USA 10019
Morley Safer:
I bring to your attention the following excerpt from an article by L. A. Ruvinsky
published in the Ukrainian Historical Journal in 1985:
After the end of the Second World War, the former head of the Lviv
Gestapo, P. Krause, replying to a question put by the writer V. P.
Bieliaev, testified: "If on our side, in the Gestapo, there had not
worked several agents from among the Zionists, we would never have been
able to capture and destroy such a large number of Jews, who were
living under false documents and assumed names." For example, in July
1941, Zionist Simon Wiesenthal, together with 39 other representatives
of the Lviv intelligentsia, found himself in prison. Somehow, as a
result of a "mysterious confluence of circumstances" all the arrested
except for himself were shot, and he was freed. It is not surprising
that after this, this Zionist provocateur became a regular Nazi agent.
Polish journalists have established this as an indisputable fact. That
is why the Hitlerites did not throw Wiesenthal into prison, which he
frequently confirms, but rather sent him there to organize subsequent
provocations. Evidently he was not lying when he said that he passed
through 5 Nazi prisons and 12 prison camps. In any case, it is not
difficult to imagine how many innocent victims are on the conscience of
this impenitent Zionist provocateur. It is such loathsome services for
the Fascist killers that were performed in the Yanivsky concentration
camp, in which people of various nationalities found themselves
Ukrainians, Poles, and Jews.
L. A. Ruvinsky, The criminal conspiracy of Zionists and Fascists on the
eve of, and during the years of, the Second World War, Ukrainian
Historical Journal, 1985, No. 9, pp. 99-109, p. 105, translated from
the Ukrainian by Lubomyr Prytulak.
The above statement, by itself, is certainly insufficient to establish that Simon
Wiesenthal passed the war years as a Gestapo agent. However, it is even by itself
sufficient to lead an investigative journalist to ask Mr. Wiesenthal certain questions:
(1) Was Simon Wiesenthal in fact arrested along with 39 other members of the Lviv
intelligentsia?
(2) Was Simon Wiesenthal the only one of the 40 who avoided execution?
(3) Did Simon Wiesenthal pass through 5 Nazi prisons and 12 prison camps?
(4) How could Simon Wiesenthal have avoided execution, and how could he have passed
through so many Nazi institutions, unless he had agreed to serve as a Gestapo agent?
Had you asked Mr. Wiesenthal any such questions in your 60 Minutes broadcast of
23Oct94, The Ugly Face of Freedom, you would have taken a step toward digging
underneath the surface, a step of the sort that some 60 Minutes viewers have come to
expect as standard from investigative journalists.
I bring to your attention further that the above quotation from Ruvinsky is not the
only reason that we have for thinking that Simon Wiesenthal may have worked for the
Gestapo. Further reasons can be found in my following three letters to Simon
Wiesenthal:
(1) 15Dec94 in which I ask Simon Wiesenthal, among other things, why he kept detailed
notes on the Polish partisans who were sheltering him, and why he allowed these notes
to be captured by the Nazis.