Simon Wiesenthal. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 979 hits since 15May99 Morley Safer Letter 9 15May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? But in the meantime, those who come too near to the truth concerning what happened to Volodymyr Ivasiuk have been the victims of an unusual number of accidents. One man's wife unexpectedly hangs herself, another man throws himself from a balcony, still another drowns, yet another falls under the wheels of a car.... But remember, butchers, God's punishment will descend even upon you! May 15, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: Who Murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? Volodymyr Ivasiuk is best known as a composer and poet, author of the widely popular song Chervona Ruta whose first two lines appear below as he wrote them in his own hand, which song more than anything else made him beloved throughout Ukraine, and even beyond the borders of Ukraine. On top of that, Volodymyr was a man of many talents, having earned a degree in medicine, and having demonstrated talent in art, photography, and cinematography. However, having reached his prime showing so much promise, it was not given Volodymyr Ivasiuk to develop his talents further. He was dead at the age of 30. To the right is a photograph of his funeral procession, attended by thousands of mourners despite the suppression by the state of the publication of information concerning his burial, despite official warnings to not attend funeral services, and despite the calling of Komsomol meetings, which carried mandatory attendance, on the same day. The magazine Halas, on whose information I rely in the present letter, states that Rostyslaw Bratun who was the first to step forward and speak at Volodymyr's funeral lost his job two months later. Words spoken at the funeral by the Sichko family landed them in prison. To the right is a second photograph showing the statue that was eventually erected in Volodymyr Ivasiuk's memory. And just how did Volodymyr Ivasiuk meet his end? His death certificate which appears below states that he died on 24-27 April 1979 from mechanical asphyxiation caused by hanging in a noose, and attributes the hanging to suicide. The details of Volodymyr Ivasiuk's death, however, do not support the official view that he killed himself: They waited and searched for Volodya for 24 days. Following the mysterious disappearance of the composer, the search for him was not disclosed to the public, the explanation being given that such an announcement would create a disturbance. However, the mass media are daily used not only to help locate people, but sometimes even their pets. [...] It was not until May 18, 1979 that Volodymyr Ivasiuk's body was accidentally discovered in the heavy forest near the village Briukhovych near Lviv. One couldn't bring oneself to believe it. The parents were allowed to identify their son only on the following day, even though it was only a five-minute walk from the apartment where Volodya lived to the morgue; and the identification was conducted with gross violations of law. The father was allowed to view the body only after he repeatedly telephoned the Oblast Procurator threatening to send a telegram of complaint to the General Procurator of Ukraine. The local authorities eventually gave in with the exasperated reply: "Take your son home, and look at him there at least a hundred years!" His death certificate reported that he died 24-27 April 1979 at the age of 30. The cause of death: mechanical asphyxiation. Hanging from a noose - suicide. The death certificate was issued on May 21, 1979, and even back then, a mere three days after the body had been discovered, without any evidence or investigation it had been written in black and white that Volodymyr Ivasiuk had committed suicide. There immediately arises the question that if the composer had indeed hung himself on 24-27 April, and was not found until 18 May, whether he could have remained hanging from a tree for 21-24 days. Volodya weighed 80 kg (176 lb), such that hanging for so long, the noose would have cut into his neck to the depth of the bones. Also during May the weather was warm and dry. The body would have decomposed during this interval, and from it would have emanated an intolerable odour. All these substantiating signs were missing, and missing too were the autopsy photographs. On May 22 of every year let us remember that Volodymyr Ivasiuk became another innocent victim of a totalitarian regime. M. Masly, Volodymyr Ivasiuk: Light and Shadow of a Legend, Halas (Clamor), 3Jun97, pp. 11-12, as translated by Lubomyr Prytulak. Halas is a Ukrainian-language magazine which reviews popular music and is published in Kyiv. The section commemorating Volodymyr Ivasiuk in the 3Jun97 issue was sponsored and supported by Coca Cola Ukraine. And truly, the administration hated him while he was alive, and feared him once he was dead. Volodya's mother, Sophia Ivanivna Ivasiuk met with the first secretary of the Lviv administration, V. Dobryk to plead with him to permit a monument to be placed on the grave of her son. "The war took from me my father and three brothers. My sister's husband did not return from the front," wept the woman, "and now my son too has been lost. Do I not after all that have the right to consecrate his memory?" In reply, Dobryk (what evil irony that such a soulless individual should have a name denoting goodness) pressed a concealed button and said in Russian to the lackey who entered, "Take that lady out." Following this visit, Sophia Ivanivna Ivasiuk received the "insult in the name of Dobryk." She has been in ill health ever since. Sooner or later will arrive the day when truth will emerge victorious. But in the meantime, those who come too near to the truth concerning what happened to Volodymyr Ivasiuk find themselves the victims of an unusual number of accidents. One man's wife unexpectedly hangs herself, another man throws himself from a balcony, still another drowns, yet another falls under the wheels of a car.... But remember, butchers, God's punishment will descend even upon you! M. Masly, Volodymyr Ivasiuk: Light and Shadow of a Legend, Halas (Clamor), 3Jun97, p. 12, as translated by Lubomyr Prytulak. Mr. Safer, you went to Ukraine determined to come back with a story of Ukrainians persecuting Russians and Jews. You failed to find any substantiation for such a story. You failed to find any Russian composer and poet who had been found hanging in a forest under mysterious circumstances. You failed to find any Jewish composer and poet who had been found hanging in a forest under mysterious circumstances. And you were not interested in a Ukrainian composer and poet who had indeed been found hanging in a forest under mysterious circumstances. You went to Ukraine determined to prove that Ukrainians persecute Russians and Jews, and you reported that story to tens of millions of 60 Minutes viewers despite a lack of evidence, and despite plentiful evidence that it is Russians and Jews who persecute Ukrainians, as they have done throughout history. In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, then, you sided with the strong against the weak. You sided with the oppressors against the oppressed. You sided with the butchers against the butchered. You sided with those who hang composers and poets and against Volodymyr Ivasiuk. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 669 hits since 17May99 Morley Safer Letter 10 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? It is conceivable that had you not broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, Volodymyr Katelnytsky would be alive today. And it is all the more conceivable that had you used the opportunity of your broadcast to defend Ukrainians against their oppressors, Volodymyr Katelnytsky would be alive today. May 17, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: Who Murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? The death of Volodymyr Katelnytsky My source is a Ukrainskyi Holos (Ukrainian Voice) article mailed to me by someone that knew Volodymyr Katelnytsky. The citation that is hand-written on the article is "4-20 August, 1997, p. 1." The Ukrainskyi Holos article reports that Volodymyr Katelnytsky was tortured to death in his apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine on the night of 7-8 July 1997. His mother, Lykeria, who was 81 years old, was tortured and died before the eyes of her son; her body was found with 21 stab wounds. When Katelnytsky's sister tried to enter the apartment in which the crime had been committed, she was roughed up by Kyiv police. Some members of the Katelnytsky family were arrested. The murders are considered to have been politically motivated. Volodymyr Katelnytsky's funeral was attended by some two thousand mourners. The life of Volodymyr Katelnytsky Volodymyr Katelnytsky was a professional journalist. He was active in the Ukrainian Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate, was head of the Brotherhood of St. Andrej Pervozvanyi in Kyiv, and supervised the tour of the chief cities of Ukraine by Metropolitan Wasyl in May 1993. He was also active politically, serving as Deputy Head of the Ukrainian Christian Democratic Party. In Canada and the United States, he may be best remembered for the role he played as President of the Committee for the Defense of John Demjanjuk. Also prominent among Volodymyr Katelnytsky's activities was the dissemination of a Ukrainian version of what happened at Babyn Yar, similar, I believe, to the version advocated on the Ukrainian Archive. One result of Volodymyr Katelnytsky's Babyn Yar activities is that he was sued for them by Jewish organizations in Ukrainian court, that in his defense he brought forward historical aerial reconnaissance photographs showing that none of the activities said to have taken place at Babyn Yar was visible from the air - not visible, that is, were signs of the execution and burial of 33,771 Jews, or the later disinterment and burning of their bodies. As a result of his convincing defense, the court acquitted Volodymyr Katelnytsky of the charges brought against him. Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? As we have no direct evidence of who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky, we can only perform a Cui bono? analysis which will at least tell us where to start looking. That is, if it is the case that the three most prominent events in Volodymyr Katelnytsky's life were: (1) that he defended John Demjanjuk, (2) that he contradicted the Soviet-inspired Holocaust version of the Babyn Yar story, and (3) that he was tortured to death along with his mother, then it would take a mental paralysis with which I have not as yet been seized to refuse to consider the first two of these events as possibly having caused the third. I don't accuse you of having failed to cover the Katelnytsky assassination. As you broadcast the Ugly Face of Freedom on 23 October 1994 and Volodymyr Katelnytsky's assassination did not take place until 7-8 July 1997, I obviously do not accuse you of having failed to cover the Katelnytsky assassination in your broadcast. But I do accuse you of having missed the big story of which Katelnytsky's assassination is but one piece. However, the persecution and assassination of Ukrainians did not begin in 1997. It began hundreds of years earlier, carried right up until your broadcast in 1994, and continued through 1997 to this day. What I do accuse you of, then, is ignoring a centuries-long stream of evidence attesting to the persecution of Ukrainians, and of broadcasting instead the story of the persecution of Russians and Jews even in the absence of evidence. Your investigations in Ukraine failed to turn up anything like a story of a prominent Russian activist being tortured to death in his apartment, whether along with his mother or alone. And your investigations in Ukraine failed to turn up anything like a story of a prominent Jewish activist being tortured to death in his apartment, whether along with his mother or alone. The story that you would have been able to document, but that you chose to ignore, is that Ukraine is a nation which is ruled by Russians and Jews, and in which Ukrainians are routinely persecuted and murdered. And I do accuse you of having helped cause Katelnytsky's assassination. But even though you could not have covered Katelnytsky's assassination in 1994, you could have in 1994 avoided giving encouragement to assassins who were at that time plotting such assassinations. Instead, you did give encouragement to Katelnytsky's assassins by demonstrating to them that the world press can be counted upon to continue broadcasting anti-Ukrainian calumnies even while Ukrainians were being victimized in their own land. It is conceivable that had you not broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, Volodymyr Katelnytsky would be alive today. And it is all the more conceivable that had you used the opportunity of your broadcast to defend Ukrainians against their oppressors, Volodymyr Katelnytsky would be alive today. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 630 hits since 30Jun99 Morley Safer Letter 11 30Jun99 Who murdered Vadim Boyko? We cannot believe that his death was just pure accident; although it is reported that 8,000 people a year in the former Soviet Union die due to their television sets exploding, we all believe that Vadim would have survived this kind of accident. June 30, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: The conclusion that you offered in your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom was that Ukraine is a place where Jews and Russians are oppressed by militant Ukrainian nationalists, and where they are the targets of Ukrainian violence. The closest that you came to substantiating this claim was to broadcast Rabbi Bleich's allegation that an elderly Jewish couple had been attacked and robbed somewhere in Western Ukraine. However, this allegation was devoid of substantiating detail, and my request for specifics (both in my letter to you of 24May98, and in my letter to Rabbi Bleich of 23May98) was answered with silence. I repeat that request to you now - please inform me of the details of this attack, which minimally would include the time, the place, the names of the victims, and the address where a police report is available. If you do not have such information, please retract the allegation. You must be aware that I. M. Levitas, Head of the Jewish Council of Ukraine as well as of the Nationalities Associations of Ukraine has questioned whether such an attack on the two elderly Jews ever took place. Levitas's doubt was first expressed in an open letter to you, and I reminded Rabbi Bleich of it in my letter to him of 23May98, of which you were mailed a copy. In view of I. M. Levitas's doubt, and in view of your and Rabbi Bleich's silence in response to my request for particulars, the impression grows daily stronger that you and Rabbi Bleich made the incident up. The chief purpose of the present letter is to demonstrate to you yet again that your conclusion which I summarize in my first sentence at the beginning of the present letter is exactly backward. Ukraine is not a place where Ukrainians attack and murder, it is a place where Ukrainians are attacked and murdered, as has been the case for the last three hundred years, at least. Below is documented one further instance in support of this conclusion. It is the story of Vadim Boyko, member of parliament, and popular television investigative journalist. I would have expected that the story of Vadim Boyko would have appealed to you, and for that reason that you might have included it in any broadcast that you prepared about Ukraine, as his life - at least up to the final moments - was not unlike your own: February 23, 1992 Journalist's notebook in Ukraine by Marta Kolomayets Kiev Press Bureau A colleague's tragic death "He was a man engaged to a young Ukraine," said Volodymyr Yavorivsky, as he bid farewell to Vadim Boyko, who died tragically on February 14, at the age of 29. Hundreds of mourners crowded into the third floor atrium of the Ukrainian State Television and Radio headquarters, tearfully passing each other on the steps Vadim so often bounded, rushing to the studios where he recorded his popular television programs. Now, on February 17, the mourners paid their last respects to Vadik (as he was affectionately known), searching for a reason why such a promising, talented life was cut short. As slow dirge-like music played over the loudspeakers, they filed past the closed coffin, sewn up in black cotton and laden with bunches of carnations of all colors. At the foot of the coffin stood a black and white photo of the young journalist and politician. An enlarged copy of the same photo, decorated with a black mourning band, hung above the coffin. To the left, the newly adopted Ukrainian national flag, also decorated with black bunting, kept guard over its native son. Wreaths from the Ukrainian Parliament, co-workers and friends surrounded the coffin. Perhaps as a carryover from the Communist-atheist state of the past, the wake of devoid of all Christian symbols and rites. Vadim's father sat at the foot of the coffin, numb to the proceedings. As a few speakers addressed the crowd, he wiped tears away from his weary, red eyes. Vadim's mother was too weak to make the trip from the family's home in Svitlovodsk to Kiev. Mykola Okhmakevych, the stagnant, Communist head of the State Television and Radio, whose removal has been pressed for by both democratic deputies and workers of the television station, said a few uninspiring words. Often harshly criticized by Vadim and his colleagues, Mr. Okhmakevych now spoke of how Vadim had always loved his job. An angry mourner, who saw this hypocrisy, cried out: "He loved Ukraine above all. He loved Ukraine, say it." We all descended the steps with Vadim for the last time. The coffin was then placed in a vehicle for Vadim's journey home to Svitlovodsk, Kirovohrad Oblast, his final resting place. x x x It has been almost a week now since my phone rang just before midnight, on Valentine's Day, February 14. It was my friend and colleague Dmytro Ponamarchuk. Yet his voice sounded different. "I don't know how to say this, Marta. Vadim Boyko burned to death tonight." I could not believe what I was hearing: "What is this, a cruel joke?" Dmytro, working at the radio station, had been called about a fire at Vadim's apartment; the fire department reported that his television had blown up. Dmytro arrived at the scene just an hour or so after the reported fire, only to find Vadim's body sprawled across the floor, burned beyond recognition. There was nothing left of his apartment, a dormitory-type dwelling in a building that housed quite a number of State television and Radio workers. News of Vadim's death spread quickly among fellow journalists - many of whom had attended Kiev State with Vadim, many of whom worked with him on numerous projects. He was an elected democratic deputy from Kremenchuk, Poltava Oblast. He had come from the neighboring town in Kirovohrad oblast, just across the Dnipro River, arriving in the capital city of Kiev in the early 1980s to obtain a college education. And from then on, he gained popularity as the founder and host of "Hart," one of the first serious investigative shows on Ukrainian television, reporting on everything from Chornobyl to Shcherbytsky. After he was elected a deputy to the Ukrainian Parliament in March 1990, he was appointed vice chairman of the standing parliamentary Committee on Glasnost and the Mass Media, a job he took very seriously, often going to Moscow to discuss problems of disinformation in Ukraine, as presented by central television. But Vadim never forgot his first vocation - journalism - and he would often join his colleagues, including a few of us foreign correspondents, on the press balcony of Parliament during the sessions to give us some inside news or highlights of his commission's work. He was our friend, and with his death, our circle has been broken. Many of us - Ukrainian journalists and foreign correspondents, as well as a few of his close friends outside this journalistic fraternity - spent last week trying to come to terms with the tragedy that has struck us. We cannot believe that his death was just pure accident; although it is reported that 8,000 people a year in the former Soviet Union die due to their television sets exploding, we all believe that Vadim would have survived this kind of accident. We have gone through the story over and over. Most of us saw him in Parliament on Wednesday afternoon; he was excited and invigorated by new opportunities: he was applying for a National Foundation internship for the spring in Washington, D.C., he was going to travel on business with Ukraine's deputy prime minister. His dancing blue eyes were smitten with the possibilities of new TV shows and programs in an independent Ukraine. None of us saw Vadim in Parliament on Thursday or Friday, February 13-14; he missed a few meetings he had scheduled on Friday. Currently, there are many rumors flying around Kiev surrounding Vadim's death, based on political, business and personal motivations. Parliamentary committees have promised to work on an investigation, although no special committee has been formed to investigate what many democratic deputies, among them Les Taniuk and Stepan Khmara, have labelled as murder. Some speculate that Vadim's TV work in Chornobyl may have triggered an early death... On Friday, February 14, Nezavisimaya Gazeta (Independent Newspaper) in Moscow ran an interview with Vadim on journalists' responsibilities and cooperation between Moscow and Kiev. "At this time, we (referring to Russian and Ukrainian journalists) can be friends, if we are honest to the end. We are currently living in a commonwealth, the root of the word is found in the word "druh," friend... We will never become true friends, until we journalists understand that we are the ones who can, who have the responsibility to stop our peoples from total degradation, from the catastrophe that can occur between our peoples," he said. "If we cannot prevent this we stop being journalists. We will become persons who today do their work and tomorrow, one by one, are destroyed." Vadim's deep sense of responsibility, his courage and commitment to the truth will always be admired by his friends and colleagues. And we are all committed to learning the truth. Given the suspicious circumstances surrounding his death, I can only hope that his last interview prophecy did not become self-fulfilling. Mr. Safer, you travelled to Ukraine looking for stories of persecution and violence against Jews and Russians, you failed to find the evidence, but you broadcast the story anyway. All the while, you were surrounded by stories of persecution and violence against Ukrainians, but that plentiful evidence you ignored. In other words, you went to Ukraine not to discover its reality, but to confirm your prejudice. You played the role not of journalist, but of propagandist. Given the opportunity to make a contribution toward protecting the lives of journalists in Ukraine by broadcasting the story of Vadim Boyko, you declined. Showing anything on 60 Minutes that might win sympathy for Ukrainians was contrary to your plan. Had you managed to find a Jewish member of parliament and television broadcaster who had died in Ukraine under mysterious circumstances, then you would have had one small piece of evidence for the anti-Ukrainian conclusions that you offered. Had you managed to find a Russian member of parliament and television broadcaster who had died in Ukraine under mysterious circumstances, then you would have had one small piece of evidence for the anti-Ukrainian conclusions that you offered. However, you found neither of these things. In Ukraine, death under mysterious circumstances is reserved for prominent Ukrainians, which conclusion you had no interest in broadcasting. Below, I identify four incidents which I have brought to your attention either in three earlier letters, or in the present one. Although the first two cases occurred before your broadcast of 23Oct94, and the second two occurred after, all serve to support the conclusion that within today's Ukraine, it is Ukrainians who are the targets of violence: Date of my letter Subject of my letter Date of Attack Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 15May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? April 1979 30Jun99 Who murdered Vadim Boyko? February 14, 1992 Violence that you might have caused by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 09Apr99 Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko? Summer 1995 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? July 7-8, 1997 As the first two of the above attacks occurred prior to your 23Oct94 broadcast, then your fault is that you neglected to report them. And as the second two attacks occurred after your 23Oct94 broadcast, then your fault is that you may have helped cause them. That is, your 23Oct94 broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, served to demonstrate to Ukraine's assassins not only that violence against Ukrainians would go unreported in the world press, but also that even as Ukrainians continued to be butchered, the world press would portray them - the victim Ukrainians - as themselves butchers. You did not yourself wield any knife or pull any trigger or tighten any garotte, but you informed those that were predisposed to do so that they might expect impunity if they did. For this reason, I consider you to have blood on your hands, some of it Maksym Tsarenko's, and some of it Volodymyr Katelnytsky's. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 1302 hits since 01Jul99 Morley Safer Letter 12 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko? The plainest moral to be drawn from the Derevyanko-Hurvits story is that when a muckraking Ukrainian editor takes on a corrupt Jewish politician, the Ukrainian editor ends up dead. July 1, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: The Committee to Protect Journalists described the contract killing of Ukrainian editor Borys Derevyanko thusly: Borys Derevyanko, Vechernyaya Odessa Date of Death: August 11, 1997 Place of Death: Odessa Derevyanko, editor in chief of Vechernyaya Odessa, a popular and influential thrice-weekly newspaper, was fatally shot at point-blank range on his way to work on the morning of August 11 near the Press House, where the newspaper's offices are located. Colleagues believe the killing of Derevyanko, who was editor of Vechernyaya Odessa for 24 years, was related to the newspaper's opposition to the policies of Odessa's mayor. The chief regional prosecutor declared the murder a contract killing and launched an official investigation. Local authorities announced in September that they had arrested a suspect, described as a professional assassin, who confessed to killing Derevyanko, but they gave no details about his confession. I would add that the Odessa mayor which the above account neglects to name was the corrupt Eduard Hurvits, who was particularly threatened by Borys Derevyanko's opposition because of municipal elections that were coming up in 1998. The comment concerning the arrest of an assassin gives a misleading impression - in today's Ukraine, contract killings are never solved, and those who order them are never punished. Today, Borys Derevyanko is dead, and Eduard Hurvits, barred by his corruption from holding the office of mayor of Odessa, continues his criminal career as a member of the Ukrainian parliament. Photographs of Derevyanko and Hurvits are shown below: Newspaper editor Borys Derevyanko Odessa Mayor Eduard Hurvits The table which I began in my letter to you of 30Jun99 can now be elaborated with another entry: Date of my letter Subject of my letter Date of Attack Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 15May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? April 1979 30Jun99 Who murdered Vadim Boyko? February 14, 1992 Violence that you might have caused by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 09Apr99 Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko? Summer 1995 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? July 7-8, 1997 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko? August 11, 1997 As the conclusion of your 23Oct94 60 Minutes story, The Ugly Face of Freedom, was that Ukraine is a place in which Ukrainians practice violence against Jews, it is highly relevant that Borys Derevyanko is Ukrainian and Eduard Hurvits is Jewish. You went to Ukraine looking for evidence of Ukrainians harming Jews, you failed to find such evidence, but you broadcast your conclusion anyway. The true story that you would not broadcast, and that was readily documentable, is that Ukraine is a place in which Jews harm Ukrainians. The plainest moral to be drawn from the Derevyanko-Hurvits story is that when a muckraking Ukrainian editor takes on a corrupt Jewish politician, the Ukrainian editor ends up dead. That is the reality of Ukraine. It was the reality of Ukraine when you visited it in 1994, it was the reality of Ukraine before 1994, and it has been the reality of Ukraine since 1994. As in earlier letters, I fault you for not reporting such incidents as are in the above table that took place before 1994, and I fault you for precipitating such incidents that took place after 1994. Thus, to the blood that is already on your hands, I add the blood of Borys Derevyanko. You had the opportunity in your 1994 broadcast to come out on the side of the victims against the butchers, but you preferred to side with the butchers against the victims, and Borys Derevyanko has been one of the casualties of your decision. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 2082 hits since 04Jul99 Morley Safer Letter 13 04Jul99 The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny Thus, it is possible that you contributed to Maksym Tsarenko losing his hands, and to Volodymyr Katelnytsky together with his mother, and Borys Derevyanko, losing their lives. Additional information on the Lviv massacre can be found in Alfred M. de Zayas, The Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau, 1939-1945. July 4, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: You Broadcast to 30 Million 60 Minutes Viewers that in the Days Prior to German Occupation, Ukrainians Killed Jews In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you joined with Simon Wiesenthal in charging that in the days preceding the arrival of German forces in June 1941, Lviv Ukrainians killed thousands of Jews: 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. Some 60 Minutes viewers may have been struck by the observation that while the 60 Minutes expert witness - Simon Wiesenthal - claimed that the number of Jews killed was "between 5 and 6 thousand" in three days, you - supposedly the neutral interviewer - chose to reduce the number killed to "3,000" and the duration of the killing to two days - but without informing the viewer on what grounds you did so. One wonders what reason you would have had for undermining the testimony of your chief - and only - witness. One wonders what superior authority you discovered for your revised statistic, and why you did not bring this superior authority forward to testify in front of the CBS cameras instead of Simon Wiesenthal whose testimony you apparently distrusted and chose to contradict. And one wonders that you could have such low regard for the intelligence of 60 Minutes viewers that you would broadcast discrepant accounts without explaining the discrepancy. However, I Can't Find Anyone Else Substantiating the Wiesenthal-Safer Pre-German Lviv Pogrom In my reading, I have yet to come across a single account which supports the Wiesenthal-Safer claim of anywhere from 3,000 Jews killed in 2 days to 5,000-6,000 Jews killed in 3 days in Lviv during the pre-German interval. Had the Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom taken place, then it would have been one of the biggest pogroms of the war, and possibly the very biggest, and thus obligatory to describe in every history of the Holocaust, if not in every history of the Second World War. What I found, in contrast, was statements contradicting the possibility of the Wiesenthal-Safer pogrom, most notably the following three made by Raul Hilberg: From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows: Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take active steps against the Jews. This may be explained by the fear of many people that the Red Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has been pointed out to us. Older people have remarked that they had already experienced in 1918 the sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth [...] which, in the eyes of many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of the wielder of political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several occasions marched Jews before their execution through the city. Also, care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting of Jews. This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more that the inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden Jews. The Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1961, p. 202) The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the whole no impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still threatening to return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308) First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen influence, did not take place; all outbreaks were either organized or inspired by the Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were implemented within a short time after the arrival of the killing units. They were not self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be started after things had settled down. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312) Fearing that substantiation for the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom did exist somewhere and that I had merely overlooked it, I made enquiry to leading Holocaust historian, Raul Hilberg, on 15Sep97. Professor Hilberg was good enough in his reply of 15Dec97 to outline for me instances that he knew of anti-Jewish activity conducted in that area at that time, and none of these instances gave credence to the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom. Perhaps the most telling piece of evidence that the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv pogrom was a fabrication is unearthed upon trying to substantiate it in Simon Wiesenthal's own writing. In one place, Simon Wiesenthal has the anti-Jewish activity postdating the arrival of the Germans, and mentions neither the number of fatalities nor the duration: The Ukrainian police ... had played a disastrous role in Galicia following the entry of the German troops at the end of June and the beginning of July 1941. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 34, emphasis added) And later in the same account, Simon Wiesenthal does mention a Lviv pogrom of three day's duration, but again without mentioning the number of fatalities, and again unambiguously placing it after the German occupation: Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the retreating Soviets. This gave rise to one of the craziest accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic population the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities committed by the Soviets. All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of opinion. It is said that after their arrival they gave the Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis added) Also, whereas on your 60 Minutes broadcast you gave the impression that Simon Wiesenthal was making his appearance on 60 Minutes in the role of an eyewitness to the Wiesenthal-Safer Lviv Pogrom, or at least as a researcher who had documented it, yet in the quotation immediately above, Simon Wiesenthal's use of "It is said that" gives the contrasting impression that he is no more than passing along a rumor concerning events that he has neither witnessed nor verified. In conclusion, the Wiesenthal-Safer story of a massive pre-German Lviv pogrom is not supported in historical writing, and is even contradicted by other testimony, some of it leading Holocaust historian Raul Hilberg's, and some of it your own expert witness Simon Wiesenthal's. Thus, unless you are able to substantiate the Wiesenthal-Safer pre-German Lviv pogrom, you will invite the conclusion that it never took place, and that your implanting it into the minds of 30 million 60 Minutes viewers constituted an attempt on the part of two individuals - Simon Wiesenthal and yourself - to fabricate a piece of history. In Fact, the Consensus Seems to be that in the Days Prior to German Occupation, it was the NKVD that was Killing Ukrainians In contrast to what appears to be a lack of substantiation of the Wiesenthal-Safer story that in the days prior to German occupation Ukrainians were murdering Jews, I do in my reading keep stumbling across quite a different story - that in the days prior to German occupation, it was the NKVD that was murdering Ukrainians. Below are 22 such statements. These statements were discovered not through any systematic or exhaustive search, but rather only through casual reading. A systematic and exhaustive search would turn up a much larger number of such statements. In order to demonstrate that the NKVD had a general policy of killing Ukrainians prior to retreating, of which the Lviv massacre was but a single instance, I include descriptions of such killings in several locations. "NKVD," in case you are interested, is an acronym for the Russian "Narodny Komisariat Vnutrenikh Del," which translates as "National Commissariat of Internal Affairs," and which bland title gives no hint of the NKVD's true role. Please note that the block quotation immediately below is attributable to Simon Wiesenthal, and that in it he demonstrates an awareness of the NKVD massacre of Ukrainians, such that omitting mention of this massacre on your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, must be considered not an oversight, but a willful suppression of relevant information: (1) Thousands of detainees were shot dead. When the German attack came on 22 June the Soviets had no time to take with them the people they had locked up. So they simply killed them. Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the retreating Soviets. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 35) (2) The NKVD burned prisons with prisoners in them. While the movement to the East was taking place, the NKVD carried out mass arrests and executions, chiefly of Ukrainians - especially those who tried to avoid evacuation. In the jails most prisoners whose period of imprisonment was more than three years were shot; others were evacuated if possible. In several cities the NKVD burned prisons with prisoners in them. (Volodymyr Kubijovyc, editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, 1963, Volume I, p. 878, Vsevolod Holubnychy and H. M. wrote this section) (3) Succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political prisoners. The Bolsheviks succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political prisoners in Western Ukraine before and after the outbreak of hostilities (massacres took place in the prisons in Lviv, Zolochiv, Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, etc.). (Volodymyr Kubijovyc, editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto, Volume 1, p. 886) (4) Mainly members of the city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia. Before fleeing the German advance the Soviet occupational regime murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly members of the city's [Lviv's] intelligentsia. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume 3, p. 222) (5) NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse. The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for thousands of political prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Unable to evacuate them in time, the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse during the week of 22-29 June 1941, regardless of whether they were incarcerated for major or minor offenses. Major massacres occurred in Lviv, Sambir, and Stanyslaviv in Galicia, where about 10,000 prisoners died, and in Rivne and Lutsk in Volhynia, where another 5000 perished. Coming on the heels of the mass deportations and growing Soviet terror, these executions added greatly to the West Ukrainians' abhorrence of the Soviets. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 461) (6) Liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck. Right after the entry we were shown 2,400 dead bodies of Ukrainians liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck at the city jail of Lemberg [Lviv] by the Soviets prior to their marching off. (Hans Frank, In the Face of the Gallows, p. 406) (7) The city stank. In Lvov, several thousand prisoners had been held in three jails. When the Germans arrived on 29 June, the city stank, and the prisons were surrounded by terrified relatives. Unimaginable atrocities had occurred inside. The prisons looked like abattoirs. It had taken the NKVD a week to complete their gruesome task before they fled. (Gwyneth Hughes and Simon Welfare, Red Empire: The Forbidden History of the USSR, 1990, p. 133) (8) Many of them were found mutilated. We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great number of Lemberg [Lviv] citizens, Ukrainians and Polish inhabitants of other towns and villages had been killed in this prison and in other prisons. Furthermore, there were many corpses of German men and officers, among them many Air Corps officers, and many of them were found mutilated. There was a great bitterness and excitement among the Lemberg population against the Jewish sector of the population. (Erwin Schulz, from May until 26 September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a subunit of Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18) (9) The killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000. On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the killed people in Lemberg [Lviv] amounted to about 5,000. It has been determined without any doubt that the arrests and killings had taken place under the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg. That was the reason why there was such an excitement against the Jewish population on the part of the Lemberg citizens. (Erwin Schulz, from May until 26 September, 1941 Commander of Einsatzkommando 5, a subunit of Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18) (10) Hardly 20% of Ukrainian intelligentsia has remained. Chief of Einsatzgruppe B reports that Ukrainian insurrection movements were bloodily suppressed by the NKVD on June 25, 1941 in Lvov. About 3,000 were shot by NKVD. Prison burning. Hardly 20% of Ukrainian intelligentsia has remained. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 10, July 2, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 2) (11) The corpses are dreadfully mutilated. Location: Lvov According to reliable information, the Russians, before withdrawing, shot 30,000 inhabitants. The corpses piled up and burned at the GPU prisons are dreadfully mutilated. The population is greatly excited: 1,000 Jews have already been forcefully gathered together. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 11, July 3, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 4) (12) The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered Ukrainians. Location: Zviahel (Novograd-Volynski) [...] Before leaving, the Bolsheviks, together with the Jews, murdered several Ukrainians; as an excuse, they used the attempted Ukrainian uprising of June 25, 1941, which tried to free their prisoners. According to reliable information, about 20,000 Ukrainians have disappeared from Lvov, 80% of them belonging to the intelligentsia. The prisons in Lvov were crammed with the bodies of murdered Ukrainians. According to a moderate estimate, in Lvov alone 3-4,000 persons were either killed or deported. In Dobromil, 82 dead bodies were found, 4 of them Jews. The latter were former Bolsheviki informers who had been killed because of their complicity in this act. Near Dobromil an obsolete salt mine pit was discovered. It was completely filled with dead bodies. In the immediate neighborhood, there is a 6X15m mass grave. The number of those murdered in the Dobromil area is estimated to be approximately several hundred. In Sambor on June 26, 1941, about 400 Ukrainians were shot by the Bolsheviks. An additional 120 persons were murdered on June 27, 1941. The remaining 80 prisoners succeeded in overpowering the Soviet guards, and fled. [...] As early as 1939, a larger number of Ukrainians was shot, and 1,500 Ukrainians as well as 500 Poles were deported to the east. Russians and Jews committed these murders in very cruel ways. Bestial mutilations were daily occurrences. Breasts of women and genitals of men were cut off. Jews have also nailed children to the wall and then murdered them. Killing was carried out by shots in the back of the neck. Hand grenades were frequently used for these murders. In Dobromil, women and men were killed with blows by a hammer used to stun cattle before slaughter. In many cases, the prisoners must have been tortured cruelly: bones were broken, etc. In Sambor, the prisoners were gagged and thus prevented from screaming during torture and murder. The Jews, some of whom also held official positions, in addition to their economic supremacy, and who served in the entire Bolshevik police, were always partners in these atrocities. Finally, it was established that seven [German] pilots who had been captured were murdered. Three of them were found in a Russian military hospital where they had been murdered in bed by shots in the abdomen. [...] [...] Prior to their withdrawal, the Bolsheviks shot 2,800 out of 4,000 Ukrainians imprisoned in the Lutsk prison. According to the statement of 19 Ukrainians who survived the slaughter with more or less serious injuries, the Jews again played a decisive part in the arrests and shooting. [...] The investigations at Zlochev proved that the Russians, prior to their withdrawal, arrested and murdered indiscriminately a total of 700 Ukrainians, but, nevertheless, included the entire [local] Ukrainian intelligentsia. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 24, July 16, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p. 29-33) (13) Ukrainians thrown into cauldrons of boiling water. Location: Pleskau [Pskov] [...] The population is in general convinced that it is mostly the Jews who should be held responsible for the atrocities that are committed everywhere. [...] As it was learned that the Russians before they left have either deported the Ukrainian intelligentsia, or executed them, that is, murdered them, it is assumed that in the last days before the retreat of the Russians, about 100 influential Ukrainians were murdered [in Pleskau]. So far the bodies have not been found - a search has been initiated. About 100-150 Ukrainians were murdered by the Russians in Kremenets. Some of these Ukrainians are said to have been thrown into cauldrons of boiling water. This has been deduced from the fact that the bodies were found without skin when they were exhumed. [...] [...] Before leaving Dubno, the Russians, as they had done in Lvov, committed extensive mass-murder. [...] Before their flight [from Tarnopol], as in Lvov and Dubno, the Russians went on a rampage there. Disinterments revealed 10 bodies of German soldiers. Almost all of them had their hands tied behind their backs with wire. The bodies revealed traces of extremely cruel mutilations such as gouged eyes, severed tongues and limbs. The number of Ukrainians who were murdered by the Russians, among them women and children, is set finally at 600. Jews and Poles were spared by the Russians. The Ukrainians estimate the total number of [Tarnopol] victims since the occupation of the Ukraine by the Russians at about 2,000. The planned deportation of the Ukrainians already started in 1939. There is hardly a family in Tarnopol from which one or several members have not disappeared. [...] The entire Ukrainian intelligentsia is destroyed. Since the beginning of the war, 160 members of the Ukrainian intelligentsia were either murdered or deported. Inhabitants of the town had observed a column of about 1,000 civilians driven out of town by police and army early in the morning of July 1, 1941. As in Lvov, torture chambers were discovered in the cellars of the Court of Justice. Apparently, hot and cold showers were also used here (as in Lemberg [Lviv]) for torture, as several bodies were found, totally naked, their skin burst and torn in many places. A grate was found in another room, made of wire and set above the ground about 1m in height, traces of ashes were found underneath. A Ukrainian engineer, who was also to be murdered but saved his life by smearing the blood of a dead victim over his face, reports that one could also hear screams of pain from women and girls. (Operational Situation Report USSR No. 28, July 20, 1941, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and Shmuel Spector, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections from the Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July 1941-January 1943, Holocaust Library, New York, 1989, p.38-40) (14) Had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away. F. Fedorenko MY TESTIMONY When the bolsheviks retreated before the German onslaught in the Second World War they took care in advance not to leave any prisoners behind when the Germans arrived. The prisoners were driven, en masse, under heavy NKVD guard deep into Russia or Siberia, day and night. Many of them were so tired that they could go no further. These were shot without compunction where they fell. Terrible things happened then. Sometimes, wives recognized their husbands among the evacuees, as the prisoners were being driven through the villages. There was great despair when they saw their loved ones taken under the muzzles of automatic guns, to far, unknown places. The villagers took care of those who did not die at once from the NKVD bullets, but this was a very dangerous thing to do before all the bolsheviks cleared out. But the NKVD could not evacuate all the prisoners, there were so many arrests, and jails were replenished constantly. In such a case the NKVD, before making a hasty retreat, would murder the prisoners in their cells. I recall that when the Germans came, in the fall of 1941, to a little town, Chornobil, on the Prypyat River, 62 miles west of Kiev, 52 corpses of recently murdered people, slightly covered with earth, were found in the prison yard. These corpses had their hands tied at the back with wire; some had their backs flayed, others had gouged eyes or nails driven into their heels; still others had their noses, ears, tongues and even genitals cut away. Instruments of torture which the communists used were found in the dungeon of the prison. Many of the tortured people were identified because they were mostly farmers from the local collectives who had been arrested by the NKVD for some unknown reason. For instance, one girl (whose name I cannot recall now) from the village of Zallissya, a mile and a quarter from Chornobil, was arrested because one day she failed to go to dig trenches. All were compelled at that time, to dig anti-tank trenches. The girl was sick but there was no doctor to examine her and the NKVD arrested her, never to return. Two days later, when the Germans arrived, she was found among the fifty-two corpses. (F. Fedorenko, My Testimony, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 97-98) (15) Executed 180 persons. Andriy Vodopyan CRIME IN STALINE In this city in the NKVD prison factory the communists executed 180 persons and buried them in two holes dug in the prison yard. The corpses were liberally treated with unslaked lime, especially the faces. My brother was sentenced to three months in jail for coming late to work. After serving 18 days in the factory prison he was set free, and a month later was drafted to the Red Army because this was in July 1941. Later, his wife and my mother found him among the corpses, identifying him by the left hand finger, underwear and papers he had on him. This atrocity came to light when prisoners who remained alive were liberated. They had also a very close call. Six days before the arrival of the German troops they heard muffled shots. The prison was secretly mined by NKVD agents in preparation for the German invaders. (Andriy Vodopyan, Crime in Staline, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 121) (16) Had their breasts cut off. Yuriy Dniprovy INNOCENT VICTIMS In the little town of Zolotnyky in the Ternopil region the bolsheviks murdered a captain of the former Ukrainian Galician Army (UHA) of 1918-1922, Mr. Dankiw, and clerks of the Ukrainian cooperative store, the sisters Magdalene, Sophia and Clementine Husar from the suburb of Vaha. Clementine and Magdalene were tortured in a beastly manner and had their breasts cut off. Other people executed at that time were: Slavko Demyd, Yosyp Vozny, Vasyl Burbela, Zynoviy Kushniryna, Pavlo Kushniryna and a non-commissioned officer of the UHA, Mr. Tsiholsky. (Yuriy Dniprovy, Innocent Victims, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 122) (17) The chopped bones and flesh of the victims fell into the sewers. P. K. THE INFERNAL DEVICE OF THE RUSSIAN COMMUNISTS (By an eyewitness) In the year 1942, when the Red Army, harassed by the German divisions, retreated from Katerynodar (Krasnodar), the regional NKVD division evacuated all the prisoners and sent them in the direction of Novorossiysk. The railway line between Katerynodar and the station of Krymska was jammed by nearly two hundred freight boxcars filled to capacity with political prisoners. Suspecting that all these prisoners might fall into German hands the Russian NKVD men, as a precautionary measure, poured gasoline on the cars and let them burn. Thus a few thousand people perished in inhuman torture merely because they were suspected of anti-communism. When the Germans entered Katerynodar they found in the regional divisional building of the NKVD in Sinny Bazar, a horrible torture chamber. In the vault of this building there was a dark passage which ended with a wooden platform which dipped down at a sharp angle. Right underneath it there was a machine which resembled a straw chopper. It was a disk equipped with a system of big knives that revolved at great speed. It was powered by a motor. After questioning, the innocent victims were driven by the NKVD agents towards the wooden platform and rolled under the knives of the hellish meatchopper. The chopped bones and flesh of the victims fell into the sewers and were carried away with a stream of sewage into the river Kuban. Having discovered this horrible place, the Germans gave permission to all who wished to view this inhuman device. Thousands of people visited the place, among them the author of these lines. Other nations direct their talents towards the discovery of better medicines, new materials, better means of communication to make living conditions better. The Russian people are using all their talents for the production of machines and new methods of mass murder and torture. (P. K., The infernal device of the Russian Communists (by an eyewitness), in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, pp. 123-124) (18) Some had nails driven into their skulls. M. Kowal BOLSHEVIK MURDERS I am Michael Kowal, from the town of Kaminka Strumylova in the Lviw Region in Ukraine. During the communist occupation of Western Ukraine I personally witnessed three arrests in my native town on June 22, 1941, those of Bohdan Mulkevich, and Michael Mulkevich who lived on Zamok Street, and Michael Mulkevich's blacksmith apprentice, presumably from the village of Rymaniw in the same Region. They were suspected of disloyalty to the communist regime. After the communist retreat from Kaminska-Strumylova they were found in the town prison with 33 other victims, murdered in a horribly sadistic manner. All the corpses were tied together with barbed wire and all bore signs of terrible beatings. Some had nails driven into their skulls. None of them had been shot to death. Their bodies, nude and badly mauled, were practically unrecognizable to their relatives. Bohdan Mulkevish's wife recognized her husband, but, trying to verify her identification by his gold teeth, found them missing. All the bodies were taken away for interment. That Same day 19 other bodies were discovered near the village of Todan about 9 or 10 kilometers from Kaminka-Strumylova. They were tied to trees and their chests were pierced with bayonets. These were all identified by relatives and taken away for burial. (M. Kowal, Bolshevik Murders, in The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529) (19) Shot the children in cold blood. Andriy Vodopyan A RAVINE FILLED WITH THE BODIES OF CHILDREN I was serving in the Soviet Russian Army. Our artillery unit was retreating before the Germans in the direction of Yeletsk. On September 18, 1941, our unit came to a wide ravine situated about 14 miles from Chartsysk station, and about 60 miles from the city of Staline. The ravine stretched from the station of Chartsysk to the station of Snizhy. When we approached the ravine we were taken aback by a horrible sight. The whole ravine was filled with the bodies of children. They were lying in different positions. Most of them were from 14 to 16 years of age. They were dressed in black, and we recognized them as students of the F.S.U., a well-known trade and craft school. We counted 370 bodies altogether. All of them had been killed by machine gun fire. This group of children was being evacuated from Staline when the Germans neared the city. The children had marched 60 miles, and, exhausted and unable to continue walking, asked for transportation. The officers in charge promised to send them trucks. Instead of trucks, a detachment of the Russian political police (NKVD) arrived, and shot the children in cold blood with machine guns. This ravine, filled with hundreds of bodies of slain children, moved even the soldiers, accustomed as they were to the sight of death. (Andriy Vodopyan, A Ravine Filled With the Bodies of Children, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529) (20) Throwing hand-grenades into the crowded cells. Rev. J. Chyrva was imprisoned in 1941 when the Russian Communist armies were withdrawing from the city of Riwne. He happened to be cast into one of those jails in which the communists, fleeing from advancing German armies, attempted to rid themselves of as many prisoners as possible by throwing hand-grenades into the crowded cells. When the first grenade was thrown into the cell where Rev. J. Chyrva was kept, he was the first to fall - his foot shattered. On him fell many mutilated bodies, covering him, thus saving his life. Later, when people came into the cell, they found all the prisoners dead with the exception of Rev. J. Chyrva. He is alive today, a witness of that horrible manslaughter. (Rev. Lev Buchak, Persecution of Ukrainian Protestants under the Soviet Rule, in S. O. Pidhainy (ed.), The Black Deeds of the Kremlin: A White Book, Ukrainian Association of Victims of Russian Communist Terror, Toronto, 1953, p. 529) (21) Exhumed corpses were found without skin. The Bolsheviks had arrested thousands of Ukrainian patriots, and prior to their retreat, they killed them savagely. For some reason even highly regarded Jewish authors understate the number of Ukrainian victims of Bolshevik terror. Gerald Reitlinger gives a figure of three to four thousand in Lviv alone. Hilberg speaks of "the Bolsheviks deporting Ukrainians," but he does not furnish any overall figures. But on the basis of a German document (RSHA IV-A-1, Operational Report USSR no. 28, 20 July 1941, No-2943), which I was unable to verify, he recounts one particularly horrible episode: In Kremenets 100-150 Ukrainians had been killed by the Soviets. When some of the exhumed corpses were found without skin, rumors circulated that the Ukrainians had been thrown into kettles of boiling water. The Ukrainian population retaliated by seizing 130 Jews and beating them to death with clubs. He also quotes the French collaborator Dr. Frederic as saying that the Bolsheviks killed eighteen thousand Ukrainian political prisoners in Lviv and its outskirts alone. Basing his remarks on an anonymous article entitled "The Ethnocide of Ukrainians in the USSR," in the dissident journal Ukrainian Herald, Issue 7-8, the Ukrainian-American publicist Lew Shankowsky gives the following number of victims of Bolshevik terror in Galicia and Volhynia: as many as forty thousand killed in the prisons of Lviv, Lutsk, Rivne, Dubno, Ternopil, Stanyslaviv (now Ivano-Frankivsk), Stryi, Drohobych, Sambir, Zolochiv and other towns and settlements. The fact of the matter is that, justifiably or not, some Ukrainians felt that some Jews were in the employ of the Stalinist secret police, the NKVD. For instance, it was pointed out to me by a resident of Western Ukraine that a high NKVD official in Lviv, a certain Barvinsky, was Jewish, despite his Ukrainian name. (Yaroslav Bilinsky, Methodological Problems and Philosophical Issues in the Study of Jewish-Ukrainian Relations During the Second World War, pp. 373-394, in Howard Aster and Peter J. Potichnyj (eds.), Ukrainian-Jewish Relations in Historical Perspective, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton, 1990, footnotes deleted) (22) From 15,000 to 40,000 prisoners were killed In their hasty and often panic-stricken retreat, the Soviet authorities were not about to evacuate the thousands of prisoners they had arrested, mostly during their last months of rule in western Ukraine. Their solution, implemented at the end of June and in early July 1941, was to kill all inmates regardless of whether they had committed minor or major crimes or were being held for political reasons. According to estimates, from 15,000 to 40,000 prisoners were killed during the Soviet retreat from eastern Galicia and western Volhynia. (Paul Robert Magocsi, A History of Ukraine, University of Washington Press, Seattle, 1996, p. 624) However, the Membership of this NKVD was Predominantly Jewish What was the membership of this NKVD that we see above being so repeatedly blamed for the massacre of Ukrainians in the days before occupation by German forces? In my analysis of data presented by Yuri Shapoval, I arrive at the conclusion that the senior membership in Ukraine of the organization one of whose names became the NKVD was as follows: Out of every 10 senior members of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine: 6 were Jewish, 2 were Russian, 1 was Ukrainian, and 1 was other. Statements made by others support the conclusion that the NKVD was predominantly a Jewish organization. For example, Yoram Sheftel, Ivan Demjanjuk's Israeli defense attorney, reports that in connection with his visit to the Simferopol, Ukraine, KGB headquarters in 1990, a plaque memorializing the "KGB" dead of the war showed that all thirty of the thirty names were Jewish: On the right-hand wall was a stone memorial plaque engraved with the names of about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in the Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets call World War II. I was shocked and angry as I read the names: the first was Polonski and the last Levinstein, and all those between were ones like Zalmonowitz, Geller and Kagan - all Jews. The best of Jewish youth in Russia, the cradle of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to the Red Devil. (The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, Victor Gollancz, London, 1994, p. 301) Of course Sheftel's sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative of the entire NKVD in Ukraine; however the Jewish domination of the entire NKVD is not a rare or dubious hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than one direction: As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were there so many Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators - including many of the most terrible? It's a painful question for me but I cannot evade it. (Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on Russia, Past, Present and Future, 1994, p. 147) Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery - especially in the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and the NKVD.... It is difficult to suggest a satisfactory reason for the prevalence of Jews in the Cheka. It may be that having suffered at the hand of the former Russian authorities they wanted to seize the reins of real power in the new state for themselves. (Leonard Shapiro, The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement, Slavonic and East European Review, 1961, 40, p. 165) But if in the pre-German interval Ukrainians were being killed by the NKVD, and if the NKVD was disproportionately, or even overwhelmingly, Jewish, then one might summarize by saying that in the pre-German interval, Ukrainians were being killed by Jews. I Expand My Summary Table Once Again The table which I have been developing in my letters to you of 30Jun99 and 01Jul99 can now be elaborated with the uppermost entry: Date of my letter Subject of my letter Date of Attack Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 04Jul99 The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny Summer 1941 15May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? April 1979 30Jun99 Who murdered Vadim Boyko? February 14, 1992 Violence that you might have caused by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 09Apr99 Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko? Summer 1995 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? July 7-8, 1997 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko? August 11, 1997 The new "The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny" entry in the table above is of particular importance not only because of the large number of victims involved, but also because it demonstrates your going beyond the fault of overlooking Ukrainians being victimized, to the greater fault of replacing the real killing of a large number of Ukrainians by Jews with an imaginary killing of a large number of Jews by Ukrainians. And I Find My Earlier Conclusions Strengthened What a convincing broadcast your The Ugly Face of Freedom would have been if all the instances in the above table had been ones of Jews or Russians being tortured and mutilated and murdered by Ukrainians, instead of the other way around! However, in your broadcast you documented not a single such story featuring Ukrainians victimizing Jews or Russians. Evidence of Ukrainians being victimized was plentiful, but you ignored it. Much worse, in the case of the pre-German violence, you reversed it. Unless you are able to offer some credible defense, Mr. Safer, two conclusions that have already gained a foothold threaten to climb to wide acceptance: (1) that your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes demonstrated your lack of competence and integrity; and (2) that your broadcast served to demonstrate to Ukraine's assassins not only that violence against Ukrainians goes unreported in the world press, but also that it is even buried under fabricated reports of violence committed by Ukrainians. By means of this demonstration, you informed Ukraine's assassins that they might expect impunity for their work against Ukrainians, and in this way you encouraged them to violence that they might otherwise have feared to commit. Thus, it is possible that you contributed to Maksym Tsarenko losing his hands, and to Volodymyr Katelnytsky together with his mother, and Borys Derevyanko, losing their lives. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 569 hits since 25Jul99 Morley Safer Letter 14 25Jul99 Who did Israel Roitman murder? "By the time the Banderite's face was turned into a bloody-hairy pulp, we were exhausted. The Banderite slumped to his knees, then fell flat on his face. We shot him." - Israel Roitman July 25, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: I bring to your attention the following boastful confession of former SMERSH agent, Israel Roitman The translation of Isreal Roitman's autobiographical account below, originally published in the Russian-language periodical Our View in Thornhill, Ontario in 1998, recounts the experience of a Jew participating in the torture and murder of a Ukrainian during the Second World War, and boasts that this one crime was only the first of many: MUSIC by Israel Roitman Our View 05May98 [...] Once, on the occasion of a talk with students, I was asked: "Did you also kill people?" What could I answer? It remained only to smile sadly, and my memory recalled the first cruelty. Afterward, there were many more, but the first is unforgettable. It happened, if memory serves, in the Zolochiv region which lies along the Ternopil-Lviv highway (Western Ukraine). The military SMERSH ("Death to Spies", as military counter-intelligence was named during the war) instructed us intelligence officers to investigate the cause of death of one of our sabotage units. On the second or third day, we came upon the tracks of the perpetrators who were responsible for the death of our comrades, and caught them relaxing in broad daylight in a large house on a forest farmstead. There were three men sitting around a table with moonshine and snacks: a thin, tall German, a heavily-armed policeman, and a fat-faced, unshaven Banderite [Ukrainian fighting for Ukrainian independence] wearing a service cap with a yellow-light blue [colors of the Ukrainian flag] cockade and some kind of stripes sewn on his sleeve. It goes without saying: a merry band. We had to shoot the policeman right there in the house, his abundance of weapons not helping him a bit. We took the German and the Banderite out into the yard. The Banderite, a huge man with long hands large as shovels, just stood there with a crooked smile. On his unshaven face, his eyes darted nervously about like gimlets. Evidently, the worsening situation was completely unexpected by him and he didn't know what to do, and couldn't hit upon any course of action. Of course, under different circumstances, he could have tossed us boys around like puppies, but this time the inveterate beast could not do so: we were the ones with the weapons. Oh, yes! By that time, we had seen a lot of these nationalists, as they were contemptuously called, the "Samostiynyks" ["Independents"] (the motto of the Ukrainian Nationalists was "For an Independent Ukraine"). These were veritable beasts, worse than some Fritzes [Germans]. Volodka Seliverstov hit him first, in the solar plexus. The Banderite groaned, gripped his stomach with his hands, and doubled over like a folding knife. Then followed a knee upper-cut to the face. A sobbing was heard and the Banderite started falling backwards. But we didn't let him fall. There were five of us. We stood in a small circle and knocked him from one to another. We struck silently with backhand blows, putting into them all our accumulated rage and hatred. We struck viciously, probably like hunters striking huge and especially dangerous maddened beasts. By the time the Banderite's face was turned into a bloody-hairy pulp, we were exhausted. The Banderite slumped to his knees, then fell flat on his face. We shot him. The German, we delivered safely across the front line and turned him over to the SMERSH people. (We followed the same practice afterwards. When police, Banderites, Vlasovites, or Germans fell into our hands, we usually delivered the latter untouched, but the traitors we executed ourselves on the spot.) [...] The original of the beginning of Israel Roitman's article appears below, the portion translated above shown enclosed in a box: I Expand My Summary Table Once Again The table which I have been developing in my previous three letters to you can now be elaborated with the Israel Roitman entry. As Roitman gives no dates for his crimes, I conjecture that they began in 1941; as Roitman could have continued his service in the Soviet secret police for several decades, there is no telling what span of time his crimes occupied: Date of my letter Subject of my letter Date of Attack Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 04Jul99 The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny Summer 1941 25Jul99 Who did Israel Roitman murder? 1941- 15May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? April 1979 30Jun99 Who murdered Vadim Boyko? February 14, 1992 Violence that you might have encouraged by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 09Apr99 Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko? Summer 1995 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? July 7-8, 1997 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko? August 11, 1997 And I Find My Earlier Conclusions Strengthened In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you urged the conclusion that Ukraine was a place where Ukrainians kill Jews. However, you found that conclusion difficult to substantiate. The conclusion that you would have found easy to substantiate - as Israel Roitman demonstrates by his lack of inhibition in stepping forward - is the opposite one that Ukraine is a place where Jews kill Ukrainians. What Israel Roitman demonstrates is not only that Jews tortured and murdered Ukrainians, but also that even today, even in Canada, they continue to view the torture and murder of Ukrainians as their right, and they recount how they did so not with self-doubting guilt, but with self-righteous pride. To Israel Roitman, a Ukrainian fighting for Ukrainian independence was, and continues to be, a "veritable beast," and the chief effect of your broadcast was to demonstrate to the world that your own opinion is not much different. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 675 hits since 27Jul99 Morley Safer Letter 15 27Jul99 Who did Leonid Wolf murder? Although you have lost all claim to journalistic competence and integrity, at least you can console yourself with not being alone and unappreciated. Indeed, you are a valued member of a large and successful team. Grigory Luchansky, Vadim Rabinovich, and Leonid Wolf undoubtedly know of your work, and they thank you for it. July 27, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: I bring to your attention the following Kyiv Post article: I reproduce the Kyiv post article in its entirely on the chance that it will be useful to 60 Minutes researchers interested in developing a good story. However, for purposes of this letter alone, we are primarily interested in information on Leonid Wolf which is contained in the three segments in blue: Who is Leonid Wolf and what is behind government action? News Analysis By STEFAN KORSHAK Post Staff Writer 01 July 1999 In making wealthy businessman Vadim Rabinovich persona non grata on June 24, the Ukrainian government created a mystery. By simultaneously announcing that it had taken a similar action against Leonid Borisovich Wolf back in December, it created another one. The government linked Wolf to numerous unsolved contract killings. But it did not specify the link between Wolf and Rabinovich, other than to name them in the same press release announcing that both Israeli citizens are banned from Ukraine. That leaves the public, as usual, out of the loop about what the twin actions mean and what evidence the Ukrainian government is holding. While Wolf could not be reached for comment, Rabinovich denied the Ukrainian government's allegations in a June 30 news conference in Tel Aviv. The unanswered questions are numerous: What led the Ukrainian government to bar Rabinovich from the nation for five years? What are his ties to Wolf? What evidence links Wolf to murders? The ban on the two men also raises larger questions about government motives: Coupled with the pending embezzlement charges against former Prime Minister Pavlo Lazarenko and an aide, is the Ukrainian government finally getting tough on corruption? Or is it simply being unfair to successful businessmen who happened to fall out of favor? Those questions in turn raise the most unpredictable question of all: What's next? The official State Security Service (SBU) press release appears straightforward: "Today Ukraine's Security Service, according to materials in its possession and in the interests of Ukraine's national security, has forbidden the entrance the citizen of Israel Vadim Zinoviovich Rabinovich, (passport numbers) from entering Ukraine for the period of five years beginning 24 June 1999, for causing especially serious damage to the Ukrainian economy. "Moreover, on 17 December 1998, the SBU closed the right of entrance into Ukrainian territory to Israeli citizen Leonid Borisovich Wolf, who is considered a member of a professional organized criminal group, which is suspected of carrying out contract killings in the Odessa, Kyiv, and Dnipropetrovsk regions." The relationship between Rabinovich and Wolf was not spelled out, nor was the reason why the Ukrainian government chose to announce the decisions in the same news release. Who is this Leonid Wolf? A search of Ukrainian media archives for the last 10 years turned up nothing. Ukraine's SBU and Ministry of Internal Affairs flatly declined comment, as did Israeli Embassy spokesmen. However, according to Kyiv law enforcement and Odessa business sources, Wolf is a Ukrainian native who was born in the 1940s. He emigrated to Israel in the late 1970s and became a citizen there. By the early 1990s, the sources said, Wolf was playing a key role in developing Ukraine into an international smuggling hub. His business activities were said to include shipping, oil trading, narcotics, export of weapons, chemicals, metals, and agricultural commodities - sometimes in cooperation with Soviet-era mobsters, sometimes with the assistance of local officials. Wolf first came into contact with Vadim Rabinovich in Israel in the early 1990s, one Ukrainian police source said. One of Wolf's important business associates, the police source said, is one of the former Soviet Union's most notorious alleged criminals, Grigory Luchansky. That, if true, could be the link between him and Rabinovich. Luchansky was born in the 1940s, possibly in Latvia, according to several sources contacted by the Post. He became a career KGB officer and served overseas in a variety of posts. By the mid-1980s, Luchansky set up and ran Vienna-based Nordex, a KGB-owned and operated business designed to launder money for overseas intelligence operatives. Nordex's primary trading partner in Ukraine was government-owned Ukragrotekhservis, U.S. Congressman Dan Burton alleged during congressional hearings in April 1997. Burton identified Rabinovich as Luchansky's key Ukrainian lieutenant, serving in a variety of capacities including, until 1995, Nordex vice president. Rabinovich has stated repeatedly that he severed relations with Luchansky in 1995 due to Nordex's poor international reputation. He has consistently denied participating in any criminal activity while he worked for Nordex. An April 1997 Time magazine article identified Luchansky as "the most pernicious unindicted criminal in the world." Luchansky's trading activities in the former Soviet Union encompass weapons, oil, narcotics, natural gas, chemicals, precious metals, fertilizers, agricultural commodities, and consumer goods. Other Luchansky enterprises reportedly include prostitution, drug manufacture, racketeering, influence peddling and fixed privatization auctions. Nordex grossed $2 billion in 1994, investing some of its income in enterprises ranging from a Moscow beer brewery to a Kyiv tire plant, a Magnitogorsk steel mill, an Austrian health spa and even a Uruguayan car dealership, according to various media reports. Luchansky's biggest business coup came in 1993, when he engineered a fuel-for-food deal between Russia and Ukraine. In 1995, after meeting at a Democratic Party fundraiser with U.S. President Bill Clinton and sparking a U.S. political scandal, Luchansky fell under increasingly intense international investigation. In 1996 a $35 million gold mine deal brokered by Luchansky between the Kazakhstan government and a Canadian mining company flopped, cutting into Nordex earnings. Nordex has reportedly suffered in the wake of the emerging-markets economic crisis. Luchansky maintains a residence in the Israeli seaside town of Netanya, a Mecca for Soviet-region emigres and scene of intense Russian mob activity, the Jerusalem Post newspaper reported. The Post was unable to contact Luchansky for comment and his whereabouts are unknown. I Expand My Summary Table Once Again The table which I have been developing in my previous four letters to you can now be elaborated with the Leonid Wolf entry. As the SBU press release gives no dates for the Leonid Wolf assassinations, I am assuming that they took place in the last five years: Date of my letter Subject of my letter Date of Attack Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 04Jul99 The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny Summer 1941 25Jul99 Who did Israel Roitman murder? 1941- 15May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk? April 1979 30Jun99 Who murdered Vadim Boyko? February 14, 1992 Violence that you might have encouraged by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom 09Apr99 Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko? Summer 1995 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky? July 7-8, 1997 01Jul99 Who murdered Borys Derevyanko? August 11, 1997 27Jul99 Who did Leonid Wolf murder? 1994-1999 And I Find My Earlier Conclusions Strengthened For your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, you went to Ukraine determined to broadcast the story - no matter what the evidence - of Ukrainians oppressing and murdering Jews. In order to do so, you had to blind yourself to the plentiful evidence that exactly the opposite was taking place. The reality is that Ukraine is being plundered and assaulted by a Jewish mafia based in Israel. You can begin your investigation of this phenomenon with the cases of the following three Israeli citizens: (1) "the most pernicious unindicted criminal in the world" Grigory Luchansky, (2) his "key Ukrainian lieutenant" Vadim Rabinovich, and (3) "contract killer" Leonid Wolf. Please note that in your smearing of Ukraine, you were unable to come up with evidence of a Ukrainian mafia based in Ukraine and victimizing Israel. The evidence was the opposite, but you were not interested in evidence. But since the subject of our discussion is not merely crime, but rather cross-ethnic violence, I restrict my attention to assassin Leonid Wolf, and with respect to Leonid Wolf, I ask you to note that you were unable to come up with evidence of a Ukrainian assassin who roamed Israel murdering as he went, especially one whom Israel, fearing the vengeance of a powerful Ukraine, neglected to arrest and put on trial, but merely banned from Israeli soil for a time. Mr. Safer, Ukraine's plunderers and assassins cannot operate in a vacuum. They need support. They need Swiss banks to stash their loot. They need Israel to provide them with sanctuary. They need journalists to smear their victims. And so, although you have lost all claim to journalistic competence and integrity, at least you can console yourself with not being alone and unappreciated. Indeed, you are a valued member of a large and successful team. Grigory Luchansky, Vadim Rabinovich, and Leonid Wolf undoubtedly know of your work, and they thank you for it. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 809 hits since 23Oct99 Morley Safer Letter 16 23Oct99 Fifth anniversary commemoration If, to imagine a comparable case, CBS management jointly owned a chicken-packing plant that had been cited for sanitation violations, then it would be unethical for 60 Minutes to run a story defending the plant without disclosing its ownership. October 23, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: Fifth anniversary of The Ugly Face of Freedom Now that we have arrived at the fifth anniversary of your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, I think that all might agree that five years has given us sufficient time to reflect on that broadcast, to arrive at a reasonable understanding of its defects, and to decide what corrective action remains for 60 Minutes to undertake. It is the purpose of the present letter to propose that the corrective action should be a 12-minute 60 Minutes story under the title The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes, and necessarily hosted by yourself. Given the severe time limitation of a 12-minute segment, not to mention the public's lack of interest in excessive detail, The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes will be forced to overlook scores of lesser inaccuracies and biases, and will be forced to omit mention of any defects that contain the least element of doubt. Rather, The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes will have no option but to outline only those major defects and errors concerning which there is no dispute. Below is my listing of the points which - being the most important and the least disputable - are ones that The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should include. Who did it? The authorship of The Ugly Face of Freedom was Jewish. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should start by acknowledging that The Ugly Face of Freedom was not just an attack upon Ukrainians and upon the nation of Ukraine, but that it was a Jewish attack. You will be able to convince your viewers of this merely by disclosing that every last person bearing responsibility for the story, from the very top of the chain of command to the very bottom, was Jewish: (1) Laurence Tisch, Chairman and CEO of CBS (2) Eric Ober, President of CBS News (3) Don Hewitt, Executive Producer of 60 Minutes (4) Jeffrey Fager, Producer of The Ugly Face of Freedom (5) Morley Safer, Program Host (6) Simon Wiesenthal, one of the two featured program witnesses (7) Yaakov Bleich, the other of the two featured program witnesses Moreover, The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should acknowledge that it was unethical for CBS to run a story on Ukraine without acknowledging its conflict of interest - the conflict being that it is an integral part of Jewish culture to nourish fear and hatred of Ukrainians, and yet 60 Minutes which was owned and operated by Jews undertook to broadcast what purported to be an objective, investigative-journalism story on Ukraine. If, to imagine a comparable case, CBS management jointly owned a chicken-packing plant that had been cited for sanitation violations, then it would be unethical for 60 Minutes to run a story defending the plant without disclosing its ownership. One of the authors of The Ugly Face of Freedom may have been a Gestapo agent. Of all the individuals in the above list, I see no need to discuss transgressions beyond those committed in creating the broadcast, except in one case where it is of the highest relevance - and that is the case of Simon Wiesenthal whom you bring forward to testify concerning Nazi collaboration when he himself appears to be a Nazi collaborator of major proportions, possibly with the blood of many on his hands, and possibly much of it Jewish blood. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose the suspect nature of Wiesenthal's past, as for example the occasion on which Simon Wiesenthal was allowed by his German captors to keep two pistols, or the occasion on which other Jews were executed following their recapture after escaping, whereas Simon Wiesenthal was relieved of work and put on double rations. This information is highly relevant, as it suggests the possibility that Simon Wiesenthal used 60 Minutes to offer false testimony concerning Nazi collaboration partly in order to conceal his own guilt. What did they do? The attempt on the part of CBS Jews steeped in a culture of hatred toward Ukrainians to report on Ukraine resulted in outstanding distortions which can be corrected as follows: (1) In the pre-German interval, Ukrainians did not kill Jews. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose to its viewers that the Wiesenthal-Safer calumny - that prior to the arrival of German forces, Ukrainians killed some five to six thousand Jews - is without support. (2) In the pre-German interval, Jews did kill Ukrainians. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that in the days prior to occupation by German forces, the Jewish-dominated NKVD tortured and murdered Ukrainians by the thousands. (3) The Yaakov Bleich stories cannot be substantiated. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that the Yaakov Bleich stories of elderly Jews being stabbed and left for dead in two different locations in Ukraine cannot be substantiated. (4) Stepan Bandera was a Ukrainian patriot. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should balance negative Stepan Bandera coverage by disclosing that Bandera was arrested by the Germans in the first