sub-human brutes. Here, for example, is Mr. Wiesenthal's own story (as told to Peter Michael
Lingens) concerning a member of a Ukrainian police auxiliary who is identified by the Ukrainian
surname "Bodnar." The story is that Mr. Wiesenthal is about to be executed, but:
The shooting stopped. Ten yards from Wiesenthal.
The next thing he remembers was a brilliant cone of light and behind it a
Polish voice: "But Mr. Wiesenthal, what are you doing here?" Wiesenthal
recognized a foreman he used to know, by the name of Bodnar. He was wearing
civilian clothes with the armband of a Ukrainian police auxiliary. "I've got
to get you out of here tonight."
Bodnar told the [other] Ukrainians that among the captured Jews he had
discovered a Soviet spy and that he was taking him to the district police
commissar. In actual fact he took Wiesenthal back to his own flat, on the
grounds that it was unlikely to be searched so soon again. This was the first
time Wiesenthal survived. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice
Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 8)
Bodnar must have known that the punishment for saving a Jew from execution and then helping him
escape would be death. And how could he get away with it? In fact, we might ask Mr. Wiesenthal
whether Bodnar did get away with it, or whether he paid for it with his life, for as the
escapees were tiptoeing out, they were stopped, they offered their fabricated story, and then:
The German sergeant, already a little drunk, slapped Bodnar's face and said:
"Then what are you standing around for? If this is what you people are like,
then later we'll all have troubles. Report back to me as soon as you deliver
them [Wiesenthal along with a fellow prisoner]." (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal
File, 1993, p. 37)
These passages invite several pertinent conclusions. First, we see a Ukrainian police auxiliary
having his face slapped by a German sergeant, which serves to remind us that Ukraine is under
occupation, to show us who is really in charge, to suggest that the German attitude toward
Ukrainians is one of contempt and that the expression of this contempt is unrestrained. We see
also that Bodnar's flat is subject to searches, indicating that although he is a participant in
the anti-Jewish actions, he is a distrusted participant, and a participant who might feel
intimidated by the hostile scrutiny of the occupying Nazis. But most important of all, we see
that the German sergeant is waiting for Bodnar to report back. Alan Levy writes that "Bodnar
was ... concerned ... that now he had to account, verbally at least, for his two prisoners" (p.
37). If Bodnar reports back with the news that Wiesenthal and the other prisoner escaped, then
how might Bodnar expect the face-slapping German sergeant to respond? For Bodnar at this point
in the story to actually allow Wiesenthal and the other prisoner to escape is heroic, it is
self-sacrificing, it is suicidal. And yet Bodnar does go ahead and effect Wiesenthal's escape,
probably never imagining that to Wiesenthal in later years this will become an event unworthy of
notice during Wiesenthal's blanket condemnation of Ukrainians.
And so these three things - the heroic actions of Lviv's Metropolitan Sheptytsky, the
self-sacrificing intervention of the Ukrainian police official, Bodnar, in saving Mr.
Wiesenthal's own life, and the existence of numerous other instances of Ukrainians saving Jews
these are things that were highly pertinent to the 60 Minutes broadcast, and they are things
that would have begun to transform the broadcast from a twisted message of hate to balanced
reporting, but they are things that were deliberately omitted. It is difficult to imagine any
motive for this omission other than the preservation of the stereotype of uniform Ukrainian
brutishness.
Following the writing of the above section on the topic of Ukrainians saving Jews, a flood of
similar material - actually more striking than similar - has come to my attention, far too great