in the city of Lviv, just such a Ukrainian police auxiliary by the name of Bodnar risked his
life - possibly sacrificed his life - to save the life of Simon Wiesenthal himself.
Let us consider each of these points in turn.
Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky
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)
Raul Hilberg adds concerning Sheptytsky:
He 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.
(Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 267)
Unbiased reporting might have mentioned such details as the following:
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)
Vast Ukrainian Sacrifices to Save Jews
And Sheptytsky's actions are not unique - Ukrainians risking their lives and giving their lives
to save Jews was not a rare occurrence. In the first Jewish Congress of Ukraine held in Kiev in
1992, "48 awards were handed out to Ukrainians and people of other nationalities who had rescued
Jews during the second world war" (Ukrainian Weekly, November 8, 1992, p. 2). References to
specific cases are not hard to find:
Prof. Weiss [head of the Israeli Knesset] reminisced about Ukraine, the country
of his childhood, and gratefully acknowledged he owed his life to two Ukrainian
women who hid him from the Nazis during World War II. (Ukrainian Weekly,
December 13, 1992, p. 8)
In the Volhynian town of Hoszcza a Ukrainian farmer, Fiodor Kalenczuk, hid a
Jewish grain merchant, Pessah Kranzberg, his wife, their ten-year-old daughter
and their daughter's young friend, for seventeen months, refusing to deny them
refuge even when his wife protested that their presence, in the stable, was