeen months, refusing to deny them
refuge even when his wife protested that their presence, in the stable, was
endangering a Christian household. (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p.
403)
Help was given even though the probability of detection was substantial and the penalties were
severe:
Sonderkommando 4b reported that it had shot the mayor of Kremenchug, Senitsa
Vershovsky, because he had "tried to protect the Jews." (Raul Hilberg, The
Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
Consulting the original Einsatzgruppe report reveals that a Catholic priest, Protyorey Romansky,
was involved in the above plot to save Jews, though Romansky's punishment is not specified:
The fact that Senitsa, the mayor of Kremenchug, was arrested for sabotaging
orders, demonstrates that responsible officials are not always selected with
the necessary care and attention. Only after the Einsatzkommandos had
interrogated the official could it be established that he had purposely
sabotaged the handling of the Jewish problem. He used false data and
authorized the chief priest Protyorey Romansky to baptize the Jews whom he
himself had selected, giving them Christian or Russian first names. His
immediate arrest prevented a larger number of Jews from evading German
control. Senitsa was executed. (Einsatzgruppe C, Kiev, Operational Situation
Report USSR No. 177, March 6, 1942, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and
Shmuel Spector, editors, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections From the
Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July
1941-January 1943, 1989, p. 304)
Similarly illustrative of help being given despite severe penalties is the following:
A German police company in the village of Samary, Volhynia, shot an entire
Ukrainian family, including a man, two women, and three children, for harboring
a Jewish woman. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p.
201)
This is not to say that all or most Jews found refuge with Ukrainians, nor that all or most
Ukrainians offered refuge to Jews. Far from it. Many stories can be found of Jews being
refused refuge or even being betrayed - but what else could anyone expect? To expect more from
Ukrainians would be to expect them to be saints and martyrs, which would be setting a very high
standard:
Whoever attempted to help Jews acted alone and exposed himself as well as his
family to the possibility of a death sentence from a German Kommando. (Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
But despite the severity of the punishment, Ukrainians did help. Andrew Gregorovich (Forum, No.
92, Spring 1995, p. 24) reproduces a public announcement issued by the "SS and Head of Police
for the District of Galicia" in Sambir, Ukraine, March 1, 1944. The announcement lists ten
Ukrainians who have been sentenced to death by the Germans. Number 7 is Stefan Zubovych,
Ukrainian, married - for the crime of helping Jews. One wonders what Stefan Zubovych might have
thought had he been told just prior to his execution that in decades to come, some among the
people that he was giving his life for would attempt to obliterate his memory and the memory of
other Ukrainians like him, and would attempt instead to depict Ukrainians as irredeemable
anti-Semites. One wonders what the surviving family of Stefan Zubovych, if any did survive,
think today of the thanks that they receive from Morley Safer for the sacrifice that they have
borne.
Given the severity and the imminence of the punishment, it is a wonder that Ukrainians offered
any help at all. Jews who had been saved by Ukrainians have subsequently admitted that in view
of the extreme danger, had their roles been reversed they would not have extended the same help
to the Ukrainians.
Ukrainian help was not limited to a few isolated cases, but rather was widely given:
"It is unfortunate," declared a German proclamation issued in Lvov on April 11
[1942], "that the rural population continues - nowadays furtively - to assist
Jews, thus doing harm to the community, and hence to themselves, by this
disloyal attitude." (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 319)
[In 1943] tens of thousands of Jews were still in hiding throughout the General
Government, the Eastern Territories and the Ukraine. But German searches for
them were continuous. (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 553)
It would be incorrect to imagine the Germans rounding up and executing all the Jews within a
region, with only a few of the Jews being saved; rather, in Ukrainian cities - which offered
more avenues of escape and concealment than did villages and towns the Jews repeatedly receded
before the advancing German killing units and then flowed back in again after the killing units
had passed - something that would have been possible only with the knowledge and the cooperation
of the indigenous Ukrainians:
Although we succeeded in particular, in smaller towns and also in villages in
accomplishing a complete liquidation of the Jewish problem, again and again it
is, however, observed in larger cities that, after such an execution, all Jews
have indeed disappeared. But, when, after a certain period of time, a Kommando
returns again, the number of Jews still found in the city always considerably
surpasses the number of the executed Jews. (Erwin Schulz, commander of
Einsatzkommando 5 of Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, Editor, The
Holocaust, Volume 18, 1982, p. 98)
Whenever the Einsatzgruppe had left a town, it returned to find more Jews than
had already been killed there. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European
Jews, 1985, p. 342)
Olena Melnyczuk in a Courage to Care Award ceremony (sponsored by the Jewish Foundation for
Christian Rescuers/Anti-Defamation League) in which she and other members of her family were
honored for having hidden a Jewish couple during World War II in Ukraine made the following
remarks, the concluding sentence of which bears a particular relevance to our present discussion
of 60 Minutes:
"At the time we were fully aware of consequences that might expect us. We were
aware that our family were doomed to perish together with the people we
sheltered if detected. But sometimes people ask 'would you do it again?' And
the answer is short. Yes. We tell them point blank that our Christian
religion taught us to love your neighbor as yourself, be your brother's
keeper," she stated.
"Sometimes," she continued, "we hear the people asking why so few did what
we did. Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure there were many, many people like us
risking their lives while hiding Jews, but how many of those rescued had the
courage to report the names of their rescuers to Yad Vashem? Somehow being
free of danger they have forgotten what risk those people took." (Ukrainian
Weekly, June 21, 1992, p. 9, emphasis added)
The Forgotten Bodnar
Yes, how some of them do seem to have forgotten. Take Simon Wiesenthal, for example. The chief
focus of discussion between him and Morley Safer seems to have been whether Ukrainians are all
genetically programmed to be worse anti-Semites than the Nazis (Mr. Morley's position), or
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