And as a final comment on the possibility of a pre-German Lviv pogrom, one might note that the
pogrom claimed by Morley Safer is massive in scale, that Simon Wiesenthal claimed to be right in
the middle of it, and that it was this very pogrom which "compelled Wiesenthal to seek out the
guilty, to bring justice." One might expect, then, that this particular pogrom would have
occupied some of Mr. Wiesenthal's attention as a Nazi hunter, and yet we are faced with the
incongruity that he seems not to have brought any of its perpetrators to justice.
Impulsive Execution
We have just seen Mr. Wiesenthal reporting that his mother-in-law was "shot to death by a
Ukrainian policeman because she couldn't walk fast." Such a thing might well have happened, of
course, but in view of Mr. Wiesenthal's lack of credibility, it behooves us to notice that it is
somewhat implausible. In fact, impulsive killing of this sort was forbidden by the German
authorities for many reasons.
(1) Any optimistic illusions of those arrested concerning their fate were better preserved until
the last possible moment - this to decrease the possibility of emotional outbursts, protests, or
resistance.
(2) As arrests were continuous and unending, there would be the need to prevent forewarning
those slated for arrest at a later time of the reality that the arrests were malevolently
motivated. Optimally, all targeted victims should believe that the arrest was part of a
"relocation," an illusion that a gratuitous shooting in the course of the arrest would dispel.
(3) There was the desirability also of keeping all killings as secret as possible so as not to
arouse the fear or indignation of the general populace. Raul Hilberg describes how even the
roundups themselves were kept as much as possible from view - how much more self-conscious,
then, would the Germans feel about a public killing:
During the stages of concentration, deportations, and killings, the
perpetrators tried to isolate the victims from public view. The administrators
of destruction did not want untoward publicity about their work. They wanted
to avoid criticism of their methods by passers-by. Their psychic balance was
jeopardized enough, especially in the field, and any sympathy extended to the
victim was bound to result in additional psychological as well as operational
complications. ... Any rumors or stories carried from the scene were an
irritant and a threat to the perpetrator.
Precautions were consequently plentiful. In Germany, Jews were sometimes
moved out in the early morning hours before there was traffic in the streets.
Furniture vans without windows were used to take Jews to trains. Loading might
be planned for a siding where human waste was collected. In Poland, the local
German administrators would order the Polish population to stay indoors and
keep the windows closed with blinds drawn during roundups of Jews, even though
such a directive was notice of an impending action. Shooting sites, as in Babi
Yar in Kiev, were selected to be at least beyond hearing distance of local
residents. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 215)
(4) Public executions would create witnesses able to later testify as to Nazi culpability, and
gunfire in a city would attract attention.
(5) In allowing impulsive killing, mistakes would be made, non-Jews or non-Communists killed.
(6) In an arrest, it would hardly be worthwhile to inform the police participants as to the
perhaps many purposes of the arrest or the final disposition of those arrested; in some cases,
therefore, those arrested, or some among those arrested, might be slated not for extermination
but for interrogation: they might have useful information, they might have monetary assets that
needed to be ascertained or confiscated, they might have rare skills which could be put into the
service of the Nazis - and so permitting the impulsive killing of any of the arrested would