ГУЛаг Палестины

Einsatzkommando 5 of Einsatzgruppe C, in John Mendelsohn, Editor, The

Holocaust, Volume 18, 1982, p. 98)

Whenever the Einsatzgruppe had left a town, it returned to find more Jews than

had already been killed there. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European

Jews, 1985, p. 342)

Olena Melnyczuk in a Courage to Care Award ceremony (sponsored by the Jewish Foundation for

Christian Rescuers/Anti-Defamation League) in which she and other members of her family were

honored for having hidden a Jewish couple during World War II in Ukraine made the following

remarks, the concluding sentence of which bears a particular relevance to our present discussion

of 60 Minutes:

"At the time we were fully aware of consequences that might expect us. We were

aware that our family were doomed to perish together with the people we

sheltered if detected. But sometimes people ask 'would you do it again?' And

the answer is short. Yes. We tell them point blank that our Christian

religion taught us to love your neighbor as yourself, be your brother's

keeper," she stated.

"Sometimes," she continued, "we hear the people asking why so few did what

we did. Ladies and gentlemen, I am sure there were many, many people like us

risking their lives while hiding Jews, but how many of those rescued had the

courage to report the names of their rescuers to Yad Vashem? Somehow being

free of danger they have forgotten what risk those people took." (Ukrainian

Weekly, June 21, 1992, p. 9, emphasis added)

The Forgotten Bodnar

Yes, how some of them do seem to have forgotten. Take Simon Wiesenthal, for example. The chief

focus of discussion between him and Morley Safer seems to have been whether Ukrainians are all

genetically programmed to be worse anti-Semites than the Nazis (Mr. Morley's position), or

whether it was just Ukrainian police units that deserve this description (Mr. Wiesenthal's

position). Now to balance this image of unrelieved Ukrainian anti-Semitism, Mr. Wiesenthal

could have mentioned that on numerous occasions Ukrainians risked their lives, perhaps even gave

their lives, to save his (Mr. Wiesenthal's) life - and not only civilians, but the very same

Ukrainian police auxiliaries whom both Mr. Safer and Mr. Wiesenthal agree were uniformly

sub-human brutes. Here, for example, is Mr. Wiesenthal's own story (as told to Peter Michael

Lingens) concerning a member of a Ukrainian police auxiliary who is identified by the Ukrainian

surname "Bodnar." The story is that Mr. Wiesenthal is 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)

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, we might ask Mr. Wiesenthal

whether Bodnar did get away with it, or whether he paid for it with his life, for as the

escapees were tiptoeing out, they were stopped, they offered their 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. First, we see a Ukrainian police auxiliary

having his face slapped by a German sergeant, which serves to remind us that Ukraine is under

occupation, to show us 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. We 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. But most important of all, we see

that the German sergeant is waiting for Bodnar to report back. Alan Levy writes that "Bodnar

was ... concerned ... that now he had to account, verbally at least, for his two prisoners" (p.

37). If Bodnar reports back with the news that Wiesenthal and the other prisoner escaped, then

how might Bodnar expect the face-slapping German sergeant to respond? For Bodnar at this point

in the story to actually allow Wiesenthal and the other prisoner to escape is heroic, it is

self-sacrificing, it is suicidal. And yet Bodnar does go ahead and effect Wiesenthal's escape,

probably never imagining that to Wiesenthal in later years this will become an event unworthy of