ГУЛаг Палестины

exhausted. The Banderite slumped to his knees, then fell flat on his face. We shot him."

– Israel Roitman

July 25, 1999

Morley Safer

60 Minutes, CBS Television

51 W 52nd Street

New York, NY

USA 10019

Morley Safer:

I bring to your attention the following boastful confession of

former SMERSH agent, Israel Roitman

The translation of Isreal Roitman's autobiographical account below, originally published

in the Russian-language periodical Our View in Thornhill, Ontario in 1998, recounts the

experience of a Jew participating in the torture and murder of a Ukrainian during the

Second World War, and boasts that this one crime was only the first of many:

MUSIC

by Israel Roitman

Our View

05May98

[...]

Once, on the occasion of a talk with students, I was asked: "Did you also kill

people?"

What could I answer? It remained only to smile sadly, and my memory recalled the

first cruelty. Afterward, there were many more, but the first is unforgettable.

It happened, if memory serves, in the Zolochiv region which lies along the

Ternopil-Lviv highway (Western Ukraine). The military SMERSH ("Death to Spies", as

military counter-intelligence was named during the war) instructed us intelligence

officers to investigate the cause of death of one of our sabotage units. On the

second or third day, we came upon the tracks of the perpetrators who were responsible

for the death of our comrades, and caught them relaxing in broad daylight in a large

house on a forest farmstead. There were three men sitting around a table with

moonshine and snacks: a thin, tall German, a heavily-armed policeman, and a

fat-faced, unshaven Banderite [Ukrainian fighting for Ukrainian independence] wearing

a service cap with a yellow-light blue [colors of the Ukrainian flag] cockade and

some kind of stripes sewn on his sleeve. It goes without saying: a merry band.

We had to shoot the policeman right there in the house, his abundance of weapons not

helping him a bit. We took the German and the Banderite out into the yard. The

Banderite, a huge man with long hands large as shovels, just stood there with a

crooked smile. On his unshaven face, his eyes darted nervously about like gimlets.

Evidently, the worsening situation was completely unexpected by him and he didn't

know what to do, and couldn't hit upon any course of action. Of course, under

different circumstances, he could have tossed us boys around like puppies, but this

time the inveterate beast could not do so: we were the ones with the weapons.

Oh, yes! By that time, we had seen a lot of these nationalists, as they were

contemptuously called, the "Samostiynyks" ["Independents"] (the motto of the

Ukrainian Nationalists was "For an Independent Ukraine"). These were veritable

beasts, worse than some Fritzes [Germans].

Volodka Seliverstov hit him first, in the solar plexus. The Banderite groaned,

gripped his stomach with his hands, and doubled over like a folding knife. Then

followed a knee upper-cut to the face. A sobbing was heard and the Banderite started

falling backwards. But we didn't let him fall. There were five of us. We stood in

a small circle and knocked him from one to another. We struck silently with backhand

blows, putting into them all our accumulated rage and hatred. We struck viciously,

probably like hunters striking huge and especially dangerous maddened beasts. By the

time the Banderite's face was turned into a bloody-hairy pulp, we were exhausted.

The Banderite slumped to his knees, then fell flat on his face. We shot him. The

German, we delivered safely across the front line and turned him over to the SMERSH

people. (We followed the same practice afterwards. When police, Banderites,

Vlasovites, or Germans fell into our hands, we usually delivered the latter

untouched, but the traitors we executed ourselves on the spot.)

[...]

The original of the beginning of Israel Roitman's article appears below, the portion

translated above shown enclosed in a box:

I Expand My Summary Table Once Again

The table which I have been developing in my previous three letters to you can now be

elaborated with the Israel Roitman entry. As Roitman gives no dates for his crimes, I

conjecture that they began in 1941; as Roitman could have continued his service in the

Soviet secret police for several decades, there is no telling what span of time his

crimes occupied:

Date of my letter

Subject of my letter

Date of Attack

Violence that you should have reported in your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom

04Jul99

The Wiesenthal-Safer Calumny

Summer 1941

25Jul99

Who did Israel Roitman murder?

1941

15May99

Who murdered Volodymyr Ivasiuk?

April 1979

30Jun99

Who murdered Vadim Boyko?

February 14, 1992

Violence that you might have encouraged by your 23Oct94 The Ugly Face of Freedom

09Apr99

Who blew the hands off Maksym Tsarenko?

Summer 1995

17May99

Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?

July 7-8, 1997

01Jul99

Who murdered Borys Derevyanko?

August 11, 1997

And I Find My Earlier Conclusions Strengthened

In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you urged the conclusion

that Ukraine was a place where Ukrainians kill Jews. However, you found that conclusion

difficult to substantiate. The conclusion that you would have found easy to