"It is unfortunate," declared a German proclamation issued in Lvov on April 11
[1942], "that the rural population continues - nowadays furtively - to assist
Jews, thus doing harm to the community, and hence to themselves, by this
disloyal attitude." (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 319)
[In 1943] tens of thousands of Jews were still in hiding throughout the General
Government, the Eastern Territories and the Ukraine. But German searches for
them were continuous. (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 553)
It would be incorrect to imagine the Germans rounding up and executing all the Jews within a
region, with only a few of the Jews being saved; rather, in Ukrainian cities - which offered
more avenues of escape and concealment than did villages and towns the Jews repeatedly receded
before the advancing German killing units and then flowed back in again after the killing units
had passed - something that would have been possible only with the knowledge and the cooperation
of the indigenous Ukrainians:
Although we succeeded in particular, in smaller towns and also in villages in
accomplishing a complete liquidation of the Jewish problem, again and again it
is, however, observed in larger cities that, after such an execution, all Jews
have indeed disappeared. But, when, after a certain period of time, a Kommando
returns again, the number of Jews still found in the city always considerably
surpasses the number of the executed Jews. (Erwin Schulz, commander of
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