le are of the same mentality that says the Holocaust didn't happen," she says. In the course of a telephone interview, she declares: "There's tremendous racism in the Jewish community. How people who have been through the Holocaust can be racist is completely incomprehensible. To think that black people are less, which is what most Jewish people think, I can't understand it." She adds that racism of the type exhibited by the film's critics is what kept all-black combat units from receiving proper recognition in the first place. "The 761st fought for 33 years to get the Presidential Unit Citation. People don't want the truth of our history to come out," she says. WNET says it stands by the film's veracity. The Liberators' focus on events that appear never to have occurred seems all the more perplexing considering the true achievements of the 761st. Among other accomplishments, it played an important role in the liberation of Gunskirchen, a satellite of the Mauthausen concentration camp in Austria, and its performance at the Battle of the Bulge was exemplary. The documentary approaches accuracy, the veterans say, when it focuses on the unit's heroic battles both against Germans and discrimination in its own Army. But the unit citation eventually awarded to the veterans by president Jimmy Carter does not list the liberation of either Buchenwald or Dachau as an achievement of the unit. "It's no great accomplishment to liberate a concentration camp, not compared to fighting the German army," says Philip Latimer, president of the 761st veterans' organization. "What we're concerned about is our combat performance. The unit has a lot to be proud of ... and I don't want to see it blamed for this documentary. I don't want the unit to be hurt." Questions have also been raised about the 183rd Combat Engineer Battalion, which the filmmakers say played a role in the liberation of Buchenwald. The unit's commander at the time, Lawrence Fuller, a former deputy director of the Defense Intelligence Agency, says the 183rd only visited Buchenwald after its liberation, when General George Patton ordered units in the sector to see proof of German atrocities. Mr. Fuller says the documentary's producers never contacted him to discuss the unit's history. Leon Bass, a retired school principal who served in the 183rd, calls himself a liberator in the film and in the frequent lectures he gives on the Holocaust. But Mr. Bass says he does not remember exactly when he entered the camp. "I don't know whether we were first or second ... We didn't go in with guns blazing," he recalls. "There was just a handful of us. I was only there for two or three hours. The rest of the company came later." The Liberators, fuelled by the public-relations success at the Apollo, is gaining momentum. The Rainbow Coalition is sponsoring a similar gala in Los Angeles in March. Ms. Rosenblum tells of a packed calendar of showings with co-sponsors ranging from the Simon Wiesenthal Center to the American Jewish Committee. Copies of the documentary will be distributed to all New York City junior and senior high schools, according to board spokeswoman Linda Scott. The cost of the schools project, Mr. Rosenblum says, is being picked up by Elizabeth Rohatyn, the wife of investment banker Felix Rohatyn, who co-sponsored the Apollo showing, although Ms. Scott says that several philanthropists are vying for the honour of buying the tapes for the schools. According to a memorandum on the documentary circulating at school-board headquarters, the film will be used to "examine the effects of racism on African-American soldiers and on Jews who were in concentration camps ... to explain the role of African-American soldiers in liberating Jews from Nazi concentration camps and to reveal the involvement of Jews as 'soldiers' in the civil-rights movement." The documentary continues to be supported by a number of influential Jews. PR guru Howard Rubenstein, who is a vice-president of New York's Jewish Community Relations Council (and who also flacks for radio station WLIB, known for the anti-Semitic invective it regularly airs), worked pro bono on the Apollo event and continues to plug the documentary, despite having heard that it is misleading. "I have no reason to distrust Nina [Rosenblum]," he says. "She seemed very able and honest. I hope and pray it's accurate." Peggy Tishman, a former president of the JCRC and a co-host of the evening at the Apollo, is sticking by the documentary too. Ms. Tishman says the documentary is "good for the Holocaust." "Why would anybody want to exploit the idea that this is a fraud?" she says. "What we're trying to do is make New York a better place for you and me to live." She claims that the accuracy of the film is not the issue. What is important is the way it can bring Jews and blacks into "dialogue." There are a lot of truths that are very necessary," she says. "This is not a truth that's necessary." Jeffrey Goldberg is New York bureau chief for The Forward. The above Jeffrey Goldberg article was accompanied by two photographs, the captions of which were: U.S. soldiers, both high-ranking officers and enlisted men, view a scene of horror at a death camp. Concentration-camp prisoners were murdered as a last act by departing German guards. A black U.S. soldier guards German prisoners in France during the last weeks of the war. Comments on the above Jeffrey Goldberg article Where's the harm? The Liberators incident is relevant to several of the topics discussed in the Ukrainian Archive. The Liberators has been somewhat arbitrarily placed with 60 Minutes documents because it demonstrates the power of the media to fabricate history. In the case of the 23 Oct 1994 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, the disinformation served to calumniate Ukrainians; in the case of the PBS documentary, the Liberators, the disinformation appears to be oriented toward improving relations between Jews and blacks. Thus, whereas the 60 Minutes disinformation will readily be viewed as destructive by all who learn of it, the Liberators disinformation may be viewed by some as innocuous or even benevolent. However, there are reasons for not viewing the Liberators disinformation leniently or indulgently: (1) Black grievances against Jews may be founded on genuine exploitation of Blacks by Jews, and the Liberators may be an attempt to quiet opposition to that exploitation and so allow it to continue. (2) Setting the precedent of conniving at disinformation such as that offered in the Liberators offers disseminators of disinformation the prospect of impunity for manipulating public opinion to their own ends, and these ends vary on the benevolence-malevolence continuum. Whereas inducing people who had never been at Buchenwald to simulate returning to Buchenwald for PBS cameras may seem harmless, the buildup of tolerance for such chicanery makes it easier to similarly induce people to falsely testify in war crimes proceedings concerning Holocaust events, with the result that the lives of innocent accused are disrupted, shattered, and even lost. "Capturing" and "liberating"? Referring to Allied forces "capturing" or "liberating" the camps is inflating what really happened - which is that Allied soldiers peacefully walked into camps that German forces had abandoned days previously. In the words of Philip Latimer, president of the 761st veterans' organization, "It's no great accomplishment to liberate a concentration camp." In other words, the Liberators film leaves the impression of Jews attempting to get black fighting units to falsely take credit for non-accomplishments. Unreliability of eye-witness testimony. We have already had occasion to notice on the Ukrainian Archive the unreliability of eye-witness testimony, as in the cases of falsely accused Frank Walus and John Demjanjuk. The Liberators film reminds us once again how easy it is to get some old men to say whatever you want them to. Thus, we find that "two of the company's soldiers assert in the film that they liberated Dachau," when we know that this could not have been the case, and we find that "several Holocaust survivors are quoted in the film and in the companion book published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich as saying they were liberated by blacks of these units," again when this is an impossibility. Of course upon less biased questioning, some of these old men will recant: "But Christopher Ruddy, a New York writer who has conducted extensive research on the film, says two of the survivors featured in the Liberators told him they were no longer sure when they first saw black soldiers." Responsible Jews and non-Jews oppose irresponsible Jews. It cannot escape our attention that foremost among those challenging the disinformation in the Liberators are the apparently-Jewish writer Jeffrey Goldberg, and possibly-Jewish historians at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This reinforces a point introduced earlier in the Ukrainian Archive during the discussion of Warsaw's 1905 Alphonsenpogrom, to the effect that what may be taken at first glance to be an expression of antagonism toward Jews may in reality be an expression of opposition by responsible Jews and non-Jews alike against irresponsible elements among Jews, and that it is the responsible Jews themselves who may be in the vanguard of the attack against irresponsible Jews. We have seen this to be the case repeatedly, not only during Warsaw's Alphonsenpogrom, but in many prominent incidents - for example, Israeli defense attorney Yoram Sheftel must be given a large share of the credit for exposing the duplicity and incompetence of the Israeli justice system, and thereby saving the life of John Demjanjuk, a case in which other Jews such as Phoenix attorney William J. Wolf also played leading and heroic roles. The prominent role played by responsible Jews in opposing irresponsible Jews should not be surprising - the irresponsible Jews injure all Jews because their irresponsibility attaches in popular thinking to Jews generally, and thus serves to smear the good name of all Jews. Important to note in the Liberators case, then, is that the friction does not divide cleanly along ethnic lines. The Liberators, and the many other cases before us, do not illustrate Jews clashing with anti-Semites - rather, they illustrate the irresponsible clashing with the responsible, the disseminators of disinformation clashing with the upholders of truth. Zero repercussions. And so for having told the lies that are told on the Liberators, have any of the makers of that film suffered any repercussions? Have any of them been fired? Been demoted? Been censured? Have any of them suffered a loss of face? Do any of them find that their later work is rejected because of their earlier loss of credibility? The answer to all these questions - in all probability - is No! In American and Canadian society, there is one category of behavior that is uniquely protected from the repercussions of falsehood - and that is the category of Jews recounting stories of the Jewish Holocaust. Charges of falsehood may indeed be levelled, but these are not picked up by the media, and so make no impact. We have already examined many such cases on the Ukrainian Archive - the cases of Morley Safer, Neal Sher, Elie Wiesel, and Simon Wiesenthal standing out - egregious, bald-faced liars all of them, but never called to task for their lies, honored and even revered despite their lies. Psychiatric diagnosis of the film's critics. Co-producer of the film, Nina Rosenblum, accuses critics of the film of being "Holocaust revisionists" and "racists." But why stop there - why not follow up the two left jabs with the right-hand haymaker, "anti-Semites"? The answer perhaps is that it may appear more credible to smear all critics of the film with the same brush, and the accusation of anti-Semitism does not stick to those critics who happen to be Jewish. The deployment of terms suggestive of psychological disorder, such as "revisionist," "racist," or "anti-Semite" exemplifies the stock Jewish ploy of attempting to silence opposition by dispensing psychiatric diagnoses. Creating collaborators in disinformation. Jews who lie not only discredit Jews generally, but also discredit any whom they lure into sharing their lies. Thus, had the 761st Tank Battalion been seduced into accepting whatever momentary glory attaches to wrongly claiming to have liberated Buchenwald, then the 761st would have ultimately suffered a loss of credibility. The 761st does have genuine achievements, and foresaw only discredit in fabricating any. In the words of Philip Latimer, president of the 761st veterans' organization, "The unit has a lot to be proud of ... and I don't want to see it blamed for this documentary. I don't want the unit to be hurt." Attempts have been made to seduce Ukrainians, and others, into a similar complicity in Jewish disinformation, and in the case of Ukrainians, these attempts have been largely successful. The Ukrainians' reward has been to receive a Righteous Gentile Award for their efforts in saving Jews during the Second World War. In accepting such an award, however, such Ukrainians implicitly acquiesce and lend support to a Jewish history of the war, which is crammed with disinformation, much of it harmful to Ukrainian interests. Among the items of disinformation in this false history is that Ukrainians were eager collaborators of the Nazis (when in reality Ukrainians overwhelmingly served as opponents), that Ukrainian efforts to save Jews were rare (when in reality large numbers of Ukrainians took grave risks and even gave their lives to save Jews), that any anti-Jewish feeling on the part of Ukrainians that did exist was gratuitous and pathological (when in reality it was founded on a memory of the recent Jewish domination of the destruction of Ukraine under Communism). Thus, any Ukrainians who were offered a Righteous Gentile Award should have declined it for the same reason that the 761st declined to be honored in the Liberators. Any Ukrainians who have accepted such an award should renounce it. Ukrainians should consider withdrawing their support from the Public Broadcasting Service (PBS). The PBS is portrayed by Goldberg as supportive of the Liberators even after the film had been discredited. Ukrainians may recall, furthermore, that the PBS broadcast a severely flawed anti-Demjanjuk documentary despite prior notice on the part of Ukrainian representatives specifying the nature of these flaws. Observations such as these invite the conclusion that the PBS acts in sympathy with Jewish disinformation, and in opposition to Ukrainian interests. For this reason, Ukrainians should consider withdrawing their support from the PBS. Ukrainians should consider cancelling their subscriptions to TIME magazine. The Apollo Theater showing of the Liberators was sponsored by "Time Warner and a host of rich and influential New Yorkers." Readers of the Ukrainian Archive will be reminded that TIME magazine was responsible for the calumniation of Ukraine in the Wallowing Photograph incident. From these two indications, we may wonder whether Time Warner, and TIME magazine, are not sympathetic toward Holocaust disinformation and hostile toward Ukrainian interests. After having been a more than three-decades-long reader of TIME, I recently cancelled my subscription. Proven fraud does little to lessen propaganda value. As the Liberators film has been discredited, it appears to stand little chance of being accepted as history. However, this does not make the film a failure. The film continues to be valuable as a tool for shaping public opinion, particularly for molding the minds of the young. At the time of the writing of the Goldberg article above, the film was about to be distributed to "all New York City junior and senior high schools." We may expect, then, that hundreds of thousands of impressionable students will view the Liberators and will believe it, and that the refutations of Jeffrey Goldberg, and the soldiers of the 761st Tank Battalion, and others will reach the ears of only a few. The film may never succeed as history, but it has a good chance of succeeding as popular history, and it is popular history that influences elections and that directs the allocation of government resources. Choosing between useful lies and harmful truths. One of the weapons within the armamentarium of the totalitarian controller of information - that a useful lie is better than a harmful truth - is explicitly wielded by at least one supporter of the Liberators film: She [Peggy Tishman] claims that the accuracy of the film is not the issue. What is important is the way it can bring Jews and blacks into "dialogue." There are a lot of truths that are very necessary," she says. "This [that the 761st did not liberate Buchenwald or Dachau] is not a truth that's necessary." However, wielding the weapon of the useful lie will succeed only in a context in which the flow of contrary information can be choked off. In a society that permits the free flow of information, there is no useful lie, because all lies stand in danger of being exposed and thus discrediting the liar and his cause. Thus, we may expect that an ancillary goal of the distributors of disinformation will be to strangle the free flow of information - and more specifically, we might expect that those backing efforts such as the Liberators film will simultaneously back efforts to suppress web sites such as the Ukrainian Archive. In a totalitarian society, the Liberators film constitutes a useful day's work for the manipulators of mass opinion; in a free society, the Liberators film constitutes a self-defeating miscalculation. Furthermore, such an open avowal of the utility of lying as Peggy Tishman's above brings to mind the question raised during the discussion of journalistic fraud Stephen Glass of whether there may exist subcultures which by means of their tolerance of, or support for, lying produce a disproportionate number of great liars. Consorting with Hasidim. In Goldberg's Liberators story above, Hasidic rabbi Leib Glanz embraces Rev. Jesse Jackson on the stage of the Apollo Theater. However, "the next night Rabbi Glanz was nearly chased out of synagogue by angry Hasidim for the transgression of consorting with Mr. Jackson." This brief description is puzzling, and from it alone we would be unable to arrive at any strong conclusion, were it not for our having read some of the characteristics of Hasidism in the writings of Israel Shahak. With Shahak's description in mind, we are tempted to interpret Rabbi Glanz being nearly chased out of synagogue by angry Hasidim as a further demonstration that Hasidic Jews generally are hostile to the idea of any rapprochement with any non-Jews. That is, Israel Shahak depicts Hasidic Jews as constituting a debasement of Jewish mysticism, of being superstitious, fanatical, mysogynistic, given to overindulgence in alcohol, and most importantly, of being committed to the hatred of all non-Jews. I do not venture such a description on my own initiative, as I have no personal knowledge of Hasidism - but I do pass the description along as the opinion of a reputable authority, Israel Shahak. The incident of Rabbi Glanz being almost chased out of synagogue can only remind us of the possibility that it may be one of Ukraine's many misfortunes that the branch of Judaism which appears to have taken deepest root in Ukraine is Hasidism. We see this in Hasidic Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich's prominence, as witnessed in his frequent appearance on the pages of the Ukrainian Weekly, and we see it as well in the central role he played - in undermining Ukraine, as it happens - during the 23 October 1994 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom. The second-greatest calamity. And so, the second-greatest calamity to befall the Jewish people during this century - which, after the Holocaust itself, is Jewish misrepresentation of the Holocaust - deepens and broadens as a result of the Liberators film. Another blow is struck at Jewish credibility. Another burden is placed on the backs of Jews - the burden of being remembered for their leading role during the 20th century as stranglers of information, manipulators of truth, disseminators of disinformation, and corruptors of history. The consequence of numbers of Jews lying about the history of their people must be that whenever any Jew discourses upon history, he may expect to be greeted with heightened skepticism - such is the penalty that all Jews must pay for the sin of harboring fabulists in their midst. HOME DISINFORMATION 60 MINUTES 849 hits since 15-May-2000 Mark Steyn National Post 15-May-2000 CBS fabricates news "But yet again those old Soviet hardliners can only marvel: They spent decades smashing presses and jamming transmitters in an effort to shut down the flow of information. Americans achieved that happy state just by leaving it to ABC, CBS and NBC." - Mark Steyn Mark Steyn in the National Post (Toronto) of 15-May-2000 takes the position that Donna Dees-Thomases Million Mom March had its projected attendance downgraded to 100,000, though how many actually showed up is the object of varied speculation; and more importantly that contrary to the attempt to portray Donna Dees-Thomases as a suburban mother who had never organized anything larger than a car pool before, she was in reality a CBS employee. In comparison to the massive distortions of Morley Safer's Ugly Face of Freedom of 23-Oct-1994, the Million Mom March media stunt seems like a peccadillo, but does contribute to the view of the mass media as ready to deceive and manipulate, with the CBS perhaps playing a leading role. Two excerpts from the longer article: But, speaking of Casts of Idiots, what about CBS? By now, you may be curious about that "part-time job," as NBC coyly referred to it. A couple of waitressing shifts? A little secretarial work for the school district? No, Donna is a part-time publicist for David Letterman's Late Show. Before that, she was a full-time publicist for CBS news anchor Dan Rather. CBS This Morning was one of the first news shows to report the Million Mom March movement last September, when Hattie Kauffman interviewed Donna. "What," asked Hattie, "turns a mild-mannered suburban mom into an anti-gun activist?" The correct answer is: "A leave of absence from my employer, CBS, which, by remarkable coincidence, is also your employer, Hattie." But that's not what Donna said. Only in the last week has CBS News begun disclosing that she's one of theirs. Mark Steyn, Made to Measure for the Media, National Post, 15-May-2000, p. A14. Heigh-ho. The non-March is over now, and the non-Millions are relaunching themselves today as a political lobby group. Good luck to them. But yet again those old Soviet hardliners can only marvel: They spent decades smashing presses and jamming transmitters in an effort to shut down the flow of information. Americans achieved that happy state just by leaving it to ABC, CBS and NBC. Mark Steyn, Made to Measure for the Media, National Post, 15-May-2000, p. A14. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE HILBERG Hilberg > 889 hits since 31May99 Hilberg Letter 1 15Sep97 Invitation to deny Lviv pogrom September 15, 1997 Raul Hilberg Department of History University of Vermont Burlington, VT USA 05401-3596 Dear Professor Hilberg: On October 23, 1994, Morley Safer together with Simon Wiesenthal in the 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom drew attention to an event which I will refer to as the "Lviv pogrom": SAFER: He [Simon Wiesenthal] remembers that even before the Germans arrived, Ukrainian police went on a 3-day killing spree. WIESENTHAL: And in this 3 days in Lvov alone between 5 and 6 thousand Jews was killed. ... SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian militia, the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here. For the moment, let us overlook that the interviewer - Morley Safer - is not citing the evidence of his own professional witness - Simon Wiesenthal - but is instead offering an unattributed lower estimate within a smaller time interval. And let us overlook as well that in another place, Simon Wiesenthal places what seems to be this same Lviv pogrom after the arrival of the Germans: 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) What does primarily interest me here is that when I attempted to find more information on this Lviv pogrom - which I took to be either the biggest single pogrom of the War, or else at least among the biggest - in your The Destruction of the European Jews, I was unable to locate anything at all resembling such an event, and in fact, I encountered statements suggesting that such an event did not occur. Specifically, the following two passages strike me as incompatible with the massive Lviv pogrom described by Messrs Safer and Wiesenthal: 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) And most particularly, your summary of pogrom activity in Ukraine seemed to flatly rule out the possibility that such a massive, pre-German, Lviv pogrom had ever taken place: 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) Examining another work which I also happen to have in my library - Leni Yahil's The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, Oxford, New York, 1990 - for information on the Lviv pogrom, I again found nothing. In Yahil's book too I thought that I had in my hands a thoroughly researched work which could not have overlooked a massive, pre-German, Lviv pogrom, if one had ever occurred: When The Holocaust first appeared in Israel in 1987, it was hailed as the finest, most authoritative history of Hitler's war on the Jews ever published. Representing twenty years of research and reflection, Leni Yahil's book won the Shazar prize, one of Israel's highest awards for historical work. (From the dust jacket) And so, I would very much appreciate your opinion on this discrepancy. What appears to be the case to myself and to others in the Ukrainian community is that the Lviv pogrom, as described by Safer and Wiesenthal, did not take place, and we have been attempting, with no success whatever, to get 60 Minutes to issue a retraction. If you were to join your voice to ours in however simple and brief a statement, I think that a retraction might be forthcoming in short order. I should explain by way of background that my attitude to this sort of misstatement is that it is disrespectful to the memory of the Holocaust dead. I do not believe that the Holocaust dead authorized Messrs Safer and Wiesenthal to replace the real Holocaust with a grander one which would do more to advance their respective careers. I believe that by means of their fabrications, Messrs Safer and Wiesenthal do a great disservice to the perception of Jewish credibility, provide ammunition for Holocaust deniers, and at the same time harm Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Thus, if it were true that the Lviv pogrom in question did not take place, and if you were to release a statement to that effect (if only in a letter to me which I could quote), I think you would be performing an invaluable service toward enhancing the perception of Jewish credibility, toward disarming Holocaust deniers, and as well toward improving Ukrainian-Jewish relations. Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE HILBERG < Hilberg Hilberg > 806 hits since 31May99 Hilberg reply to Letter 1 15Dec97 Lviv pogrom implicitly denied Raul Hilberg 236 Prospect Parkway Burlington, VT 05401 802-863 4653 December 15, 1997 Mr. Lubomyr Prytulak [...] Dear Mr. Prytulak, I have had to delay a reply to your letter of September 15, because I had an almost impossible deadline for a manuscript, plus two trips, one to Europe and one to Alberta. Now I have had a chance to reexamine some sources with respect to actions in Lviv and a few other places within eastern Galicia during the early phase of the occupation. Here then are a few more details to complement the sections you have taken from the 1961 edition of my book, The Destruction of the European Jews. The historian Philip Friedman writes on pages 246-47 of his Roads to Extinction, New York 1980: By inciteful proclamations, pamphlets, and oral propaganda, the Germans stirred up mass hatred of the Jews. Persecution and pogroms began immediately after the entry of the German army. From June 30 to July 3, German soldiers spread through the streets of the city in the company of Ukrainian nationalists and an unruly mob of the local population. They fell upon the Jews in the streets, beat them murderously, and dragged them away for "work" - especially for cleansing of prisons filled with corpses and blood. Thousands of Jews were seized and conveyed to the prisons on Zamarstynowska, Jachowicza, and Lackiego Streets; to the Brygidki prison on Kazimierzowska Street; and to the Gestapo headquarters, at 59 Pelzynska. The first mention of these events in a report of the Security Police of July 3, 1941, is a statement that angered residents had already seized 1,000 Jews. A subsequent report, dated July 16, 1941, notes that "In Lemberg [Lviv] the population rounded up about 1,000 Jews, and with mistreatment [unter Mi?handlungen] delivered them to the [German] army-occupied GPU prison." In the same report, there is mention of the shooting by the Security Police of 7,000 Jews in all of eastern Galicia. Fifty Jews were reported to have been killed by local inhabitants in Sambor. Another Security Police report, dated July 11, 1941, refers to 600 Jews "liquidated" in the course of "persecutions of Jews inspired by the Einsatzkommando" 4b in Tarnopol. In conclusion, it would seem that local inhabitants violently seized about a thousand of the Jews arrested in Lviv. Because of the German role and the presence of Ukrainian militia, I have not called these actions a pogrom, but that may be a matter of labeling. Sincerely, Raul Hilberg [signature] HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE JORDAN Jordan > 786 hits since 23May98 Jordan Letter 1 Mar 6/96 Answering 16,000 pieces of mail March 6, 1996 Michael H. Jordan Chairman, Westinghouse Electric Corporation 11 Stanwix Street Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA 15222 Dear Mr. Jordan: In the Wall Street Journal article on you of February 28, 1996, the phrase "pulling CBS from the ratings basement" caught my attention, and led me to wonder whether it would be possible to accomplish such a feat while CBS continues to be weighed down with personnel who have demonstrated such lapses of intelligence and of integrity as were requisite to broadcasting "The Ugly Face of Freedom." If you take the trouble to read the enclosed documentation, I am sure that you will be convinced that my depiction of this broadcast as requiring lapses of both intelligence and integrity is not hyperbolic, but rather is restrained. Let me right now give you just one example of the hatemongering that was offered to CBS viewers as investigative journalism in "The Ugly Face of Freedom." It is Morley Safer reading into the camera - without so much as blinking - "The Church and Government of Ukraine have tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that ... Ukrainians, despite the allegations, are not genetically anti-Semitic." One might have expected that no mainstream journalist would be able to speak such words in any public forum and still keep his job. Had someone made up the equally fantastic and inflammatory "The World Jewish Congress has tried to ease people's fears, suggesting that Jews, despite the allegations, are not genetically addicted to usury," then surely he would have been out of a job. Mr. Safer did say one of these things - does it matter which one? - and yet somehow he still works for CBS television, reading his lines into the camera just as if he is not to be held accountable for his statement, carrying on as before just as if he had not played the leading role in what may be the most concentrated fifteen minutes of disinformation and hate to come out of the mainstream media. CBS's behavior since "The Ugly Face of Freedom" continues in the same vein and encourages the suspicion that those at its helm continue to be crippled by the same deficit of intelligence and of integrity. Specifically, CBS claimed first that of the 16,000 pieces of mail which it had received objecting to "The Ugly Face of Freedom," all had been answered. On being pressed, it later revised the "all" downward to 25%. And only after the Ukrainian community beat the bushes in a vain attempt to find a single person who had received an answer did CBS revise that figure downward still another notch - to none at all having been answered. Topping that off, instead of keeping the 16,000 letters of protest on file as is required by the FCC, CBS trashed them. To date, almost one and a half years after the original broadcast, CBS remains frozen like a deer in the headlights of an onrushing car, devoid on the one hand of arguments to refute the charges levelled against the broadcast, and devoid also of the courage to admit that these charges are correct - perhaps taking the advice of its lawyers that when you find yourself unable to say anything convincing in your own defense, then the best policy is to say nothing at all. I urge you in the interests both of truth and of redeeming CBS to weed out the incompetents responsible for "The Ugly Face of Freedom," and to direct CBS to offer its viewers the retraction and apology which are long overdue. Yours truly, Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Morley Safer, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE JORDAN < Jordan Jordan > 625 hits since 23May98 Jordan Letter 2 May 7/96 Confusion concerning the Lviv pogrom May 7, 1996 Michael H. Jordan Chairman, Westinghouse Electric Corporation 11 Stanwix Street Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania USA 15222 Dear Mr. Jordan: In your reply to my letter to you of March 6, 1996, I am particularly looking forward to hearing your comments on the discrepancies between the following three sets of quotations. VIEW #1: THE LVIV POGROM WAS MASSIVE AND PRE-GERMAN. SAFER: He [Simon Wiesenthal] remembers that even before the Germans arrived, Ukrainian police went on a 3-day killing spree. WIESENTHAL: And in this 3 days in Lvov alone between 5 and 6 thousand Jews was killed. ... SAFER: But even before the Germans entered