in the anti-Jewish actions, he is a distrusted participant, and a participant who might feel intimidated by the
hostile scrutiny of the occupying Nazis.
(3) But most important of all, you see that the German sergeant is waiting for Bodnar to report back. Alan Levy
writes that "Bodnar was ... concerned ... that now he [Bodnar] had to account, verbally at least, for his two
prisoners" (p. 37). If Bodnar reports back with the news that you, Mr. Wiesenthal, escaped, then how might Bodnar
expect the face-slapping German sergeant to respond? For Bodnar at this point in the story to actually allow you, Mr.
Wiesenthal, to escape is heroic, it is self-sacrificing, it is suicidal. And yet the forgotten Bodnar does go ahead
and effect your escape, probably never imagining that in later years this will become an event unworthy of notice
during your blanket condemnation of Ukrainians.
What I urge you to do now, Mr. Wiesenthal, is the following:
(1) Conduct a search to determine the fate of the forgotten Bodnar, and bestow upon him the recognition that he
deserves for his heroic action. Hopefully, Bodnar is still alive, so that the recognition will not be posthumous.
Hopefully, Bodnar did not sacrifice his life to save yours, as then your ingratitude would be truly black.
(2) Bring the forgotten Bodnar to the attention of Morley Safer at 60 Minutes, and ask for some correction of the
negative image created of the Ukrainian police.
(3) Search your memory long and hard and determine a version of the story which appears to be closest to the
truth, and then publish it as the official account, because at present, the wildly different versions in your several
biographies create the negative image of someone who just spews tall tales off the top of his head, without any
consideration for making them consistent with earlier versions of those same tales. For example, Mr. Wiesenthal, what
impression do you imagine is created in the mind of a reader who is told in Justice Not Vengeance that Bodnar saved
you alone and took you to his apartment, but then is told in The Wiesenthal File that Bodnar saved you together with
another prisoner and took the two of you to the office of a "commissar" which office the two of you spent the entire
night cleaning? I will tell you what impression is created, Mr. Wiesenthal - it is that of a person lying so
clumsily, that one almost imagines that he does so in order to be caught and exposed so as to finally be able to
confess and to purge his conscience.
Sincerely yours,
Lubomyr Prytulak
HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL 879 hits since 18Jan98
Wiesenthal Letter 15 Sep 8/97 The elusive Lviv pogrom
September 8, 1997
Simon Wiesenthal
Jewish Documentation Center
Salztorgasse 6
1010 Vienna
Austria
Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
According to your testimony on the 60 Minutes broadcast of October 23, 1994, "The Ugly Face of Freedom," in three
days following the evacuation of the Communist forces and before the arrival of the German troops, Ukrainian police
killed between five and six thousand Jews:
SAFER: He [Simon Wiesenthal] remembers that even before the Germans arrived, Ukrainian police
went on a 3-day killing spree.
WIESENTHAL: And in this 3 days in Lvov alone between 5 and 6 thousand Jews was killed.
...
SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian militia, the police, killed 3,000
people in 2 days here.
Now before going beyond what was actually said in the broadcast, we already see a discrepancy which I ask you to
comment on. Specifically, you are the expert on the Holocaust who is testifying on 60 Minutes, and more than that you
are the eyewitness to the Lviv pogrom - the only eyewitness - and you tell Morley Safer that 5 to 6 thousand Jews were
killed in three days - but then Mr. Safer turns around and changes it to 3 thousand killed in two days. This does not