What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
Quality of Translation
Were all those Ukrainians really saying "kike" and "yid"?
In one instance, I could make out the Ukrainian word "zhyd." Following conventions of Ukrainian
transliteration into English, by the way, the "zh" in "zhyd" is pronounced approximately like
the "z" in "azure," and the "y" in "zhyd" is pronounced like the "y" in "myth." Quite true, to
continue, that in Russian "zhyd" is derogatory for "Jew" and "yevrei" is neutral. In Ukrainian,
the same is true in heavily Russified Eastern Ukraine, and even in Central Ukraine. But in the
less Russified Western Ukraine old habits persist, and here especially among the common people
- "zhyd" continues to be as it always has been the neutral term for "Jew," and "yevrei" sounds
Russian.
Thus, in non-Russified Ukrainian, the "Jewish Battalion" of the Ukrainian Galician Army formed
in 1919 was the "zhydivskyi kurin". "Judaism" is "zhydivstvo." A "learned Jew" is "zhydovyn."
"Judophobe" is "zhydofob" and "Jodophile" is "zhydofil." The adjective "zhydivskyi" meaning
"Jewish" was used by Ukrainians and Jews alike in naming Jewish orchestras and theater groups
and clubs and schools and government departments. The Encyclopaedia Judaica (1971, Volume 11,
p. 616) shows the May 18, 1939 masthead and headlines of the Lviv Jewish newspaper which was
published in Polish. The Polish language is similar to Ukrainian, but uses the Roman rather
than the Cyrillic alphabet. The headline read "Strejk generalny Zydow w Palestynie" which means
"General strike of Jews in Palestine." The third word "Zydow" meaning "of Jews" is similar to
the Ukrainian word that would have been used in this context, and again serves to illustrate
that the Jews of this region did not view the word "zhyd" or its derivatives as derogatory.
We find this same conclusion in the recollections of Nikita Khrushchev (in the following
quotation, I have replaced the original translator's "yid" which rendered the passage confusing,
with the more accurate "zhyd"):
I remember that once we invited Ukrainians, Jews, and Poles ... to a meeting at
the Lvov opera house. It struck me as very strange to hear the Jewish speakers
at the meeting refer to themselves as "zhyds." "We zhyds hereby declare
ourselves in favour of such-and-such." Out in the lobby after the meeting I
stopped some of these men and demanded, "How dare you use the word "zhyd"?
Don't you know it's a very offensive term, an insult to the Jewish nation?"
... "Here in the Western Ukraine it's just the opposite," they explained. "We
call ourselves zhyds...." Apparently what they said was true. If you go back
to Ukrainian literature ... you'll see that "zhyd" isn't used derisively or
insultingly. (Nikita Khrushchev, Khrushchev Remembers, 1971, p. 145)
But 60 Minutes' mistranslation went even further than that - upon listening to the broadcast
more carefully, it is possible to hear that where the editor of the Lviv newspaper For a Free
Ukraine was translated as saying in connection with a joke circulated among the common people
"In terms of the Soviet Union which is abbreviated SSSR, that stands for three kikes and a
Russian," - in fact he was using the unarguably neutral term "yevrei" which it is obligatory to
translate not as "kike" but as "Jew" not only in Russian, but in Eastern and Western Ukrainian
as well.
Thus, in at least two instances, and possibly in all, the 60 Minutes' translator was translating
incorrectly, and in such a manner as to make the Ukrainian speakers appear to be speaking with
an unrestrained anti-Semitism, when in fact they were not. On top of that, the translator
gratuitously spit out his words and gave them a venomous intonation which was not present in the
original Ukrainian. And then too, where the speaker spoke in grammatical Ukrainian, the
translator on one occasion at least, offered a translation in ungrammatical English, making the