Deschenes, Commission of Inquiry on War Criminals, 1986, p. 255)
Although as we have just seen "no specific charges of war crimes have been made by the Soviet or
any other Government against any members of this group," Mr. Safer ventures to do what no one
has done before - where angels fear to tread, Mr. Safer rushes in to lay a specific crime at the
feet of the Galicia Division:
SAFER: Thousands of Ukrainians joined the SS and marched off to fight for
Naziism. In the process, they helped round up Lvov's Jews, helped march more
than 140,000 of them to extinction - virtually every Jew in Lvov.
However, the rounding up of Lviv's Jews was begun in 1941 and was largely completed in 1942, so
that by 1943 when the Galicia Division was formed, there were not 140,000 Jews left in Lviv to
round up. In truth, the Galicia Division never participated in the rounding up of Jews in Lviv
or anywhere else. To repeat: the Galicia Division was a combat unit. More particularly, the
Galicia Division saw action on only a single occasion - in facing the Soviets in the Battle of
Brody in July 1944.
Talk of the Galicia Division Induces Paralysis of the Comparative Function
The broad topic of "Paralysis of the Comparative Function" is discussed within its own larger
section below, but such a paralysis becomes evident in other places throughout this essay, as
for example in discussions of the Galicia Division. In such discussions, the comparison - the
elementary and obvious comparison - that is not made is that between the Ukrainian contribution
to German armed forces of Waffen SS troops and the similar contribution made by other peoples.
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 questions:
(1) As the population of The Netherlands is small, and as The Netherlands 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 Mr. Safer 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 he 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 Mr. Safer attacks the former members of the Galicia Division as war criminals, I wonder
why he does not attack former members of The Netherlands, Belgium, and French Waffen SS
divisions in the same way? Why does he single out the Galicia Division? How is the Galicia
Division different from the other Waffen SS divisions?