ГУЛаг Палестины

doubted: (1) the arrest of your mother, and (2) the shooting of your mother-in-law:

SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian militia,

the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here.

LUBACHIVSKY: It is not true!

SAFER: It's horribly true to Simon Wiesenthal - like thousands of Lvov

Jews, his mother was led to her death by the Ukrainian police.

These are remnants of a film the Germans made of Ukrainian

brutality. The German high command described the Ukrainian behavior as

'praiseworthy.'

WIESENTHAL: My wife's mother was shot to death because she could not go

so fast.

SAFER: She couldn't keep up with the rest of the prisoners.

WIESENTHAL. Yes. She was shot to death by a Ukrainian policeman

because she couldn't walk fast.

SAFER: It was the Lvov experience that compelled Wiesenthal to seek out

the guilty, to bring justice.

The above passage starts by mentioning Lviv prior to arrival of the Germans, and it

ends with a reference to "the Lvov experience," which invites the viewer to imagine

that the events bracketed in Mr. Safer's discourse by these two references happened

during that same pre-German interval. Specifically, Mr. Safer gives the distinct and

unmistakable impression that the pre-German anti-Jewish activities on the part of

Ukrainians cannot be doubted because among the events that occurred during these

activities were the arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law.

However, examining your biographies for confirmation of these two events - the

arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law - turns up the following

(it will help at this point to recollect that Lviv was occupied by the Germans on June

30, 1941):

In August [1942] the SS was loading elderly Jewish women into a goods

truck at Lvov station. One of them was Simon Wiesenthal's mother, then

sixty-three. ... His wife's mother was shortly afterwards shot dead

by a Ukrainian police auxiliary on the steps of her house. (Peter

Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.

8)

"My mother was in August 1942 taken by a Ukrainian policeman," Simon

says, lapsing swiftly into the present tense as immediacy takes hold.

... Around the same time, Cyla Wiesenthal [Mr. Wiesenthal's wife]

learned that, back in Buczacz, her mother had been shot to death by a

Ukrainian policeman as she was being evicted from her home. (Alan

Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 41)

We see, therefore, that Morley Safer seems to have advanced the date of arrest of your

mother as well as the shooting of your mother-in-law by more than a year in order to

lend credibility to the claim of Ukrainian-initiated actions against Jews prior to the

German occupation of Lviv.

As this error appears to be Mr. Safer's and not your own, I do not ask you to

account for it. However, I do ask if you at any time subsequent to the 60 Minutes

broadcast became aware of Mr. Safer's error, and if so, if you as a result asked him to

issue a correction?

Also, if you are only now for the first time learning of Mr. Safer's error, I

wonder if you could tell me if you now intend to ask Mr. Safer to issue a correction?

Sincerely yours,

Lubomyr Prytulak

HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL 886 hits since 18Jan98

Wiesenthal Letter 23 Sep 23/97 The pious executioners

September 23, 1997

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

I wonder if you are aware that during the German occupation of Lviv, the Greek

Catholic church, headed by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, was courageous and outspoken

in defense of Jews? Here are four quotations which provide some details as to the role

played by Sheptytsky, and which demonstrate that this role is widely acknowledged:

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.