days of their invasion of Ukraine, spent most of the war in German captivity, lost two brothers in Auschwitz, and upon release from German captivity toward the end of the war, devoted his efforts to fighting the Germans. (5) Symon Petliura protected Jews from anti-Ukrainian provocateurs. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should balance negative Symon Petliura coverage by quoting his own words, as for example this excerpt from his Army Order No. 131: "I most positively order that all those who are instigating you to pogroms be thrust out of the army, and as traitors to the fatherland be handed over to the court. Let the court punish them according to their crimes by giving them the severest lawful penalty." (6) The Galicia Division was an anti-Bolshevik combat unit. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that the Galicia Division was not part of the SS, but only of the Waffen-SS, and so was a combat unit; that there were a total of 38 Waffen-SS divisions comprised of several nationalities, including four Dutch divisions, two Belgian, as well as French, Norwegian, and Russian; and that the Galicia Division did not "march off to fight for Hitler," but rather marched off to fight against the Bolshevik re-occupation of Western Ukraine. (7) The Holocaust story has been adulterated. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that the history of the Holocaust has been adulterated by the admixture of fantasies concocted by unprincipled opportunists - Jerzy Kosinski being the most widely known example, and the Wiesenthal-Safer calumny providing the instance closest to home. (8) CBS stone-walled. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that 60 Minutes illegally destroyed the 16,000 pieces of mail which protested The Ugly Face of Freedom, and that 60 Minutes also delayed for five years (and maybe a little bit longer) before informing its viewers of the defects in the original broadcast. (9) Mistranslation. Conceding for present purposes that 60 Minutes was not clearly in the wrong to always translate Zhyd as Kike, nevertheless The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should disclose that when the editor of Za Vilnu Ukrainu used the word Yevrei, 60 Minutes was obligated to translate that as Jew, and was clearly in the wrong to have translated it as Kike. (10) Ukrainian sacrifices to save Jews. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should tear up its picture of unrelieved Ukrainian hostility to Jews by disclosing that a large number of Ukrainians risked their lives, and gave their lives, to save Jews, and that no comparable reciprocity has ever been observed from the Jewish side. The case of Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky hiding large numbers of Jews on church property could be featured in this context, as could the Ukrainian Bodnar's saving the life of Simon Wiesenthal. (11) The chief Ukrainian roles during WW II were those of victim and of victor. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should tear up its picture of unrelieved Ukrainian sympathy for Nazism by disclosing that Ukrainians were among the foremost victims of the Nazis, suffering losses much greater than Jewish losses, and were in the forefront of the battle which defeated the Nazis. Why did they do it? Jews have motives for calumniating Ukraine. The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes should finally inform its viewers of Jewish motives for calumniating Ukrainians and Ukraine, among these being the following: (1) Brain drain. Magnified and incited Ukrainian anti-Semitism is needed in order to increase the brain drain from Ukraine to Israel. (2) Image of the Jew as victim. Inculcating the image of Jews as victims of the Nazis, and Ukrainians as the leading collaborators of the Nazis, serves to crowd out, and give the appearance of implausibility to, a series of other images: that Ukrainians were leading victims of the Nazis, that Ukrainians played a leading role in the defeat of the Nazis, that Jews collaborated with the Nazis more than Ukrainians did, that Ukrainians risked their lives and gave their lives to save Jews, and that in today's world, among the leading perpetrators of war crimes and crimes against humanity are the Israelis. (3) The Lviv massacre. Promoting the false story of Ukrainians massacring Jews prior to the arrival of the Germans is particularly useful in winning disbelief of the true story that the Jewish-dominated NKVD massacred Ukrainians prior to the arrival of the Germans. (4) Bohdan Khmelnytsky. The Jewish calumniation of Ukrainians strengthens a frame of mind that will more readily accept the Jewish revision of the Bohdan Khmelnytsky uprising of 1648 from the accurate view that it was a rebellion against severe Polish-Jewish oppression to the false view that it was a spontaneous outburst of gratuitous and genocidal anti-Semitism. (5) US aid. The Jewish calumniation of Ukrainians weakens competition for US aid, as by discrediting Ukrainian president Leonid Kuchma who was at the time of the 60 Minutes broadcast paying an official visit to the US. (6) Group cohesion. The incitement of fear and hatred in Jews increases popular support for, and the flow of private donations to, Jewish leaders. A focus is needed for that fear and hatred. At the moment, Ukrainians have been chosen to be that focus. Most of the above assertions have been documented, sometimes at length, on the Ukrainian Archive at www.ukar.org. If you would like me to direct your attention to documentation concerning any particular assertion - whether that documentation is on the Ukrainian Archive or elsewhere - please let me know and I will be happy to oblige. Twelve minutes to restored credibility I think you will have no trouble accomodating all of the above points into a single 60 Minutes segment. If you do, and if you broadcast that segment, you will turn your currently failing grades for competence and integrity into high As, and you will lift the status of 60 Minutes to a level never before reached in American journalism. If you do not, you will credit 60 Minutes with the dubious achievement of having broadcast the most concentrated segment of hate propaganda ever to make its appearance in the mainstream media. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 821 hits since 28Oct99 Morley Safer Letter 17 28Oct99 CBS must produce its evidence "At the end of June 1941 the NKVD massacred 10,000 prisoners in Lviv." - Nicolas Werth In connection with the photograph below, the caption referring to "hundreds of bodies" at Vinnytsia may be somewhat of an underestimate, as other sources give higher counts, as for example in a Chronology of Major Events, opposite the date 13-17 July, 1943, the following entry: "An international medical commission with representation from neutral powers examines the graves of 9,439 victims of NKVD shootings (1937-8) in Vinnytsia" (Yury Boshyk, Ukraine during World War II: History and its aftermath, Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, Edmonton, 1986, p. 257). October 28, 1999 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: Jews massacred Ukrainians in pre-German Lviv One cannot read the history of the 1941 German invasion of Ukraine without endlessly bumping into accounts of the massacre of Ukrainians by the retreating Jewish-dominated NKVD. In reinforcement of the many quotations which I brought to your attention in my letter to you of 04Jul99, I presently enclose the chapter-long statement of Alfred M. de Zayas, and I add below the briefer statement of Nicolas Werth: The rapid German advance in the first months of the war forced the NKVD to evacuate several prisons, labor colonies, and camps that would otherwise have fallen into enemy hands. Between July and December 1941, 210 colonies, 135 prisons, and 27 camps, containing nearly 750,000 prisoners, were transferred to the east. Summarizing "gulag activity in the Great Patriotic War," the Gulag chief, Ivan Nasedkin, claimed that "on the whole, the evacuation of the camps was quite well organized." He went on to add, however, that "because of the shortage of transport, most of the prisoners were evacuated on foot, over distances that sometimes exceeded 600 miles." One can well imagine the condition in which the prisoners arrived at their destinations. When there was not enough time for a camp to be evacuated, as was often the case in the opening weeks of the war, the prisoners were simply executed. This was particularly the case in western Ukraine, where at the end of June 1941 the NKVD massacred 10,000 prisoners in Lviv, 1,200 in the prison at Lutsk, 1,500 in Stanislwow, and 500 in Dubno. When the Germans arrived, they discovered dozens of mass graves in the regions of Lviv, Zhytomyr, and Vynnytsa. Using these "Judeo-Bolshevik atrocities" as a pretext, the Nazi Sonderkommandos in their turn immediately massacred tens of thousands of Jews. Nicolas Werth in Stephane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London England, 1999, pp. 225-226. The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny is a lie of Orwellian proportions Of course my reason for bringing these two additional accounts to your attention is to underline the admission that journalistic ethics demands that you make - that your 23Oct94 60 Minutes story The Ugly Face of Freedom got things exactly backwards. In the days prior to German occupation, it was Jews who were killing Ukrainians by the thousands. This is attested to by many. The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny - that in the days prior to German occupation, Lviv Ukrainians killed some five to six thousand Jews - is attested to only by Simon Wiesenthal and yourself. CBS attempts to re-write history One motive for CBS Jews to broadcast the Ugly Face of Freedom appears to be to re-write a history that they find unflattering. The historical record shows that Communist rule over Ukraine was largely a Jewish-inflicted oppression and carnage of which the Lviv massacre constituted a single incident. The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny, then, gives the impression of being, in part, an attempt to replace the accurate perception of Jews killing Ukrainians - or more generally, Jews killing Slavs - with the false image of Ukrainians killing Jews. However, the CBS effort was insufficient to erase from the historical record that the essence of Ukrainian-Jewish relations is captured not by the Ugly Face of Freedom, but by scenes such as the one below. Vynnytsa, Ukraine, June 1943. Here trenches dating from 1937-38 were opened and hundreds of bodies exhumed. The authorities had built a park and summer theater on the site. Similar trenches were discovered in Zhytomyr, Kamenets-Podolski, and other areas. Such macabre discoveries continue even today. In 1997, 1,100 bodies were exhumed in St. Petersburg, and another 9,000 were found in a mass grave in the forests of Karelia. Stephane Courtois, et al., The Black Book of Communism: Crimes, Terror, Repression, Harvard University Press, Cambridge Massachusetts and London England, 1999, between pp. 202 and 203. It's time for CBS to produce its evidence. If you have evidence which demonstrates that the Wiesenthal-Safer accusation is true, I invite you to break your five-year silence by placing it beside the evidence that I have adduced so that comparisons can be made and the truth can be discovered. Send me your evidence, and I will publish it on the Ukrainian Archive web site the same day, and web visitors will be able to judge for themselves who is right. If you have no evidence on your side, I invite you to break your five-year silence by withdrawing the Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny. If you continue to remain silent, the public will continue to judge not only that you were in the wrong, but that you lack the integrity to admit it as well. Lubomyr Prytulak cc: Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney, Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace. HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE SAFER < Safer Safer > 653 hits since 05Apr00 Morley Safer Letter 18 05Apr00 Flip side of French drinking "In 1991, Morley Safer's '60 Minutes' report on the possible heart protective effects of drinking red wine led to a 44 percent increase in red wine sales among Americans." - David Jernigan "While men in Sweden can expect to live 76.5 years on average, a French man's average lifespan is 74.1 years." - Cardiologist Michel de Lorgeril April 05, 2000 Morley Safer 60 Minutes, CBS Television 51 W 52nd Street New York, NY USA 10019 Morley Safer: The weight of scientific evidence contradicts your French Paradox conclusions My letter to you of 21Apr99 on the question "Does drinking wine promote longevity?" demonstrated that your conclusion that drinking 3 to 5 glasses of wine per day promotes longevity could be seen to be unwarranted from no more than the data that you adduced in its support. Today, I was astonished to read literature published by the Marin Institute indicating that research literature that you have failed to bring to public attention, either in your two French Paradox broadcasts or afterward, reveals that the bulk of the evidence points to conclusions opposite to the ones that you advocated. Below, I reproduce excerpts which illustrate the nature of this evidence from two Marin Institute articles: The Flip Side of French Drinking by Hilary Abramson (c) 2000 The Marin Institute Johnny Carson [who underwent quadruple heart bypass surgery last year] has some advice for David Letterman [who is recovering from a quintuple bypass]: "Drink more red wine." That's the message Carson left for Letterman while he was in the hospital. - Associated Press One of the fathers of the "French Paradox" believes the time has come to "ban" the expression his research team published in the mid '80s. One of his countrymen, whose work helped make famous the paradox of having a high saturated fat diet and lower than expected death rate from heart disease nearly a decade ago on "60 Minutes," says that attributing a low rate of heart disease to daily consumption of wine or other forms of alcohol is wrong. A growing number of French health researchers have news for the rest of the world: It is myth that the French are healthier than most everyone else because they drink. In truth, the French are drowning in the grape and paying a hefty price for it. "There is no scientific consensus today over the protective effect of alcohol," says Dominique Gillot, France's secretary of state for health. "The link between the quantity of alcohol consumed and increase of risk of diseases, particularly cancer, is, on the other hand, scientifically validated." The fact is that according to data from the world's largest study of heart disease, conducted by the World Health Organization (WHO) during the past decade in 21 countries with 10 million men and women, French heart disease statistics appear to have been underestimated and the "French Paradox" overestimated. France's rate of heart disease is actually similar to that of neighboring Italy, Spain, and southern Germany - lower than many countries in the world, but hardly as remarkable as reported in the 80s and early 90s. The French drink one-and-a-half times more per capita than Americans and their death rate from liver cirrhosis is more than one-and-a-half times greater than that in the United States. According to WHO, France has the sixth highest adult per capita alcohol consumption in the world. (The U.S. ranks 32nd.) Alcohol may be involved in nearly half of the deaths from road accidents, half of all homicides, and one-quarter of suicides, according to the French equivalent of the U.S. Institutes of Health. And while coronary heart disease may be less pervasive in that country of 60 million people than in many others, it is still the number one cause of death. Within the past year, several other revelations have highlighted this little-publicized, other side of French drinking: According to the first French economic study of its kind, France is more like the U.S. than Americans might realize in that alcohol also ranks first - above tobacco - in its cost to society. Tobacco takes more of a toll than alcohol in the rest of Europe, Canada and Australia. The high premature death rate of French men is largely due to alcohol abuse. It is nearly double the premature death rate of French women, and the magnitude of the difference is the highest in Europe, according to the French government's most recent report on health. French youth, who can legally drink at age 16, prefer beer and distilled spirits to wine and have increased their consumption five-fold since 1996 in part because 12- to 14-year-olds are drinking and binge drinking. This has led to a new government "War Against Drugs" that includes alcohol. [...] The French Paradox. Even in English the expression sounded romantic to 33.7 million Americans who first heard it in a report by Morley Safer on "60 Minutes" in November 1991. Although the French eat fatty foods and smoke more than Americans, said Safer, "if you're a middle-aged American man, your chances of dying of a heart attack are three times greater than a Frenchman of the same age. Obviously, they're doing something right - something Americans are not doing... Now it's all but confirmed: Alcohol - in particular red wine - reduces the risk of heart disease." Within four weeks, U.S. sales of red wine rocketed by 44 percent. American Airlines reported being unable to stock enough red wine to meet demand. By February 1992, a Gallup poll showed that 58 percent of Americans were aware of research linking moderate drinking to lower rates of heart disease. According to the poll, consumers had returned to drinking levels not seen since the mid-'80s. Although beer remained the preferred drink of Americans, wine preference increased from 22 to 27 percent. Five months after the 1992 poll, "60 Minutes" re-broadcast the "French Paradox" segment. Sales of red wine shot up 49 percent over the previous year. Safer was honored in France with a special "communication" prize from LVMH Moet Hennessy-Louis Vuitton. During the next few years, the Wine Institute lobbied officials of the U.S. Department of Health to reflect studies confirming the "60 Minutes" side of French drinking in the U.S. Dietary Guidelines, which the industry subsequently used to market wine as a health elixir. Food and Wines from France, which promotes Gallic products overseas, placed full-page newspaper ads announcing that French consumption of fatty food was counteracted by drinking French red wine. "[Health] announcements are increasing consumption more than anything else," said Stephanie Grubbs, marketing manager for Robert Mondavi Coastal, in Impact magazine in 1997. That same year, three out of four readers in the January Consumer Reports on Health survey believed that moderate red wine consumption is more beneficial than drinking beer or liquor. Recently, the San Francisco-based Wine Institute helped some California wineries get permission from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to add a label referring consumers to the federal dietary guidelines to learn the "health effects" of alcohol. But anyone who actually sent for the document would discover that the government's advice on alcohol is mostly cautionary. Inflamed by the belief that the wine industry was using the label to make it appear that the government was suggesting Americans drink for their health, Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), whose daughter was killed by a drunk driver, recently won a battle for the BATF to hold hearings on whether the "health effects" label can legally be affixed to every wine bottle. They're scheduled to take place in a number of U.S. cities in late spring. Today the Wine Institute touts its product on its website with studies and press releases. One quotes David Pittman, Ph.D., researcher at Washington University in St. Louis: "In societies such as France, Italy, Spain and Portugal, where wine and overall alcohol consumption is higher than in the United States, they just don't have as many alcohol-related problems such as drunk driving and underage drinking." That would be news to France. The world view that the French are able to control their drinking habits is untrue, according to Pierre Kopp, professor of economics at the Sorbonne. Kopp recently released the first French study estimating the cost of legal (alcohol and tobacco) and illegal drugs. Kopp estimates that alcohol costs France $18.5 billion (U.S.) each year. Drinking is responsible for nearly 53 percent of overall social costs of alcohol, tobacco and illegal drugs, he reports. (Annual cost to the state is $14.3 billion for tobacco and $2 billion for illegal drugs.) But even these high alcohol economic cost figures are underestimated, cautions the researcher, because he left out alcohol-related crime and accidents, which comprise some of the largest costs to society in the United States. Kopp focused on public and private money spent on medical treatment, lost productivity, absenteeism, uncollected taxes, unpaid health contributions, and preventive measures. [...] "Consumption is exceptionally high and the final bill is extremely heavy. Alcohol accounted for 42,963 deaths in France in 1997." [...] When "60 Minutes" introduced the French Paradox to America, Morley Safer featured only one French scientific authority - Serge Renaud, a trendsetter in alcohol research who still maintains that "there is no doubt that a moderate intake of wine (one to three glasses per day for a man) is associated with a 30- to 40-percent reduction in mortality from all causes." In its first issue of the new millennium, the prestigious British journal Lancet noted in a short profile of Renaud that his enthusiasm for alcohol and the French Paradox is hardly unanimous today among his French peers. In fact, at least two of the scientists instrumental in early French Paradox research today disagree with Renaud's belief in the central role of alcohol in a lower coronary heart disease rate. [...] What's new for both men is the MONICA Project established by centers around the world to MONItor trends in Cardiovascular diseases and relate them to risk factor changes over a 10-year period. Established in the early 1980s by WHO, its final data were highlighted last September at the European Society of Cardiology in Barcelona. De Lorgeril reported there that the WHO data were 75 to 90 percent higher than France's statistics for coronary heart disease deaths. The cardiologist said he scrutinized alcohol-related deaths and found that French men, "who drink too much," have the highest rates of liver disease and - by far - more upper gastrointestinal cancer, and were more likely to die in accidents, by suicide, or as a consequence of crime than men of other nationalities. While men in Sweden can expect to live 76.5 years on average, a French man's average lifespan, said de Lorgeril, is 74.1 years. Dr. Ian Graham, a professor of epidemiology at Trinity College in Dublin, said that de Lorgeril's statistics suggest that the lower rate of coronary deaths in France are due "to competing causes of death" - many more French men might die early from alcohol-related causes before they have the opportunity to die of heart disease. [...] In 1998, a pharmacist who is a director at the French counterpart of the U.S. National Institute of Health handed then French Health Minister Bernard Kouchner a report that had the effect of "a sort of a bomb." In what has become known as the Roques Report, Bernard Roques classified drugs on the basis of their danger to the public rather than their legal status. Based on scientific data, alcohol took first place along with heroin and cocaine; tobacco took second place with amphetamines and LSD; and marijuana was in the third, least dangerous group. [...] Written by Hilary Abramson; edited by James F. Mosher; copy edited by Pam Glenn Copyright 2000 Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol & Other Drug Problems The original article from which the above excerpts were taken can be found on the Marin Institute web site at www.marininstitute.org/NL2000.html. Drink Like the French, Die Like the French by David Jernigan The truth is finally starting to come out: If Americans drink alcohol like the French, we will die like the French. [...] Nearly 43,000 French people die each year from alcohol-related causes, roughly the equivalent of 200,000 American - double the number who currently die annually of alcohol-related causes in the United States. According to the World Health Organization's Global Status Report on Alcohol, the French drink 54 percent more alcohol than Americans, and die of liver cirrhosis 57 percent more often. Yes, fewer French people die of heart disease than would be expected given their fatty diets. However, French men in particular die prematurely in disproportionate numbers, and alcohol-related problems are often the cause. In 1991, Morley Safer's "60 Minutes" report on the possible heart protective effects of drinking red wine led to a 44 percent increase in red wine sales among Americans. Assiduous lobbying by wine makers prompted the Department of Agriculture (USDA) for the first time to make positive mention of alcohol consumption in its Dietary Guidelines for Americans. Now wineries want to label their products as health food. In 1999 several wineries convinced the Federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (BATF) to permit an ambiguous label on wine bottles suggesting that people write the USDA to learn more about the "health effects" of drinking alcohol. Further pressure from the Wine Institute and complaints from Senator Strom Thurmond, author of the warning label currently on alcohol bottles, prompted BATF to open the entire issue of putting health claims on alcohol bottles for public comment. The BATF is expected to hold hearings on the topic around the nation this spring. To date, no U.S. government agency has recommended that Americans drink alcohol to protect themselves against heart disease. [...] The push to put a health benefits label on alcohol bottles is a marketing ploy, pure and simple. [...] David Jernigan directs international programs for The Marin Institute. He is the author of Thirsting for Markets: The Global Impact of Corporate Alcohol. Copyright 2000 Marin Institute for the Prevention of Alcohol & Other Drug Problems The original article from which the above excerpts were taken can be found on the Marin Institute web site at www.marininstitute.org/NL2000a.html. What you are obligated to do (1) Retract and correct The French Paradox. You must bring to public attention two things: that the evidence presented in your two French Paradox broadcasts was insufficient to justify your conclusions to the effect that drinking wine prolongs life (as explained in my letter to you of 21Apr99, already cited above); and that broader scientific evidence than you reported in your broadcasts, or since, contradicts your conclusions (as illustrated in the Marin Institute excerpts above). Your unwarranted and false conclusions advocating wine consumption cannot be left to continue inflicting harm upon the public as they do today. Your obligation to journalism, to 60 Minutes, to the public, and to your conscience, demands that you issue such a retraction and correction without reservation and without delay. (2) Disclose any conflict of interest relating to The French Paradox. Please disclose any consideration that you may have received, or that 60 Minutes or CBS may have received, from the wine or alcohol industries for your two French Paradox broadcasts. In the absence of affirmations on your part that no such consideration has traded hands, your broadcasts may tend to be viewed less as defective reporting than as infomercials. Of particular interest would be the nature of any relationship between 60 Minutes and Edgar Bronfman Senior, chairman of liquor giant Seagram. (3) Retract and correct The Ugly Face of Freedom. Every day, growing numbers of people become convinced that you owe a similar retraction and correction for your similarly incorrect and damaging 23Oc94 broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom. (4) Disclose any conflict of interest relating to The Ugly Face of Freedom. Please disclose the degree to which your broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom was requested by external sources, who these sources were, and what benefits to 60 Minutes or to CBS accrued from complying with such external requests. Of particular interest would be any request originating from the direction of Edgar Bronfman Senior. You need to take some such step in order to disarm the suspicion that your broadcast was no better than an eruption of the hatred toward non-Jews, and particularly of the special hatred toward Ukrainians, which is endemic to Jewish culture. Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 747 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 14 Sep 4/97 The forgotten Bodnar September 4, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: In your testimony on the 60 Minutes broadcast of October 23, 1994 "The Ugly Face of Freedom" I notice a startling omission: MORLEY SAFER: I get the impression from people that the actions of the Ukrainians, if anything, were worse than the Germans. SIMON WIESENTHAL: About the civilians, I cannot say this. About the Ukrainian police, yes. That's all you said! You just left it at that! But in that case, there is something very big missing from your statement, isn't there Mr. Wiesenthal - something very interesting, very important, very relevant? Something that the 60 Minutes viewer would have found to be quite remarkable? Do you know what it is? It is the story of the Ukrainian policeman with the surname Bodnar - the one who saved your life? Remember him? Don't you think that this forgotten Bodnar is someone who should have been mentioned in your statement? And doesn't the story of the forgotten Bodnar somewhat contradict your unqualified statement that the Ukrainian police collectively were worse than the Germans? And if among what you say is the worst of the Ukrainians (the auxiliary police) some are saving Jews, then what heroic acts can we expect among the rest of the Ukrainian population? To refresh your memory about this story which seems so forgettable to you now, I may remind you that you were about to be executed, but: The shooting stopped. Ten yards from Wiesenthal. The next thing he remembers was a brilliant cone of light and behind it a Polish voice: "But Mr. Wiesenthal, what are you doing here?" Wiesenthal recognized a foreman he used to know, by the name of Bodnar. He was wearing civilian clothes with the armband of a Ukrainian police auxiliary. "I've got to get you out of here tonight." Bodnar told the [other] Ukrainians that among the captured Jews he had discovered a Soviet spy and that he was taking him to the district police commissar. In actual fact he took Wiesenthal back to his own flat, on the grounds that it was unlikely to be searched so soon again. This was the first time Wiesenthal survived. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 8) But the story of the forgotten Bodnar is even better than that - Bodnar not only saved you, not only risked his life to save you, but possibly gave his life to save you. I say that because Bodnar must have known that the punishment for saving a Jew from execution and then helping him escape would be death. And how could he get away with it? In fact, I ask you now, Mr. Wiesenthal, whether the forgotten Bodnar did get away with it, or whether he paid for it with his life, for as you were tiptoeing out, you were stopped, Bodnar offered his fabricated story, and then: The German sergeant, already a little drunk, slapped Bodnar's face and said: "Then what are you standing around for? If this is what you people are like, then later we'll all have troubles. Report back to me as soon as you deliver them [Wiesenthal along with a fellow prisoner]." (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 37) These passages invite several pertinent conclusions which a man of integrity and conscience would have insisted on bringing to Morley Safer's attention: (1) You yourself, Mr. Wiesenthal, can see a Ukrainian police official having his face slapped by a German sergeant, which serves to remind you that Ukraine is under occupation, to show you who is really in charge, to suggest that the German attitude toward Ukrainians is one of contempt and that the expression of this contempt is unrestrained. (2) You yourself see also that Bodnar's flat is subject to searches, indicating that although he is a participant in the anti-Jewish actions, he is a distrusted participant, and a participant who might feel intimidated by the hostile scrutiny of the occupying Nazis. (3) But most important of all, you see that the German sergeant is waiting for Bodnar to report back. Alan Levy writes that "Bodnar was ... concerned ... that now he [Bodnar] had to account, verbally at least, for his two prisoners" (p. 37). If Bodnar reports back with the news that you, Mr. Wiesenthal, escaped, then how might Bodnar expect the face-slapping German sergeant to respond? For Bodnar at this point in the story to actually allow you, Mr. Wiesenthal, to escape is heroic, it is self-sacrificing, it is suicidal. And yet the forgotten Bodnar does go ahead and effect your escape, probably never imagining that in later years this will become an event unworthy of notice during your blanket condemnation of Ukrainians. What I urge you to do now, Mr. Wiesenthal, is the following: (1) Conduct a search to determine the fate of the forgotten Bodnar, and bestow upon him the recognition that he deserves for his heroic action. Hopefully, Bodnar is still alive, so that the recognition will not be posthumous. Hopefully, Bodnar did not sacrifice his life to save yours, as then your ingratitude would be truly black. (2) Bring the forgotten Bodnar to the attention of Morley Safer at 60 Minutes, and ask for some correction of the negative image created of the Ukrainian police. (3) Search your memory long and hard and determine a version of the story which appears to be closest to the truth, and then publish it as the official account, because at present, the wildly different versions in your several biographies create the negative image of someone who just spews tall tales off the top of his head, without any consideration for making them consistent with earlier versions of those same tales. For example, Mr. Wiesenthal, what impression do you imagine is created in the mind of a reader who is told in Justice Not Vengeance that Bodnar saved you alone and took you to his apartment, but then is told in The Wiesenthal File that Bodnar saved you together with another prisoner and took the two of you to the office of a "commissar" which office the two of you spent the entire night cleaning? I will tell you what impression is created, Mr. Wiesenthal - it is that of a person lying so clumsily, that one almost imagines that he does so in order to be caught and exposed so as to finally be able to confess and to purge his conscience. Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 879 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 15 Sep 8/97 The elusive Lviv pogrom September 8, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: According to your testimony on the 60 Minutes broadcast of October 23, 1994, "The Ugly Face of Freedom," in three days following the evacuation of the Communist forces and before the arrival of the German troops, Ukrainian police killed between five and six thousand 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. Now before going beyond what was actually said in the broadcast, we already see a discrepancy which I ask you to comment on. Specifically, you are the expert on the Holocaust who is testifying on 60 Minutes, and more than that you are the eyewitness to the Lviv pogrom - the only eyewitness - and you tell Morley Safer that 5 to 6 thousand Jews were killed in three days - but then Mr. Safer turns around and changes it to 3 thousand killed in two days. This does not seem fair - after all you were there and Morley Safer wasn't, and whereas for Mr. Safer, this is just a story that he is covering, for you it is the pivotal experience which determined the course of your life, the experience which in the words of Mr. Safer, "compelled Wiesenthal to seek out the guilty, to bring justice." So I wonder why Morley Safer changed your numbers? As you are the only witness adduced, Mr. Safer seems to have lowered your figures on his own initiative. I wonder if you have contacted Mr. Safer concerning his revision of your estimate, or if in your subsequent discussions with Mr. Safer, you might have by now arrived at a mutually-agreed estimate? If you have, I wonder if you would be able to tell me whether Mr. Safer has agreed to raise his estimate, or if you have agreed to lower yours? Be that as it may, it must surprise you to learn that when I consulted Leni Yahil's The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, Oxford, New York, 1990 for further information on the Lviv pogrom, I found nothing. There is no indication in Yahil's book that such a pogrom ever took place. If Yahil's book were cursory or carelessly researched, then the oversight of the single largest pogrom of the War might be understandable, but if we are to believe the book's dust jacket, then it is one of the best works on the Jewish Holocaust ever written: When The Holocaust first appeared in Israel in 1987, it was hailed as the finest, most authoritative history of Hitler's war on the Jews ever published. Representing twenty years of research and reflection, Leni Yahil's book won the Shazar prize, one of Israel's highest awards for historical work. Well, in my continuing quest to learn more about the Lviv pogrom which you describe on 60 Minutes, I turned next to Raul Hilberg's The Destruction of the European Jews, Holmes & Meier, New York, 1985. This work too cannot be accused of being either cursory or carelessly researched. For example, the publisher's promotional material claims: This landmark work, now substantially revised and expanded, is destined to remain the foremost source to which historians and others must turn in any exploration of the most infamous crime in history. ... This definitive edition of THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EUROPEAN JEWS is the most complete, comprehensive, and authoritative account of the Nazi Holocaust. As well, this same promotional material cites critical acclaim for Hilberg's work in Michael R. Marrus's review in The Times Literary Supplement which ends in the words: No single book has contributed more, even to its critics, to an understanding of Nazi genocide. In its originality, scope, and seriousness of theme, this is one of the great historical works of our time. But what does Hilberg say about the Lviv pogrom, this most massive pogrom of the Second World War; what does he say in his "most complete, comprehensive, and authoritative account of the Nazi Holocaust"? Why he says ... exactly nothing! He too seems to be totally unaware of it. Worse than that - much worse - Hilberg makes statements to the effect that no such pogrom ever took place. I reproduce below three quotations from Hilberg, the last of which is particularly troubling, as it is his summary of all anti-Jewish activity in Ukraine, and it flatly contradicts the possibility of the pogrom that you describe: 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 - in this case, I am quoting from the 1961 edition) 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) It would seem, Mr. Wiesenthal, that you were an eyewitness - the only eyewitness - to the largest pogrom of the war, and that at the same time, at least two of the foremost chroniclers of the Jewish Holocaust have quite overlooked this program, and in the case of Raul Hilberg, flatly deny that any such pogrom ever took place. According to Hilberg, all Ukrainian pogroms took place after the arrival of the Germans, were instigated by the Germans, were small in scale, and had no momentum of their own. In view of this oversight on the part of the historians, Mr. Wiesenthal, shouldn't you get in touch with them and recount your experiences to them so that the story of the Lviv pogrom is not lost to future generations, and so that Jewish hatred of Ukrainians is not diminished by the loss? Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 906 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 16 Sep 9/97 Shifting date for the Lviv pogrom September 9, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: In my letter to you of September 8, I demonstrated that two prominent historians seem to be unaware of the pre-German Lviv pogrom which killed 5 to 6 thousand Jews, at least as claimed by Morley Safer and yourself on the 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994. I will remind you that in that 60 Minutes broadcast, Morley Safer twice asserts - once seemingly in your hearing - that the Lviv pogrom antedated the arrival of the Germans, thus placing culpability squarely at the feet of the Ukrainian perpetrators. In a continuing effort to learn more about this Lviv pogrom, I turned to your biographical Justice Not Vengeance, only to discover you claiming that this pogrom postdated the arrival of the Germans: Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the retreating Soviets. This gave rise to one of the craziest accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic population the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that all Jews were Bolsheviks and all Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities committed by the Soviets. All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of opinion. It is said that after their arrival they gave the Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis added) As the timing of the Lviv pogrom is critical to assigning blame, I would have expected this timing to have been verified with care and to be either consistent between the two reports, or else with an explanation offered for any inconsistency. Instead, I find that you along with Morley Safer have broadcast a version in 1994 that directly contradicts a version that you published five years earlier in 1989. I look forward to hearing your clarification of this discrepancy. Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 2113 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 18 Sep 11/97 Questions concerning the Waffen SS September 11, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: Your accusation that Canada harbors a large number of war criminals has been incessant over the years, and at one point led to the creation of Canada's Deschenes Commission on War Criminals. This accusation seems to be based primarily on Canada's presently being home to some former members of the Ukrainian Galicia Division, combined with the fact that the Galicia Division was categorized by the Germans as belonging to the Waffen SS. The first question that I would like to put to you, Mr. Wiesenthal, is whether you are aware that the Waffen SS was a combat unit that played no role in the management of concentration camps, and carried out no SS functions? I wonder if you are aware of this, as you typically - perhaps always? - drop the qualification "Waffen" and refer to members of the Galicia Division simply as members of the "SS," which gives the misleading impression that combat soldiers were administrators of concentration camps. If you are already aware of the distinction between the SS and the Waffen SS, then I wonder that you would allow yourself to present the misleading picture that you have been presenting. If you are unaware of this distinction, then I wonder how it came to be that you are accorded the status of an expert witness on World War II events, as you were on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom on October 23, 1994. Would you be able to throw any light on this question? But on top of that, you must have become aware during your long career as a Nazi hunter that Ukraine was not unique in providing the German armed forces with Waffen SS troops. Below, I reproduce a quote from an interview by Slavko Nowytski of Professor Norman Davies, historian at the University of London, and author of the recent Europe: A History, published by Oxford University Press: In discussing the question of collaborating with Germany Prof. Davies noted that, "A large number of the volunteers for the Waffen SS came from Western Europe. The nation which supplied it the largest number of divisions was the Netherlands [four]. There were two Belgian divisions, there was a French Waffen SS. To my mind, it's rather surprising that Ukraine, which is a much larger country [than the Netherlands or Belgium] supplied only one Waffen SS Division.... It's surprising that there were so few Ukrainians [in the German Army]. Many people don't know, for example, that there were far more Russians fighting alongside the Wehrmacht or in the various German armies than there were Ukrainians.... Thanks to Soviet propaganda, the Russian contribution to the Nazi war effort has been forgotten, whereas the Ukrainian contribution has been remembered, I think, too strongly." (Andrew Gregorovich, Forum, No. 95, Spring, 1997, p. 34) And so the information in the above quotation leads to several more questions: (1) As the population of The Netherlands is small, and as it contributed the largest number of Waffen SS divisions, this gives The Netherlands the largest per capita contribution to the Waffen SS of any country. Would you conclude from this that the people of The Netherlands are the most anti-Semitic in the world? And following the same line of reasoning, would you conclude that the people of Belgium are the next most anti-Semitic? And also that as the population of France is approximately equal to the population of Ukraine, and as each of these contributed one Waffen SS division, that the French are approximately as anti-Semitic as the Ukrainians? (2) As you have expended considerable energy attacking the former members of the Galicia Division as war criminals, I wonder if you have expended any similar energy attacking former members of The Netherlands, Belgium, and French Waffen SS divisions in the same way? For example, have you demanded any investigation of The Netherlands Waffen SS, and as a result has the government of The Netherlands ever created a commission on war criminals comparable to Canada's Deschenes Commission on War Criminals? And have you done so in Belgium? In France? If not, then why not? Why do you single out the Galicia Division? How is the Galicia Division different from the other Waffen SS divisions? (3) If in comparison to several other countries, Ukraine contributed proportionately fewer numbers to the Waffen SS, or to any of the German armed forces, then shouldn't you as a Nazi hunter, commend or thank Ukrainians for their relatively small contribution to the German war effort? (4) Are you aware that the chief motive behind the creation of the Galicia Division was to prevent the Soviet re-occupation of Ukraine? Are you aware that in consequence, the Galicia Division was organized with the proviso that it not be used against the Western allies, but only against the Soviets on the Eastern front; and that in fact, the only use to which the Galicia Division was ever put was against the Soviets in the Battle of Brody? If you are aware of this, then why did you not mention it on the 60 Minutes broadcast in which you were the chief witness and the Galicia Division the chief subject of discussion? If you are not aware of this, then why does 60 Minutes consider you an authority on World War II? Would you happen to know if the Waffen SS divisions of other countries were created under the same proviso? (5) Given that Canada's Deschenes Commission on War Criminals failed to identify even a single member of the Galicia Division as calling for further investigation; and given that neither you nor anyone else has ever had any member of the Galicia Division convicted of any crime, or even tried for any crime; and, most importantly, given that neither you nor anyone else has ever even specified any crime of which the Galicia Division as a whole, or any member of the Galicia Division, might have been guilty - given all this, I wonder if the time has not finally come when you have to admit that your obsession with the Galicia Division has been misplaced? And would you happen to know if the Waffen SS divisions of The Netherlands, Belgium, and France have proven to be as free from blame as has the Ukrainian Galicia Division? Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 840 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 19 Sep 12/97 Testimony of Erwin Schulz September 12, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: In my letters to you of September 8 and 9, 1997, I have questioned your assertion made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994 to the effect that in the few days before the arrival of the Germans, Ukrainians killed some 5 to 6 thousand Jews in Lviv. I have recently come across some testimony that indicates that your assertion is correct on all of the details of this event save one. The fresh testimony that I am referring to is that of Erwin Schulz, Commander of Einsatzkommando 5 (a subunit of Einsatzgruppe C), from May until 26 September, 1941. From Schulz's testimony, it appears that several of the details of your assertion are correct: namely that the number murdered was 5,000, which is within the bounds of your own estimate; that the location was indeed Lviv (identified as Lemberg); that the time was indeed during the few days prior to the arrival of the Germans; and that the chief participants were indeed Ukrainians and Jews, although Schulz does mention the secondary involvement of others. The point on which Schulz differs from you is that whereas you say that the slaughter consisted of Ukrainians killing Jews, Schulz says that it consisted of Jews killing Ukrainians: We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great number of Lemberg 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, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18) On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the killed people in Lemberg 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, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18) I wonder if you would care to comment on this discrepancy between Schulz's testimony and your own? Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 1435 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 20 Sep 13/97 Jews killing Ukrainians in Lviv September 13, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: In my letter to you of September 12, I presented the testimony of Erwin Schulz to the effect that in the few days prior to the arrival of German forces in Lviv in 1941, some 5,000 inhabitants of the Lviv region, predominantly Ukrainians and Poles, had been killed, and that the killing had been conducted "under the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg." The continuing question before us can be broken down into two parts: (1) Were such large numbers of Ukrainians and Poles killed? (2) What ethnic groups were most responsible for the killing? On the first question, there does not appear to be much doubt - every one of the half-dozen sources that I consulted agree that the slaughter did take place. In fact, in the last quotation of the following set of six, you yourself, Mr. Wiesenthal, can be seen to agree: 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) 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.). (Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, Volume 1, p. 886) 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) 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) 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) 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) The first question having been settled - I trust - to the satisfaction of all, we turn now to the second question: Is there any ethnic group that might have been particularly responsible for the killing? Well, if the slaughter was conducted by the NKVD or was directed by the NKVD, then the question reduces to What was the ethnic composition of the NKVD? The evidence that I have come across points to the conclusion that the NKVD was dominated by Jews. Here is one such piece of evidence. The speaker is Yoram Sheftel, John Demjanjuk's Israeli defense attorney, describing his visit to the Simferopol, Ukraine, KGB headquarters in 1990 - what Sheftel seems to be saying is that out of a sample of some 30 members of the wartime NKVD, every last one was a Jew: 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, 1994, p. 301) Of course a sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative of the entire NKVD; 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) The question that I would be interested in hearing your views on, then, Mr. Wiesenthal, is whether the assertion you made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994 may have been diametrically opposite to the truth - specifically, that whereas you held out that during the interval prior to the occupation of Lviv by German forces Ukrainians were slaughtering Jews by the thousands, in reality during this same interval it may have been closer to the truth to say that Jews were slaughtering Ukrainians by the thousands. Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 826 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 21 Sep 14/97 Altered dates of death September 14, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: In connection with the possibility of a massive, pre-German Lviv pogrom, Morley Safer (in his 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994) inserted into the pre-German interval two events which gave the viewer the impression that the pre-German pogrom in question was well-documented and incapable of being doubted: (1) the arrest of your mother, and (2) the shooting of your mother-in-law: SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian militia, the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here. LUBACHIVSKY: It is not true! SAFER: It's horribly true to Simon Wiesenthal - like thousands of Lvov Jews, his mother was led to her death by the Ukrainian police. These are remnants of a film the Germans made of Ukrainian brutality. The German high command described the Ukrainian behavior as 'praiseworthy.' WIESENTHAL: My wife's mother was shot to death because she could not go so fast. SAFER: She couldn't keep up with the rest of the prisoners. WIESENTHAL. Yes. She was shot to death by a Ukrainian policeman because she couldn't walk fast. SAFER: It was the Lvov experience that compelled Wiesenthal to seek out the guilty, to bring justice. The above passage starts by mentioning Lviv prior to arrival of the Germans, and it ends with a reference to "the Lvov experience," which invites the viewer to imagine that the events bracketed in Mr. Safer's discourse by these two references happened during that same pre-German interval. Specifically, Mr. Safer gives the distinct and unmistakable impression that the pre-German anti-Jewish activities on the part of Ukrainians cannot be doubted because among the events that occurred during these activities were the arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law. However, examining your biographies for confirmation of these two events - the arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law - turns up the following (it will help at this point to recollect that Lviv was occupied by the Germans on June 30, 1941): In August [1942] the SS was loading elderly Jewish women into a goods truck at Lvov station. One of them was Simon Wiesenthal's mother, then sixty-three. ... His wife's mother was shortly afterwards shot dead by a Ukrainian police auxiliary on the steps of her house. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 8) "My mother was in August 1942 taken by a Ukrainian policeman," Simon says, lapsing swiftly into the present tense as immediacy takes hold. ... Around the same time, Cyla Wiesenthal [Mr. Wiesenthal's wife] learned that, back in Buczacz, her mother had been shot to death by a Ukrainian policeman as she was being evicted from her home. (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 41) We see, therefore, that Morley Safer seems to have advanced the date of arrest of your mother as well as the shooting of your mother-in-law by more than a year in order to lend credibility to the claim of Ukrainian-initiated actions against Jews prior to the German occupation of Lviv. As this error appears to be Mr. Safer's and not your own, I do not ask you to account for it. However, I do ask if you at any time subsequent to the 60 Minutes broadcast became aware of Mr. Safer's error, and if so, if you as a result asked him to issue a correction? Also, if you are only now for the first time learning of Mr. Safer's error, I wonder if you could tell me if you now intend to ask Mr. Safer to issue a correction? Sincerely yours, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 886 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 23 Sep 23/97 The pious executioners September 23, 1997 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: I wonder if you are aware that during the German occupation of Lviv, the Greek Catholic church, headed by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, was courageous and outspoken in defense of Jews? Here are four quotations which provide some details as to the role played by Sheptytsky, and which demonstrate that this role is widely acknowledged: There is little doubt as to the almost saintly role of Ukrainian (Greek) Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Sheptytsky, Archbishop of L'viv and head of the church, was widely known as being sympathetic to the Jews. ... The elderly metropolitan wrote directly to SS commander Heinrich Himmler in the winter of 1942 demanding an end to the final solution and, equally important to him, an end to the use of Ukrainian militia and police in anti-Jewish action. His letter elicited a sharp rebuke, but Sheptytsky persisted even though the death penalty was threatened to those who gave comfort to Jews. In November 1942 he issued a pastoral letter to be read in all churches under his authority. It condemned murder. Although Jews were not specifically mentioned, his intent was crystal clear. We can never know how many Ukrainians were moved by Sheptytsky's appeal. Certainly the church set an example. With Sheptytsky's tacit approval, his church hid a number of Jews throughout western Ukraine, 150 Jews alone in and around his L'viv headquarters. Perhaps some of his parishioners were among those brave and precious few "righteous gentiles" who risked an automatic death penalty for themselves and their families by harbouring a Jew under their roof. The towering humanity of Sheptytsky remains an inspiration today. (Harold Troper & Morton Weinfeld, Old Wounds, 1988, pp. 17-18) He [Sheptytsky] dispatched a lengthy handwritten letter dated August 29-31, 1942 to the Pope, in which he referred to the government of the German occupants as a regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 267) One of those saved by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was Lviv's Rabbi Kahane whose son is currently the marshal commander of the Israeli Air Force. (Ukrainian Weekly, June 21, 1992, p. 9) Sheptitsky himself hid fifteen Jews, including Rabbi Kahane, in his own residence in Lvov, a building frequently visited by German officials. (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 410) However, despite the widespread agreement that the Catholic church headed by Sheptytsky was outspoken and courageous in its defense of Jews, you have consistently portrayed Christianity in general, and the Catholic church in Lviv in 1941 in particular, as being virulently anti-Semitic. I refer, for example, to your fable of the alcoholic priest in Western Ukraine who incites a pogrom (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 24), which fable I have already brought to your attention in my letter to you of December 8, 1994; and I refer as well to your story of the Ukrainians who you say almost executed you: As the shots and shouts of the boisterous Ukrainians drew closer to Wiesenthal, he heard a new sound: church bells. The Ukrainians heard it, too. Good Orthodox Catholics all, they laid down their arms for evening mass. Wiesenthal and his friend had stood five or six bullets away from extinction. (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, Constable, London, 1993, p. 36) Now if it is the case as we have just seen above that the Catholic church unambiguously and unequivocally stood for the defense of Jews, then we would expect devout Catholics to not be among the executioners of Jews. Conversely, given that someone is among the executioners of Jews, we would expect him not to be a devout Catholic. Your portrayal of sadistic executioners as being simultaneously devout Catholics is incongruous and elicits incredulity. But your story goes beyond the incongruous to the grotesque. You portray a team of executioners who have been repeatedly drinking vodka - and may therefore be depicted as drunk. You say that they have also just been shooting prisoners in the back of the neck, and then lifting the bodies from the floor and placing them into makeshift coffins - therefore, the executioners are also covered with blood. Assuming that these executioners did not have a place to shower and had not brought with them a change of clothing, and assuming that the church bells are signaling the imminent commencement of mass so as not to leave time for showering and changing, then I have trouble conjuring up a credible image of these executioners arriving at the church for mass. To accept your image requires us to accept that the appearance of drunk and blood-spattered executioners at a mass would not attract notice and repugnance - a supposition which is erroneous and offensive. And it requires us also to accept that the mind set of executioners engaged in genocide is so similar to Christians engaged in devotion, that they make the transition instantaneously and seamlessly - another supposition which is erroneous and offensive. Mr. Wiesenthal, I entreat you to either explain and defend your bizarre story, or else to withdraw it. Yours truly, Lubomyr Prytulak HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL < Wiesenthal Wiesenthal > 3285 hits since 18Jan98 Wiesenthal Letter 24 Jan 18/98 Reversing victim and victimizer The caption at the top of the photographs shown below is from LIFE magazine, 11Jun45, p. 50. The caption in German and Latin at the bottom of the Simon Wiesenthal drawing below was, of course, included with the drawing in Simon Wiesenthal's KZ Mauthausen, 1946, p. 64. This caption says: The Gallows The Marquis de Sade would have been in ecstasy if he could have seen the gallows in a KZ [concentration camp]. His faithful successors the SS-hangmen had daily execution fever. It provided some variety, beyond the eternal, monotonous shootings and beatings. Something one could photograph with pleasure. They placed bets for rounds of beer on how long the offender could hold out. He must not die too quickly. When he threatened that, he was bound, and when he had somewhat recovered, it continued ... to the greater glory of the devil! I refer to Simon Wiesenthal's drawing as a "1946" drawing because that was the date of publication of the book in which the drawing appeared. A reader using a recent version of a NetScape browser can click here to be taken to a discussion of the Lviv pogrom referred to in the letter below. A reader using an Internet Explorer browser can go to the top of the page which contains that discussion by clicking here, and once on that page, can click "What happened in Lviv?" to arrive at the same discussion of the Lviv pogrom. January 18, 1998 Simon Wiesenthal Jewish Documentation Center Salztorgasse 6 1010 Vienna Austria Dear Mr. Wiesenthal: In the course of the October 24, 1993 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, you leveled the accusation, echoed by Morley Safer, that immediately prior to the occupation of Lviv by German forces in 1941, Ukrainians killed some 5 to 6 thousand Jews. I have already brought to your attention evidence that your accusation is unfounded, and that the more likely reality is that during approximately that same interval, the NKVD - dominated by Jews - killed approximately that same number of Ukrainians. This evidence was presented to you in five letters, dated September 8, 9, 12, 13, and 14, 1997. That the NKVD was dominated by Jews is not an irrelevancy which I am introducing gratuitously, but, rather, is germane in that it offers a motive for your reversal of the truth. That is, it is possible that your reason for falsely portraying Ukrainians killing Jews is to cover up the reality that Jews were killing Ukrainians, and to make any claim on behalf of the latter seem implausible should it ever be put forward. What I ask you in the present letter is whether you had not begun a comparable reversing of victim and victimizer earlier in your career - almost five decades earlier, as a matter of fact - and on a smaller scale? Specifically, I am enclosing copies of two similar, and yet contrasting, images: Three LIFE magazine photographs, 1945 Enclosed you will find a photocopy of three photographs from LIFE magazine (June 11, 1945, p. 50) which appear at the end of a photo essay titled "FIRING SQUAD: Army executes three German spies who were caught in U.S. uniforms." The story appears on three pages - 47, 48, and 50. There are a total of nine, mutually-consistent photographs in the essay. The first paragraph of the story is: During Nazi breakthrough at Bastogne last December the Germans managed to smuggle some of their intelligence officers behind U.S. lines. Three of these spies were captured, tried and shot. Last week the War Department released pictures on this and the following pages, taken by LIFE Photographer Johnny Florea, which show their speedy execution. (p. 47) One Simon Wiesenthal drawing, 1946 Enclosed you will also find a photocopy of one of your drawings, signed "SWiesenthal," from p. 64 of your 1946 book of drawings KZ Mauthausen showing three individuals in striped uniforms, tied to stakes, and apparently either unconscious or executed. As your book is dedicated to depicting the suffering of Jews at the hands of the Nazis at the Mauthausen concentration camp, and as your caption indicates that the drawing depicts victims of Nazi torture, the reader is encouraged to the conclusion that the drawing represents a scene witnessed by yourself of Jews tortured to the point of unconsciousness or executed by Nazis at Mauthausen. However, the similarity between the three individuals shown in the 1945 LIFE magazine photographs and in your 1946 KZ Mauthausen drawing is striking and unmistakable, and suggests the alternative conclusion that you copied the LIFE magazine photographs, added striped uniforms to the victims, and then misattributed the result. Questions I would appreciate your answering the following three questions: (1) How do you explain the similarity between the LIFE magazine photographs and your drawing? (2) Do you not feel it appropriate at this time to issue a retraction of the misattribution of your KZ Mauthausen drawing? (3) Might it not be even more appropriate to issue a similar retraction of your more extreme, more recent, and more damaging reversal of victim and victimizer in the case of the pre-German Lviv massacre of 1941? Yours truly, Lubomyr Prytulak 2. Israel-Jewish Diaspora World-Wide criminal activity (Jewish extremists lobbism is behind the cover up of the Israel-related criminal activity world wide and money laundering) Hassidic Jews in New York yeshivas are among the top money launderers in the world. They use the cloak of religion to hide their work and they use Israel's exclusively Jewish immigration policy (the "law of return") to escape U.S. justice by relocating to Israel. One of these Hassidic Jews candidly admitted that as long as it benefitted "their community" it didn't matter whether money was laundered. The article is interesting in that demonstrates another example of the age-old problem of Jewish loyalty being to "Jews first" rather than their country of residence. It also shows how can Jews benefit from and get away with crimes due to Israel's exclusive immigration policy which allows Jewish criminals to escape U.S. prosecution by fleeing to Israel (and in most cases, =with= the money). The U.S. government -- ever beholden to Jewish influence and Jewish interest as always -- dare not extradite them. It is amazing how these Jewish criminals can exploit America and then escape its laws by recourse to an immigration policy which Jews claim is "racist" for every other country but Israel (!) New York's 47th Street : Maariv, September 2, 1994 By Ben Kaspit, the New York correspondent Rabbi Yosef Crozet fell because of his big mouth. "I launder money, a lot of money," he once told an acquaintance. "Every day I take $300,000 from 47th Street in Manhattan, bring it to the synagogue, give a receipt and then take a commission." The man who heard that story from Crozer was, how sad, an undercover Jewish agent of the US agency for fighting drugs, DEA. A month later, in February 1990, Crozer was arrested by agents on his way from 47th Street to Brooklyn. They found on him prayer books, five passports and also $280,000 in cash in the trunk of his car. He traveled that route every day. He would arrive at the gold trading office on 47th Street in the afternoon, and leave a little later, carrying suitcases and bags loaded with cash. From there he drove to the Hessed Ve'Tzadaka ["Mercy and Charity"] synagogue in Brooklyn which had been turned into a laundry for millions of dollars, the revenue from drug sales in the New York area. That was how Crozer made his living. Assuming that the commission for laundering money ranged in the area of 2% to 6%, Rabbi Crozet can be presumed not to have suffered from hunger. The investigators who questioned him faced a simple task. A respectable and pious jew who never imagined that he would be interrogated, a son of a highly respected rabbi who headed a large yeshiva in city of New Square, Crozer broke down and cooperated. But then his lawyer, Stanley Lupkin, argued that his client, a pious Jew, had no idea that he was laundering drug money. Crozer, according to his lawyer, believed that he was laundering money for a Jewish diamond trader .'who trades in cash" and not for Gentile drug traders and was using the situation to make some extra money, for his synagogue. It seems that this argument had some effect since Crozer was sentenced to one year and one days imprisonment. In exchange for a lenient science, he supplied his interrogators with valuable information which helped them to capture a person whom they had been seeking for a long time: Avraham Sharir, another pious Jew, the owner of a gold trading office on 47th Street, who was really one of the biggest sharks for laundering drug money in New York City. Sharir, an Israeli Jew aged about 45, to whom we will later return, subsequently confessed to having laundered $200 million for the Colombian drug cartel of Kali. The drug trade is considered to be the most profitable branch of crime in the world. The profit margin ranges in the area of 200% for cocaine and 1,200% for heroin. The amounts of money laundered in the trading office are larger than the budgets of many small states. The temptation is great. The main problem of the Colombian drug barons who control a significant part of world drug trade is how to get rid of the money. It is a problem of the rich but a nagging one. Two major Colombian drug cartels operate in the US - the Kali cartel and the Medellin cartel. The killing of the head of the Medellin cartel, Pablo Escovar, by the Colombian authorities in December 1993 greatly weakened this cartel which had controlled the drug trade in the New York area. The Kali people, in contrast, hold a monopoly over the Los Angeles and Miami area markets. At present, the Kali people distribute about 80 per cent of the world's cocaine and a third of the heroin- The Kali drug cartel makes $25 billion each year within the US alone. The money must somehow be shipped out of the US without arousing the attention of the American authorities. Besides, the cash must be given a seal of approval and, one way or another, become legitimized. Around this complex issue a mega-business has sprung up - laundering and smuggling drug money. American customs investigators have found millions of dollars in containers supposed to have contained dried peas, in double-sided gas tanks, in steel boxes attached to freight ships. In 1990 they found $14 million in cash in a shipment of cables, supposed to have been sent from a Long Island warehouse to Colombia. According to records found on the site, that was shipment No. 234 (multiplied by 14 million, calculate it yourselves). The same year, at Kennedy Airport, in a warehouse, 26 large containers were found which were supposed to have contained bull sperm. The latter was not there but there were $6.5 million. In May of this year American investigators raided a bowling ball plant in Long Island. They picked up the balls, cut them in half and found within them $210,000 in used $100 bills. Despite their active imaginations, the drug barons find it hard to keep up. $25 billion is a lot of money and it must fill a lot of space since most of the money gained in drug deals comes in bills of $10 to $20. And that is how the match was made between the drug cartels and 47th Street in Manhattan. This street is the world center for trading diamonds, gold, jewels and precious stones. Hundreds of businesses are crowded in there, between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. Shops, businesses, display halls. In the back rooms and on the top floors, far from public access, the action takes place. That is where the major traders sit, and that is where the deals are made. Diamonds, gold and jewels pass from hand to hand with a handshake. The frantic activity there offers an ideal cover for illegal transfers of money. "In fact, even legitimate business appears, on 47th Street, to be dark and mysterious," said a customs official. "Merchandise arrives constantly, boxes, suitcases and packages are constantly opened, everything arrives in armored cars, under heavy security and a shield of secrecy. Now, go find the black money." "The match between the drug barons and 47th Street," an American customs investigator told Afaai-ii@, "is ideal. The gold and diamonds industry circulates large amounts of cash. The diamond traders are accustomed to transporting large amounts of money in cash, from one state to another, efficiently and without leaving a trace, Large amounts of money pass from hand to hand on 47th Street, without arousing suspicion. "A diamond trader might launder $5 million every day without arousing special attention. it is difficult to monitor the deals, to locate the sources of the money and it is very difficult to infiltrate that closed field, which is based on personal acquaintance and trust." Added to it is the fact that in the course of the past five years, the diamond industry on 47th Street has been in a deep slump, which put many traders into bankruptcy. "A trader like that," said an investigator, "faces the choice of bankruptcy or making easy, quick and relatively safe money. Not everyone is strong enough to withstand the temptation." All of that would not have been of interest to us if not for the massive Israeli and Jewish presence on 47th Street. "At least 50% of the diamond traders there are Israelis," so an Israeli diamond merchant, who wishes to remain anonymous, told Maariv. "Not a few Israelis also operate in the field of jewels, precious stones and gold. All of them came to New York to make fast money, conquer the market, get their big break. Not all of them have succeeded, especially not recently." But the Jewish presence on 47th Street is much greater than that. Experts in the field estimate that 75% to 80% of the active traders on the street are Jews. A large number of them are very pious Orthodox Jews, mainly Hassids. There is also a respectable representation of Jews from Iran and Syria, usually also very pious. One can get along fine in Hebrew on 47th Street. There are many more kosher restaurants in the area than in all of Tel Aviv. The place is also the biggest laundry for drug money in the US. The expansion of the phenomenon of laundering drug money in the US in general, and on 47th Street in particular, led to the establishment of a special American task force to combat the phenomenon. The unit is called Eldorado, after the mythical South American city of gold. It is staffed with 200 agents, officials of the US customs and internal revenue agencies. Eldorado, established in April 1990, investigates the money- laundering in general. Fifty of its agents dedicate their time just to 47th Street. "It is work that demands tremendous manpower," said Robert Van Attan, an Eldorado officer, "since the money has to be monitored along the length and breadth of the continent, sometimes also abroad." The target of the Eldorado agents is money, and money alone. They are not interested in drug imports, drug deals or drug dealers. "We want to put our hands on the money. To hit their pockets," say members of the unit. The task is difficult. In America there is no law that prohibits possessing money. On the other hand, when a large amount of cash is found in the possession of a launderer, the agents confiscate the money. If the person can prove that the source of the money was legitimate, he gets it back. That does not happen. The launderers are experienced. When one of them is caught and several million dollars are found in his possession, he willingly hands over the money, but asks for a receipt. "The money is not mine. I want you to confirm that you took it," is the common request. Incidentally, their lives depend on that receipt. It is not a simple matter to trail them. The eyes of a typical launderer are glued to his rear-view mirror. He makes sudden stops, moves from one lane to another, chooses long and twisted routes from one place to another. Eldorado has an answer. The investigators follow their targets with eight, ten, sometimes twelve vehicles. If necessary they use one or two helicopters. There is also sophisticated equipment, the wonders of American technology in the fields of tapping, surveillance and code-breaking. In the first two years of its operations, Eldorado captured $60 million and arrested 120 launderers. Compared to the scope of overall laundering, that is peanuts. "That is not the point," say the Eldorado agents. "Obviously, it is impossible, with the existing legal restrictions, to put an end to the phenomenon. Our warfare is psychological." Incidentally, Eldorado is not the only agency combating money-laundering. The DEA, the American Drug Enforcement Agency, and the FBI, also conduct lively activity in that field. Not always is this activity coordinated. In recent months the Eldorado agents discovered a new center of operations. It is called The Cocaine Triangle. Its sides are Colombian drug barons, Israeli-Jewisli money launderers and Jewish-Russian mafiosi. The Colombians funnel the money, the Israelis launder it, the Russian mafiosi (who have recently overrun New York in droves) provide the security and the muscle. A New York journalist recently told Maariv: "The Israeli Jews are ataining notoriety in the money- laundering market. You need only look at the list of arrests and the indictments of the past 3-4 years, in order to grasp the enormous scope of Israeli involvement in this field." One reason for the growing power of the Jews in the business of laundering drug money is the Law of Return with its easy possibility of escape to Israel. In May 1993, five members of the Jewish international laundering ring which had worked with the Kali cartel were arrested. The ring was exposed following an FBI "sting" operation, as part of which it established a dummy corporation called Prism, which served the gang for laundering money. In the course of less than one year $22.5 million were laundered through the company. The head of the ring was an Israeli named Zion Ya'akov Evenheim, known as "Zero". Evenheim, who had a dual Israeli and Colombian citizenship, stayed in Kali, from where he coordinated the activity and supervised the transfers of money. Most of the ring's members were arrested in May 1993. Evenheim was arrested by Interpol in Switzerland and extradited to the US. He is cooperating with the FBI. Additional Israeli detainees: Raymond Shoshana, 38, Daniella Levi, 30, Binyamin Hazon, Meir Ochayon, 33, Alex Ajami, 34. Many other suspects, to whom we will later return, escaped to Israel, and there are difficulties in extraditing them to the US. In the course of the investigation, FBI agents recorded hundreds of hours of conversations in Hebrew among the Israeli suspects. For the purpose of translating the material, they employed, among others, Neil Elefant, a Jewish resident of New Jersey who had lived in Israel for some time and who spoke fluent Hebrew. Elefant translated and translated, until one day in May 1992 he was amazed to discover among the speakers a friend, Jack Zbeida, a Jewish antiques dealer from Brooklyn, Elefant was in a difficult dilemma. He approached his rabbi, Elazar Teitz, who told him that his religious duty was to warn Zbeida. Elefant then secretly met Zbeida and told him that he was targeted by the FBI. Alex Ajami, an Israeli Jew who was one of the heads of the gang, was also present. Zbeida and Ajami hurried to the FBI offering to cooperate, turning in Elefant, who was arrested and charged with interfering with legal procedures. He argued that one of the reasons for his decision to warn Zbeida was the zealousness, almost approaching anti-Semitism, which he found among the FBI agents trying to involve the State of Israel in drug affairs. Judge Kevin Duffy sentenced Elefant to I8 months' imprisonment. In the meantime the FBI was forced to arrest hurriedly all those involved in the affair. In spite of their hurry, many Israeli Jews involved fled to Israel. Some few of the tens of Israeli and American Jews who fled to Israel on this occasion are: Raymond Shosliana, Adi Tal, David Va'anunu, his nephew Yisliai Vanunu, Ya'akov Cohen. Most of them came out of the affair with a lot of money which they also took to Israel. The story of Adi Tal is worthy of elaboration. He is an impressive youth, handsome, with a good record in the army, a son of a fine Israeli family, formerly a security guard at El Al. All that did not hinder Tal from becoming involved in laundering drug money in 1988. In March 1988 the American authorities arrested I I members of the laundering ring, including Tal and his good friend Nir Goldstein, also an Israeli. The investigators at the time said that Tal and his friends had operated cautiously, used aliases and codes and lived in constant fear. They would receive large amounts of money from Colombian couriers, divide the money into sums of $10,000 (any amount over 10,000 dollars that is deposited in an American bank requires a report), deposit the sums in banks and convert them into travelers' checks which they sent, by means of international couriers, to a dummy corporation in Panama. The most popular code which Tal's gang used was taken from the diamond industry. When information was transmitted about the transfer of a diamond of 30.4 carats, it meant the sum of $30,400. Tal worked for Jose Satro, the money launderer of the Kali cartel. The Colombians constantly pressured him to increase the scope of the laundering. Tal was afraid. "He lived in constant fear, his bags were always packed and he was prepared to flee at any minute to Israel," one investigator said. An important member of Tal's laundering ring was Rabbi Shalom Leviatan, a Lubavitch Hassad, head of their branch in Seattle. It is assumed that all the considerable political power of these Hassids and of their rebbe (then alive) was exerted in favor of that laundering ring. "My intentions were good," Leviatan said after he was captured. "A person learns from experience," he added. According to him, he did not know that he was laundering drug money and he was certain that he helped Iranian Jews trying to smuggle their money out of Iran. Leviatan got out cheaply and was sentenced to 30 days' community service. Tal, who confessed to laundering $10 million, was sentenced to 52 months' imprisonment. He served his sentence at Danbury jail in Connecticut but he did not learn his lesson. When he was released, he joined a gang which was captured in the FBI's "sting" operation. This time he managed to flee to Israel where he apparently remains to this day. The gold and diamond industry has recently become the favorite of the drug barons, due to the numerous possibilities for laundering which it contains. One of the popular methods is laundering by means of trading in gold. This is how it works. The drug money is converted into gold, which is smuggled to Colombia, from where it is exported to Milano and used to make jewelry which then legitimately returns to 47th Street. "The funniest thing in this business," say the investigators, "is that the jewelry comes here under favored import conditions because the gold seemingly originates from Colombia and that state possesses favored terms of trade with tile US." There are also other methods. Drug money is deposited in the