a Division Of course the members of any military unit will be required to swear oaths of obedience to the Commander-in-Chief. No fighting force can function without such an oath, and the members of the Galicia Division were unable to avoid swearing one. However, compare the differences in the German SS oath and the Ukrainian Waffen-SS oath: German SS Oath "I swear to you Adolf Hitler, as Leader and Chancellor of the Reich, loyalty and valor. I vow to you and all those you place over me obedience until death, so help me God." Ukrainian Waffen-SS Oath "I swear by God this holy oath, that in the struggle against Bolshevism I will give the Commander-in-Chief of the German Armed Forces, Adolf Hitler, absolute obedience, and if it be his will, as a fearless soldier, I will always be prepared to lay down my life for this oath." (Richard Landwehr, Fighting for Freedom: The Ukrainian Volunteer Division of the Waffen-SS, Bibliophile Legion Books, Silver Spring, Maryland, 1985, p. 45) Here are three revealing differences between the above oaths: (1) The German SS oath swears to Adolf Hitler who happens to be leader, whereas the Ukrainian Waffen-SS oath swears to the leader who happens to be Adolf Hitler. (2) The German SS oath does not restrict the Germans to any limited role, but the Ukrainian Waffen-SS oath does restrict the Ukrainian role to the "struggle against Bolshevism." (3) In the words "obedience until death," the German SS oath appears to imply obedience for the rest of one's life, whereas the Ukrainian Waffen-SS oath limits the duration of the obedience to the period of service "as a fearless soldier." These are not insignificant differences - they constitute an affirmation that the Ukrainians had their own goals, and that these overlapped with German goals only on the matter of opposing the Soviet re-occupation of Ukraine. For the Ukrainians to have won an even greater variance from the fundamental German SS oath would have been for the Germans to accept into their armed forces members who were openly declaring recalcitrance and insubordination. The Ukrainian motivation for permitting the formation of the Galicia Division was threefold: (1) the existence of the division would serve to improve German treatment of Ukrainians in the occupied territories, (2) the Division would form the nucleus of a national army which might promote Ukrainian aspirations to statehood, and (3) the Division would be thrown into the fight to oppose the Soviet re-occupation of Ukraine. Even though both Canada and the U.S. have Nazi-hunting units within their respective Justice Departments, not a single member of the Division has ever been convicted of any war crime and none has ever been charged. The absence of evidence of any wrongdoing not only of the Division as a whole, but also of any member of the Division, during his membership in the Division or before or after, is widely recognized. Judge Jules Deschenes, heading Canada's Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, concluded that: The members of the Galicia Division were individually screened for security purposes before admission to Canada. Charges of war crimes against members of the Galicia Division have never been substantiated, neither in 1950 when they were first preferred, nor in 1984 when they were renewed, nor before this Commission. ... In the absence of evidence of participation in or knowledge of specific war crimes, mere membership in the Galicia Division is insufficient to justify prosecution. (Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 12) Judge Deschenes cites a 1947 report of a British Screening Commission which was filed just prior to the Galicia Division being moved from Italy to Britain (note that these are the words of the 1947 British Screening Commission, not of Judge Deschenes): They probably were not, and certainly do not now seem to be at heart pro-German, and the fact that they did give aid and comfort to the Germans can fairly be considered to have been incidental and not fundamental. (in Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 253) A 1950 British Foreign Office report to the Canadian Department of External Affairs concerning the Galicia Division was also cited by Judge Deschenes (note that these are the words of the 1950 British Foreign Office, not of Judge Deschenes): While in Italy these men were screened by Soviet and British missions and neither then nor subsequently has any evidence been brought to light which would suggest that any of them fought against the Western Allies or engaged in crimes against humanity. Their behaviour since they came to this country has been good and they have never indicated in any way that they are infected with any trace of Nazi ideology. ... From the reports of the special mission set up by the War Office to screen these men, it seems clear that they volunteered to fight against the Red Army from nationalistic motives which were given greater impetus by the behaviour of the Soviet authorities during their earlier occupation of the Western Ukraine after the Nazi-Soviet Pact. Although Communist propaganda has constantly attempted to depict these, like so many other refugees, as "quislings" and "war criminals" it is interesting to note that no specific charges of war crimes have been made by the Soviet or any other Government against any members of this group. (in Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 252) Judge Deschenes concludes: It is an acknowledged fact that the members of the Division were volunteers who had enlisted in the spring and summer of 1943, essentially to combat the "Bolsheviks"; indeed, they were never used against Western allies. (Jules Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 255) Although as we have just seen "no specific charges of war crimes have been made by the Soviet or any other Government against any members of this group," Mr. Safer ventures to do what no one has done before - where angels fear to tread, Mr. Safer rushes in to lay a specific crime at the feet of the Galicia Division: SAFER: Thousands of Ukrainians joined the SS and marched off to fight for Naziism. In the process, they helped round up Lvov's Jews, helped march more than 140,000 of them to extinction - virtually every Jew in Lvov. However, the rounding up of Lviv's Jews was begun in 1941 and was largely completed in 1942, so that by 1943 when the Galicia Division was formed, there were not 140,000 Jews left in Lviv to round up. In truth, the Galicia Division never participated in the rounding up of Jews in Lviv or anywhere else. To repeat: the Galicia Division was a combat unit. More particularly, the Galicia Division saw action on only a single occasion - in facing the Soviets in the Battle of Brody in July 1944. Talk of the Galicia Division Induces Paralysis of the Comparative Function The broad topic of "Paralysis of the Comparative Function" is discussed within its own larger section below, but such a paralysis becomes evident in other places throughout this essay, as for example in discussions of the Galicia Division. In such discussions, the comparison - the elementary and obvious comparison - that is not made is that between the Ukrainian contribution to German armed forces of Waffen SS troops and the similar contribution made by other peoples. Below, I reproduce a quote from an interview by Slavko Nowytski of Professor Norman Davies, historian at the University of London, and author of the recent Europe: A History, published by Oxford University Press: In discussing the question of collaborating with Germany Prof. Davies noted that, "A large number of the volunteers for the Waffen SS came from Western Europe. The nation which supplied it the largest number of divisions was the Netherlands [four]. There were two Belgian divisions, there was a French Waffen SS. To my mind, it's rather surprising that Ukraine, which is a much larger country [than the Netherlands or Belgium] supplied only one Waffen SS Division.... It's surprising that there were so few Ukrainians [in the German Army]. Many people don't know, for example, that there were far more Russians fighting alongside the Wehrmacht or in the various German armies than there were Ukrainians.... Thanks to Soviet propaganda, the Russian contribution to the Nazi war effort has been forgotten, whereas the Ukrainian contribution has been remembered, I think, too strongly." (Andrew Gregorovich, Forum, No. 95, Spring, 1997, p. 34) And so the information in the above quotation leads to several questions: (1) As the population of The Netherlands is small, and as The Netherlands contributed the largest number of Waffen SS divisions, this gives The Netherlands the largest per capita contribution to the Waffen SS of any country. Would Mr. Safer conclude from this that the people of The Netherlands are the most anti-Semitic in the world? And following the same line of reasoning, would he conclude that the people of Belgium are the next most anti-Semitic? And also that as the population of France is approximately equal to the population of Ukraine, and as each of these contributed one Waffen SS division, that the French are approximately as anti-Semitic as the Ukrainians? (2) As Mr. Safer attacks the former members of the Galicia Division as war criminals, I wonder why he does not attack former members of The Netherlands, Belgium, and French Waffen SS divisions in the same way? Why does he single out the Galicia Division? How is the Galicia Division different from the other Waffen SS divisions? (3) If in comparison to several other countries, Ukraine contributed proportionately fewer numbers to the Waffen SS, or to any of the German armed forces, then why didn't Mr. Safer commend Ukrainians for their relatively small contribution to the German war effort? (4) It would have been instructive of Mr. Safer to inform 60 Minutes viewers whether the Waffen SS divisions of other countries were created under the same proviso - that they not be used against the Western Allies, but only against the Soviets on the Eastern Front? Perhaps Ukrainians are to be commended again for limiting the role that their Waffen SS troops played within the German military. (5) Finally, given that Canada's Deschenes Commission on War Criminals failed to identify even a single member of the Galicia Division as calling for further investigation; and given that not a single member of the Division has ever been convicted of any crime, or even tried for any crime; and, most importantly, given that nobody has ever specified any crime of which the Galicia Division as a whole, or any member of the Galicia Division, might have been guilty - given all this, it would have been instructive of Mr. Safer to inform 60 Minutes viewers whether the Waffen SS divisions of The Netherlands, Belgium, and France have proven to be as free from blame as has the Ukrainian Galicia Division. Why Did Himmler Want a Waffen SS? If the Wehrmacht was the combat arm of the German forces, and Himmler's SS was dedicated to running the concentration camps, then why were there combat units within the SS? Why weren't non-German combat units such as the Galicia Division considered to be part of the Wehrmacht rather than part of the SS? The suspicion in the mind of the impartial observer might readily be that any unit that was considered part of the SS may in fact have performed some duties that were uniquely SS, and thus was more likely to be guilty of war crimes than a Wehrmacht unit. Israeli historian Leni Yahil provides an answer - the war effort had taken center stage; Himmler wanted to remain on center stage; and it is for that reason that Himmler defined certain combat units as falling within the SS: The very fact that Himmler and his executors became the central force directing the implacable war against the Jews accorded them, and primarily Himmler as their leader, a crucial position in the hierarchy of Nazi rule wherever it extended. Hitler's hatred of the Jews and the importance he ascribed to solving the Jewish problem according to his concept were among the factors that ensured Himmler's status as the man who carried out the fuhrer's program. It might have been assumed that in wartime, when stress is necessarily laid on the military struggle, the influence of the SS would have declined, since it no longer held the center stage. If Hitler had lost interest in Himmler's activities, the latter's own political career would have come to an end. He forestalled the danger in two ways: one was by associating the SS with the war effort through the establishment of the armed or Waffen SS while being careful to prevent the army's influence over these corps from overriding his own. (Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The fate of European Jewry, 1932-1945, Oxford, New York, 1990, p. 145) The Nightingale Unit 60 Minutes also mentioned the Nightingale Unit, otherwise known as the Nachtigall Unit. The Nachtigall Unit was eventually merged with the Ukrainian Roland Unit, some 600 Ukrainian soldiers in all. These two units were formed on German territory prior to the outbreak of World War II by Ukrainians who had either not fallen within the Soviet zone of occupation, or who had escaped from it, and who anticipated German assistance in liberating Ukraine from Soviet rule. These units too, however, fail to support the picture of Ukrainians "marching off to fight for Hitler." Specifically, shortly after the entry of the Germans into Lviv, Stepan Bandera, "(supported by members of the Nachtigall Unit) decided - without consulting the Germans - to proclaim on 30 June 1941, the establishment of a Ukrainian state in recently conquered Lviv. ... Within days of the proclamation, Bandera and his associates were arrested by the Gestapo and incarcerated" (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, pp. 463-464). Refusing to rescind the proclamation, Bandera spent July 1941 to September 1944 in German prisons and concentration camps. (Stepan Bandera is mentioned at this point because he was supported by the Nachtigall Unit; Bandera was not a member of the Nachtigall Unit.) "Because of their opposition to German policies in Ukraine, the units were recalled from the front and interned. ... Toward the end of 1942, the battalion was disbanded because of the soldiers' refusal to take an oath of loyalty to Hitler" (Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, Volume 2, p. 1088). "The battalion was disarmed and demobilized, and its officers were arrested in January 1943. Shukhevych, however, managed to escape and join the UPA" (Encyclopaedia of Ukraine, Volume 4, p. 680). Roman Shukhevych who had been the highest-ranking Ukrainian officer of the Nachtigall unit went on to became commander-in-chief of the Ukrainian Insurgent Army (UPA), a partisan group opposing all foreign occupation, and which during the Nazi occupation was directed primarily against the Nazis. Ukrainians in the Nachtigall and Roland Units, then, were also not Ukrainians marching off to fight for Hitler, but rather they were Ukrainians calculating that an alliance with German forces would promote their national interests, they were Ukrainians whose willingness to fight for Hitler or to promote Nazi interests proved to be close to non-existent, and they were Ukrainians who fell out with their Nazi sponsors in the early stages of the war. It must be noted also that unlike the Galicia Division, the Nachtigall and Roland Units were not part of the SS, and so that Mr. Safer was in error when he stated that "Roman Shukhevych ... was deputy commander of the SS Division Nightingale." It is another mark of 60 Minutes' biased coverage that in objecting to streets being named after the above-mentioned Stepan Bandera, it did not mention that he spent most of the war in German captivity, nor that he lost two brothers at Auschwitz; and in objecting to the commemoration of the above-mentioned Roman Shukhevych, it did not mention that he escaped from German captivity and commanded the Ukrainian guerrilla war against the German occupation. These omissions are part of a pattern of distortions and misrepresentations used by 60 Minutes to create the false impression of undeviating commitment to Naziism on the part of Ukrainians. Take Ukraine's staunchest opponents of Naziism, let 60 Minutes' makeup crew touch them up for the camera, and somehow they appear on the air with swastikas smeared on their foreheads. And so 60 Minutes has painted a picture entirely at variance with the historical record. The idea of Ukrainians en masse unselfconsciously celebrating the SS is preposterous and on a par with the image of Jews sacrificing Christian children to drink their blood. These sorts of fantastic and inflammatory charges are leveled by the more hysterical elements within each community, are passed along by the more irresponsible members of the mass media, and are aimed at consumption by the more naive and gullible members of their respective groups. 60 Minutes' allegations have smeared members of the Galicia Division and Ukrainians generally with a reckless disregard of evidence that is readily available to any researcher who is interested in presenting an impartial picture. It is a blatant calumny for 60 Minutes to hold out any of the above-mentioned units as evidence that Ukrainians "marched off to fight for Hitler" and it overlooks also that on the Soviet side fighting the Nazis were about two million Ukrainians which in view of their much larger number, 60 Minutes could have taken as evidence of Ukrainians "marching off to fight against Hitler" and it overlooks as well the large number of Ukrainians fighting against Hitler in the various national armies of the Allied forces. Morley Safer's Contempt for the Intelligence of his Viewers. Morley Safer states that "Nowhere, not even in Germany, are the SS so openly celebrated," and while he is saying this, we might rightly expect that the scenes presented will be supportive of his statement. What we do see is elderly veterans of the Galicia Division at a reunion in Lviv. What details of these scenes support Morley Safer's strong conclusion? Let us consider ten possibilities. (1) Perhaps Mr. Safer counted swastikas, and their large number supported his strong conclusion? But no, that can't be it - for there is not a single swastika to be seen anywhere. Not one! But how is it possible to hold the world's most open celebration of the SS without a single swastika? Mr. Safer's conclusion does not seem to be supported by the scene presented - in fact, his conclusion seems to be contradicted by the scene presented. Well, but perhaps there were other clues? (2) Surely at the world's most open celebration of the SS, one would find the "SS" insignia in plentiful supply? But no, there is not a single "SS" visible anywhere. The camera scans the veterans, we can see their medals and decorations, but we cannot see a single "SS." So far, then, we have the world's most open celebration of the SS, but without a single swastika and without a single "SS." But let us move ahead more quickly. (3) The number of portraits of Hitler, commander-in-chief of all the German armed forces, and so commander-in-chief of the SS? Zero! (4) The number of portraits of Himmler, head of the SS? Zero! (5) The number of portraits of any member of the Nazi hierarchy, or indeed of any German? Zero! (6) Any Nazi salutes being made? No, not one! (7) Any Nazi songs being sung? None! (8) A single word of German spoken? No, not one! (9) Perhaps there was literature circulated during the reunion which revealed Nazi sympathies? But no such literature was shown. How about at any time prior to the reunion - even during the entire 50 or so years following the formation of the Division and up until the reunion? 60 Minutes does not appear to have discovered any such Nazi literature. (10) As these veterans have been living for more than 50 years predominantly in Canada, the United States, and Australia, then they can readily be interviewed, and so perhaps 60 Minutes interviewers managed to elicit pro-Nazi statements from them? No, this golden opportunity too was passed over, not a single question was asked, not a single word spoken, and not a single pro-Nazi statement was to be heard. What then are we left with? We seem to be left with Morley Safer making a fantastic claim while presenting as evidence images devoid of the slightest detail supporting that claim. We are left, in short, with Morley Safer revealing his contempt for the intelligence of the 60 Minutes viewer. 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 Quality of Translation Were all those Ukrainians really saying "kike" and "yid"? In one instance, I could make out the Ukrainian word "zhyd." Following conventions of Ukrainian transliteration into English, by the way, the "zh" in "zhyd" is pronounced approximately like the "z" in "azure," and the "y" in "zhyd" is pronounced like the "y" in "myth." Quite true, to continue, that in Russian "zhyd" is derogatory for "Jew" and "yevrei" is neutral. In Ukrainian, the same is true in heavily Russified Eastern Ukraine, and even in Central Ukraine. But in the less Russified Western Ukraine old habits persist, and here - especially among the common people - "zhyd" continues to be as it always has been the neutral term for "Jew," and "yevrei" sounds Russian. Thus, in non-Russified Ukrainian, the "Jewish Battalion" of the Ukrainian Galician Army formed in 1919 was the "zhydivskyi kurin". "Judaism" is "zhydivstvo." A "learned Jew" is "zhydovyn." "Judophobe" is "zhydofob" and "Jodophile" is "zhydofil." The adjective "zhydivskyi" meaning "Jewish" was used by Ukrainians and Jews alike in naming Jewish orchestras and theater groups and clubs and schools and government departments. The Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971, Volume 11, p. 616) shows the May 18, 1939 masthead and headlines of the Lviv Jewish newspaper which was published in Polish. The Polish language is similar to Ukrainian, but uses the Roman rather than the Cyrillic alphabet. The headline read "Strejk generalny Zydow w Palestynie" which means "General strike of Jews in Palestine." The third word "Zydow" meaning "of Jews" is similar to the Ukrainian word that would have been used in this context, and again serves to illustrate that the Jews of this region did not view the word "zhyd" or its derivatives as derogatory. We find this same conclusion in the recollections of Nikita Khrushchev (in the following quotation, I have replaced the original translator's "yid" which rendered the passage confusing, with the more accurate "zhyd"): I remember that once we invited Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles ... to a meeting at the Lvov opera house. It struck me as very strange to hear the Jewish speakers at the meeting refer to themselves as "zhyds." "We zhyds hereby declare ourselves in favour of such-and-such." Out in the lobby after the meeting I stopped some of these men and demanded, "How dare you use the word "zhyd"? Don't you know it's a very offensive term, an insult to the Jewish nation?" ... "Here in the Western Ukraine it's just the opposite," they explained. "We call ourselves zhyds...." Apparently what they said was true. If you go back to Ukrainian literature ... you'll see that "zhyd" isn't used derisively or insultingly. (Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 1971, p. 145) But 60 Minutes' mistranslation went even further than that - upon listening to the broadcast more carefully, it is possible to hear that where the editor of the Lviv newspaper For a Free Ukraine was translated as saying in connection with a joke circulated among the common people - "In terms of the Soviet Union which is abbreviated SSSR, that stands for three kikes and a Russian," - in fact he was using the unarguably neutral term "yevrei" which it is obligatory to translate not as "kike" but as "Jew" not only in Russian, but in Eastern and Western Ukrainian as well. Thus, in at least two instances, and possibly in all, the 60 Minutes' translator was translating incorrectly, and in such a manner as to make the Ukrainian speakers appear to be speaking with an unrestrained anti-Semitism, when in fact they were not. On top of that, the translator gratuitously spit out his words and gave them a venomous intonation which was not present in the original Ukrainian. And then too, where the speaker spoke in grammatical Ukrainian, the 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