President Franklin D. Roosevelt and the Pope, protests from several
governments, including the U.S., British and Swedish governments, forced the
Hungarian head of government, Admiral Horthy, to stop the deporting of more
Jews from the country.
Vrba was born Walter Rosenberg but changed his name after escaping from
Auschwitz. (Oshawa Times, December 30, 1968)
Jewish help compared to Ukrainian help. And so here we are faced with the following
incongruity. Ukrainians were dying at the hands of the Nazis, were dying fighting the Nazis,
were dying saving Jews - and yet Morley Safer now brands Ukrainians as Nazis. In contrast,
American Jews were not allowing the Jewish Holocaust to interfere with their lifestyles, were
vetoing proposals to assist and rescue European Jews, and yet they are now privileged to accuse
Ukrainians of being Nazis. People who did next to nothing to save the European Jews, people who
obstructed the rescue of European Jews, people who acted while not under threat of death now
turn around and judge those who while under threat of death did not live up to impossibly high
moral standards.
Appropriately did Reb Moshe Shonfeld place on the title page of his book The Holocaust Victims
Accuse: Documents and Testimony on Jewish War Criminals the quotations "Our enemies will
subjugate you" (Vayikra) - "Those enemies will be from within" (Chazal). Reading Reb Shonfeld's
book invites the conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for Nazi collaborators in Ukraine was
misplaced - perhaps it is the case that the largest repository of unprosecuted Nazi
collaborators today is to be found in the state of Israel; and invites consideration of the
further conclusion that Morley Safer's searching for enemies of Judaism in Ukraine is similarly
misplaced - he might instead have looked for the truly dangerous enemies within - for Jews like
Simon Wiesenthal, Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich, Elie Wiesel, Jerzy Kosinski, and - yes - Morley Safer
himself. Their misstatements lower Jewish credibility; their hatred incites a reactionary
anti-Semitism.
In fact, Morley Safer's accusation of Ukrainian collaboration with the Nazis is not a cry for
justice nor an advancement of historical truth, but is, rather, a weapon sometimes brandished
under political motivation even when the facts do not justify its use, and at other times
sheathed, also for political reasons, even when the facts cry out for its use. Thus, a
Ukrainian may be prosecuted even though the evidence against him is patently fraudulent, as was
the case in the trial of Ivan Demjanjuk (Yoram Sheftel, The Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall
of a Show-Trial, 1994). A Jewish Zionist, in contrast, may go unprosecuted for very real
collaboration with the Nazis, though he may be unable to avoid final justice imposed through
individual action:
Moldetsky, a leader of the Zionist Workers Party (Poalei Zion), who was
appointed head of the council of elders in Bedzin, and who, over the course of
years, chose thousands of Jews for forced labor and extermination, succeeded in
remaining alive. For the mass deportations, Moldetsky published a decree which
was completely fraudulent and deceiving, in which he said: "Jews, dress up in
your holiday clothes and march joyfully to the gathering places mentioned
above. No one is to remain at home. ..." The Jews, in their innocence,
obeyed him. The result was that people with large families - as well as the
elderly - a total of 8,000, were sent to Auschwitz. The babies were pushed
into sacks by the Nazis.
...
After the war, Moldetsky - by merit of Zionist activities - was
understandably one of the first to receive an immigration certificate to
Palestine. His collaboration in the murder of tens of thousands of Jews did