to you.
Yes, the fence which you showed, and the dogs, unfortunately are there - but these
are remnants of the past. In any case, a decision has been made to get rid of them
and to build a memorial in the same location. You should have reported this. More
to the point, the very first monument in our new Ukraine dedicated to Jewish victims
was erected not far from Lviv, in the town of Chervonohrad. Following that, three
other monuments were erected in our region.
You reported that two Jews were robbed and beaten. This might have happened, but
most likely not because they were Jews. I imagine that in Lviv, Ukrainians are also
robbed (and significantly more often!), and yet nobody draws from this the sort of
conclusions concerning ethnic hostility that you draw from the robbing of these two
Jews.
Our Jewish Council constantly receives news concerning Jews in Ukraine, but during
the past five years, we have received not a single report of anyone being beaten
because he was a Jew. However, it must be admitted that such a thing may have
occurred without it coming to our attention - there are plenty of miscreants in
every country.
Because the facts selected for your broadcast were excessively biased and one-sided,
it is incumbent upon me to give you a view of the other side of Jewish life.
In Lviv, where seven thousand Jews live, there are thirteen Jewish organizations.
There are also active organizations in the rest of the region - in Drohobych,
Boryslav, Truskavets. I can send you all their addresses. Lviv was the first city
in Ukraine to have a Jewish Society (1988), the first Ukraine-Israel Society (1989),
and the first to publish a Jewish newspaper (1989). A Center for the Study of
Jewish History is functioning in the city. Two Jewish-Ukrainian conferences have
been held here. We have a Jewish ensemble, a Jewish theater, a philharmonic
orchestra which recently, at the opening of the season, performed the works of
Tchaikovsky and of two Jewish composers. A Jew, Kotlyk, head of the Jewish Society,
was elected as a member of the City Council.
Two years ago, in the center of the city, not far from "Hitler Square," a monument
dedicated to the victims of the Lviv ghetto was unveiled. This is the biggest and
most prominent Jewish memorial in all of Europe. Haven't you seen it?
As head of the Jewish Council, I was present at all the events that I am describing,
and I can document them. Your discussing these events in a future broadcast would
present a wonderful balance which together with your video footage would paint an
accurate picture of Jewish life in Ukraine, and not a deliberately one-sided one.
One cannot indict any nation on the grounds that a few of its members were evil.
Evil individuals exist in every nation. But why didn't you show those Ukrainians
and Poles who rescued Jews? There are many of them. Initially, we ourselves didn't
know about them, as they remained silent, and our former regime forbade them to
speak on such topics. In Lviv, Simon Wiesenthal himself was rescued from death, and
in Boryslav, the head of the Israeli parliament, Shevakh Weiss, with whom in 1992 I
personally visited his own rescuers.
We have a list of almost 2,500 Ukrainians who rescued Jews, and many of these are
precisely from the Western region. We have brought these rescuers to Israel,
presented them with certificates, and are now supporting them with pensions. We are
presently in the process of submitting this list of rescuers to the Holocaust Museum
in Washington. Concerning this I have been making particular arrangements, as I
will be in the United States later this year.