any impulse for vengeance existed, then it was inhibited - the Ukrainian population had been
decimated, deprived of its leadership, throttled into submission. For all they knew, the
Communists who had just left might return that very same day and resume the slaughter, starting
first with any who had dared to lift a vengeful hand. For all they knew, this was just the calm
before a new storm, just a few hours' respite while names were taken for the next round of NKVD
executions. And the last person to lift a hand against would be a Jew because the Jew had
traditionally occupied the position of authority:
From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows:
Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take
active steps against the Jews. This may be explained by the
fear of many people that the Red Army may return. Again and
again this anxiety has been pointed out to us. Older people
have remarked that they had already experienced in 1918 the
sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear
psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth ... which, in the
eyes of many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of
the wielder of political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several
occasions marched Jews before their execution through the
city. Also, care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen
watch the shooting of Jews.
This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired
effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more that the
inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden Jews. The Ukrainians were
passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the
area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction
of the European Jews, 1961, p. 202)
The picture painted by Raul Hilberg is not at all the one of Ukrainians enthusiastically
slaughtering Jews that was painted by Morley Safer in his 60 Minutes broadcast:
The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding
spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the whole no impelling desire
to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet
regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred miles to the east, was still
threatening to return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint upon many a
potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews,
1985, p. 308)
Raul Hilberg is not the only historian testifying to the fact that the Einsatzgruppen organized
and instigated the pogroms, and that they were disappointed by the results. Leo Heiman below,
for example, reaffirms this, and adds the detail that the pogromists had a short attention span
with respect to the German-inspired motive of anti-Semitism, being instead readily diverted by
"looting and plunder." "Lemberg," of course, is Lviv:
The results of diligent Nazi efforts to organize "Ukrainian pogrom mobs" were
disappointing.... According to official German documents introduced by the
prosecution during the Eichmann trial, the Nazi commander of S.D. Einsatzgruppe
"Kommando Lemberg" complained to his superiors that "...to rely on local people
to take the law of retribution in their own hands, and themselves carry out
final solution measures against Jews, is hopeless. We organized several action
groups, but they soon degenerated into ordinary pogrom mobs, more interested in
looting and plunder than in energetic and forceful measures against Jews. The
number of Jews eliminated by mobs runs less than two thousand in my area of