source to which historians and others must turn in any exploration of the most infamous crime in
      history.
      ...
      This definitive edition of THE DESTRUCTION OF THE EUROPEAN JEWS is the most complete,
      comprehensive, and authoritative account of the Nazi Holocaust.
      As well, this same promotional material cites critical acclaim for Hilberg's work in Michael R. Marrus's review in The
      Times Literary Supplement which ends in the words:
      No single book has contributed more, even to its critics, to an understanding of Nazi genocide.
      In its originality, scope, and seriousness of theme, this is one of the great historical works
      of our time.
      But what does Hilberg say about the Lviv pogrom, this most massive pogrom of the Second World War; what does he
      say in his "most complete, comprehensive, and authoritative account of the Nazi Holocaust"? Why he says ... exactly
      nothing! He too seems to be totally unaware of it.
      Worse than that - much worse - Hilberg makes statements to the effect that no such pogrom ever took place. I
      reproduce below three quotations from Hilberg, the last of which is particularly troubling, as it is his summary of
      all anti-Jewish activity in Ukraine, and it flatly contradicts the possibility of the pogrom that you describe:
      From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows:
      Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take active steps against
      the Jews. This may be explained by the fear of many people that the Red
      Army may return. Again and again this anxiety has been pointed out to us.
      Older people have remarked that they had already experienced in 1918 the
      sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear psychosis, and in
      order to destroy the myth ... which, in the eyes of many Ukrainians, places
      the Jew in the position of the wielder of political power, Einsatzkommando
      6 on several occasions marched Jews before their execution through the
      city. Also, care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen watch the shooting
      of Jews.
      This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired effect. After a few
      weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more that the inhabitants did not betray the movements of
      hidden Jews. The Ukrainians were passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist terror." Only the ethnic
      Germans in the area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of
      the European Jews, 1961, p. 202 - in this case, I am quoting from the 1961 edition)
      The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding spectacle of the
      "final solution." There was on the whole no impelling desire to cooperate in a process of such
      utter ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet regime, fighting off the Germans a few hundred
      miles to the east, was still threatening to return, undoubtedly acted as a powerful restraint
      upon many a potential collaborator. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985,
      p. 308)
      First, truly spontaneous pogroms, free from Einsatzgruppen influence, did not take place; all
      outbreaks were either organized or inspired by the Einsatzgruppen. Second, all pogroms were
      implemented within a short time after the arrival of the killing units. They were not
      self-perpetuating, nor could new ones be started after things had settled down. (Raul Hilberg,
      The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 312)
      It would seem, Mr. Wiesenthal, that you were an eyewitness - the only eyewitness - to the largest pogrom of the
      war, and that at the same time, at least two of the foremost chroniclers of the Jewish Holocaust have quite overlooked
      this program, and in the case of Raul Hilberg, flatly deny that any such pogrom ever took place. According to
      Hilberg, all Ukrainian pogroms took place after the arrival of the Germans, were instigated by the Germans, were small
      in scale, and had no momentum of their own.
      In view of this oversight on the part of the historians, Mr. Wiesenthal, shouldn't you get in touch with them and
      recount your experiences to them so that the story of the Lviv pogrom is not lost to future generations, and so that
      Jewish hatred of Ukrainians is not diminished by the loss?
      Sincerely yours,
      Lubomyr Prytulak
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      Wiesenthal Letter 16 Sep 9/97 Shifting date for the Lviv pogrom
      September 9, 1997
      Simon Wiesenthal
      Jewish Documentation Center
      Salztorgasse 6
      1010 Vienna
      Austria
      Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
      In my letter to you of September 8, I demonstrated that two prominent historians seem to be unaware of the
      pre-German Lviv pogrom which killed 5 to 6 thousand Jews, at least as claimed by Morley Safer and yourself on the 60
      Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994. I will remind you that in that 60 Minutes broadcast,
      Morley Safer twice asserts - once seemingly in your hearing - that the Lviv pogrom antedated the arrival of the
      Germans, thus placing culpability squarely at the feet of the Ukrainian perpetrators.
      In a continuing effort to learn more about this Lviv pogrom, I turned to your biographical Justice Not Vengeance,
      only to discover you claiming that this pogrom postdated the arrival of the Germans:
      Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the retreating Soviets. This gave rise
      to one of the craziest accusations of that period: among the strongly anti-Semitic population
      the rumour was spread by the Ukrainian nationalists that all Jews were Bolsheviks and all
      Bolsheviks were Jews. Hence it was the Jews who were really to blame for the atrocities
      committed by the Soviets.
      All the Germans needed to do was to exploit this climate of opinion. It is said that after
      their arrival they gave the Ukrainians free rein, for three days, to 'deal' with the Jews.
      (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 36, emphasis added)
      As the timing of the Lviv pogrom is critical to assigning blame, I would have expected this timing to have been
      verified with care and to be either consistent between the two reports, or else with an explanation offered for any
      inconsistency. Instead, I find that you along with Morley Safer have broadcast a version in 1994 that directly
      contradicts a version that you published five years earlier in 1989.
      I look forward to hearing your clarification of this discrepancy.
      Sincerely yours,
      Lubomyr Prytulak
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      Wiesenthal Letter 18 Sep 11/97 Questions concerning the Waffen SS
      September 11, 1997
      Simon Wiesenthal
      Jewish Documentation Center
      Salztorgasse 6
      1010 Vienna
      Austria
      Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
      Your accusation that Canada harbors a large number of war criminals has been
      incessant over the years, and at one point led to the creation of Canada's Deschenes
      Commission on War Criminals. This accusation seems to be based primarily on Canada's
      presently being home to some former members of the Ukrainian Galicia Division, combined
      with the fact that the Galicia Division was categorized by the Germans as belonging to
      the Waffen SS.
      The first question that I would like to put to you, Mr. Wiesenthal, is whether you
      are aware that the Waffen SS was a combat unit that played no role in the management of
      concentration camps, and carried out no SS functions? I wonder if you are aware of
      this, as you typically - perhaps always? - drop the qualification "Waffen" and refer to
      members of the Galicia Division simply as members of the "SS," which gives the
      misleading impression that combat soldiers were administrators of concentration camps.
      If you are already aware of the distinction between the SS and the Waffen SS, then I
      wonder that you would allow yourself to present the misleading picture that you have
      been presenting. If you are unaware of this distinction, then I wonder how it came to
      be that you are accorded the status of an expert witness on World War II events, as you
      were on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom on October 23, 1994. Would
      you be able to throw any light on this question?
      But on top of that, you must have become aware during your long career as a Nazi
      hunter that Ukraine was not unique in providing the German armed forces with Waffen SS
      troops. Below, I reproduce a quote from an interview by Slavko Nowytski of Professor
      Norman Davies, historian at the University of London, and author of the recent Europe:
      A History, published by Oxford University Press:
      In discussing the question of collaborating with Germany Prof. Davies
      noted that, "A large number of the volunteers for the Waffen SS came
      from Western Europe. The nation which supplied it the largest number
      of divisions was the Netherlands [four]. There were two Belgian
      divisions, there was a French Waffen SS. To my mind, it's rather
      surprising that Ukraine, which is a much larger country [than the
      Netherlands or Belgium] supplied only one Waffen SS Division.... It's
      surprising that there were so few Ukrainians [in the German Army].
      Many people don't know, for example, that there were far more Russians
      fighting alongside the Wehrmacht or in the various German armies than
      there were Ukrainians.... Thanks to Soviet propaganda, the Russian
      contribution to the Nazi war effort has been forgotten, whereas the
      Ukrainian contribution has been remembered, I think, too strongly."
      (Andrew Gregorovich, Forum, No. 95, Spring, 1997, p. 34)
      And so the information in the above quotation leads to several more questions:
      (1) As the population of The Netherlands is small, and as it contributed the
      largest number of Waffen SS divisions, this gives The Netherlands the largest per
      capita contribution to the Waffen SS of any country. Would you conclude from this that
      the people of The Netherlands are the most anti-Semitic in the world? And following
      the same line of reasoning, would you conclude that the people of Belgium are the next
      most anti-Semitic? And also that as the population of France is approximately equal to
      the population of Ukraine, and as each of these contributed one Waffen SS division,
      that the French are approximately as anti-Semitic as the Ukrainians?
      (2) As you have expended considerable energy attacking the former members of the
      Galicia Division as war criminals, I wonder if you have expended any similar energy
      attacking former members of The Netherlands, Belgium, and French Waffen SS divisions in
      the same way? For example, have you demanded any investigation of The Netherlands
      Waffen SS, and as a result has the government of The Netherlands ever created a
      commission on war criminals comparable to Canada's Deschenes Commission on War
      Criminals? And have you done so in Belgium? In France?
      If not, then why not? Why do you single out the Galicia Division? How is the
      Galicia Division different from the other Waffen SS divisions?
      (3) If in comparison to several other countries, Ukraine contributed
      proportionately fewer numbers to the Waffen SS, or to any of the German armed forces,
      then shouldn't you as a Nazi hunter, commend or thank Ukrainians for their relatively
      small contribution to the German war effort?
      (4) Are you aware that the chief motive behind the creation of the Galicia
      Division was to prevent the Soviet re-occupation of Ukraine? Are you aware that in
      consequence, the Galicia Division was organized with the proviso that it not be used
      against the Western allies, but only against the Soviets on the Eastern front; and that
      in fact, the only use to which the Galicia Division was ever put was against the
      Soviets in the Battle of Brody? If you are aware of this, then why did you not mention
      it on the 60 Minutes broadcast in which you were the chief witness and the Galicia
      Division the chief subject of discussion? If you are not aware of this, then why does
      60 Minutes consider you an authority on World War II?
      Would you happen to know if the Waffen SS divisions of other countries were
      created under the same proviso?
      (5) Given that Canada's Deschenes Commission on War Criminals failed to identify
      even a single member of the Galicia Division as calling for further investigation; and
      given that neither you nor anyone else has ever had any member of the Galicia Division
      convicted of any crime, or even tried for any crime; and, most importantly, given that
      neither you nor anyone else has ever even specified any crime of which the Galicia
      Division as a whole, or any member of the Galicia Division, might have been guilty
      given all this, I wonder if the time has not finally come when you have to admit that
      your obsession with the Galicia Division has been misplaced?
      And would you happen to know if the Waffen SS divisions of The Netherlands,
      Belgium, and France have proven to be as free from blame as has the Ukrainian Galicia
      Division?
      Sincerely yours,
      Lubomyr Prytulak
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      Wiesenthal Letter 19 Sep 12/97 Testimony of Erwin Schulz
      September 12, 1997
      Simon Wiesenthal
      Jewish Documentation Center
      Salztorgasse 6
      1010 Vienna
      Austria
      Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
      In my letters to you of September 8 and 9, 1997, I have questioned your assertion
      made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994 to the
      effect that in the few days before the arrival of the Germans, Ukrainians killed some 5
      to 6 thousand Jews in Lviv. I have recently come across some testimony that indicates
      that your assertion is correct on all of the details of this event save one.
      The fresh testimony that I am referring to is that of Erwin Schulz, Commander of
      Einsatzkommando 5 (a subunit of Einsatzgruppe C), from May until 26 September, 1941.
      From Schulz's testimony, it appears that several of the details of your assertion are
      correct: namely that the number murdered was 5,000, which is within the bounds of your
      own estimate; that the location was indeed Lviv (identified as Lemberg); that the time
      was indeed during the few days prior to the arrival of the Germans; and that the chief
      participants were indeed Ukrainians and Jews, although Schulz does mention the
      secondary involvement of others.
      The point on which Schulz differs from you is that whereas you say that the
      slaughter consisted of Ukrainians killing Jews, Schulz says that it consisted of Jews
      killing Ukrainians:
      We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great
      number of Lemberg citizens, Ukrainians and Polish inhabitants of other
      towns and villages had been killed in this prison and in other
      prisons. Furthermore, there were many corpses of German men and
      officers, among them many Air Corps officers, and many of them were
      found mutilated. There was a great bitterness and excitement among the
      Lemberg population against the Jewish sector of the population. (Erwin
      Schulz, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents
      in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18)
      On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the killed
      people in Lemberg amounted to about 5,000. It has been determined
      without any doubt that the arrests and killings had taken place under
      the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with the participation of
      the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg. That was the reason why there was
      such an excitement against the Jewish population on the part of the
      Lemberg citizens. (Erwin Schulz, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The
      Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York,
      1982, Volume 18, p. 18)
      I wonder if you would care to comment on this discrepancy between Schulz's
      testimony and your own?
      Sincerely yours,
      Lubomyr Prytulak
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      Wiesenthal Letter 20 Sep 13/97 Jews killing Ukrainians in Lviv
      September 13, 1997
      Simon Wiesenthal
      Jewish Documentation Center
      Salztorgasse 6
      1010 Vienna
      Austria
      Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
      In my letter to you of September 12, I presented the testimony of Erwin Schulz to
      the effect that in the few days prior to the arrival of German forces in Lviv in 1941,
      some 5,000 inhabitants of the Lviv region, predominantly Ukrainians and Poles, had been
      killed, and that the killing had been conducted "under the leadership of Jewish
      functionaries and with the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg."
      The continuing question before us can be broken down into two parts: (1) Were
      such large numbers of Ukrainians and Poles killed? (2) What ethnic groups were most
      responsible for the killing?
      On the first question, there does not appear to be much doubt - every one of the
      half-dozen sources that I consulted agree that the slaughter did take place. In fact,
      in the last quotation of the following set of six, you yourself, Mr. Wiesenthal, can be
      seen to agree:
      Before fleeing the German advance the Soviet occupational regime
      murdered thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly members of the city's
      [Lviv's] intelligentsia. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume 3, p. 222)
      The Bolsheviks succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political
      prisoners in Western Ukraine before and after the outbreak of
      hostilities (massacres took place in the prisons in Lviv, Zolochiv,
      Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, etc.). (Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, Volume
      1, p. 886)
      The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for thousands of
      political prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Unable to
      evacuate them in time, the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse
      during the week of 22-29 June 1941, regardless of whether they were
      incarcerated for major or minor offenses. Major massacres occurred in
      Lviv, Sambir, and Stanyslaviv in Galicia, where about 10,000 prisoners
      died, and in Rivne and Lutsk in Volhynia, where another 5000 perished.
      Coming on the heels of the mass deportations and growing Soviet terror,
      these executions added greatly to the West Ukrainians' abhorrence of
      the Soviets. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 461)
      Right after the entry we were shown 2,400 dead bodies of Ukrainians
      liquidated with a shot at the scruff of the neck at the city jail of
      Lemberg [Lviv] by the Soviets prior to their marching off. (Hans Frank,
      In the Face of the Gallows, p. 406)
      In Lvov, several thousand prisoners had been held in three jails. When
      the Germans arrived on 29 June, the city stank, and the prisons were
      surrounded by terrified relatives. Unimaginable atrocities had
      occurred inside. The prisons looked like abattoirs. It had taken the
      NKVD a week to complete their gruesome task before they fled. (Gwyneth
      Hughes and Simon Welfare, Red Empire: The Forbidden History of the
      USSR, 1990, p. 133)
      When the German attack came on 22 June the Soviets had no time to take
      with them the people they had locked up. So they simply killed them.
      Thousands of detainees were shot dead in their cells by the retreating
      Soviets. (Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 35)
      The first question having been settled - I trust - to the satisfaction of all, we
      turn now to the second question: Is there any ethnic group that might have been
      particularly responsible for the killing? Well, if the slaughter was conducted by the
      NKVD or was directed by the NKVD, then the question reduces to What was the ethnic
      composition of the NKVD?
      The evidence that I have come across points to the conclusion that the NKVD was
      dominated by Jews. Here is one such piece of evidence. The speaker is Yoram Sheftel,
      John Demjanjuk's Israeli defense attorney, describing his visit to the Simferopol,
      Ukraine, KGB headquarters in 1990 - what Sheftel seems to be saying is that out of a
      sample of some 30 members of the wartime NKVD, every last one was a Jew:
      On the right-hand wall was a stone memorial plaque engraved with the
      names of about thirty KGB men from Simferopol who had fallen in the
      Great Patriotic War, as the Soviets call World War II. I was shocked
      and angry as I read the names: the first was Polonski and the last
      Levinstein, and all those between were ones like Zalmonowitz, Geller
      and Kagan - all Jews. The best of Jewish youth in Russia, the cradle
      of Zionism, had sold itself and its soul to the Red Devil. (The
      Demjanjuk Affair: The Rise and Fall of a Show-Trial, 1994, p. 301)
      Of course a sample of 30 is not necessarily a sample that is representative of the
      entire NKVD; however the Jewish domination of the entire NKVD is not a rare or dubious
      hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than one direction:
      As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were there
      so many Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators - including many of the
      most terrible? It's a painful question for me but I cannot evade it.
      (Yevgenia Albats, The State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on
      Russia, Past, Present and Future, 1994, p. 147)
      Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery
      especially in the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and the
      NKVD.... It is difficult to suggest a satisfactory reason for the
      prevalence of Jews in the Cheka. It may be that having suffered at the
      hand of the former Russian authorities they wanted to seize the reins
      of real power in the new state for themselves. (Leonard Shapiro, The
      Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary Movement, Slavonic and East
      European Review, 1961, 40, p. 165)
      The question that I would be interested in hearing your views on, then, Mr.
      Wiesenthal, is whether the assertion you made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face
      of Freedom of October 23, 1994 may have been diametrically opposite to the truth
      specifically, that whereas you held out that during the interval prior to the
      occupation of Lviv by German forces Ukrainians were slaughtering Jews by the thousands,
      in reality during this same interval it may have been closer to the truth to say that
      Jews were slaughtering Ukrainians by the thousands.
      Sincerely yours,
      Lubomyr Prytulak
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      Wiesenthal Letter 21 Sep 14/97 Altered dates of death
      September 14, 1997
      Simon Wiesenthal
      Jewish Documentation Center
      Salztorgasse 6
      1010 Vienna
      Austria
      Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
      In connection with the possibility of a massive, pre-German Lviv pogrom, Morley
      Safer (in his 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994)
      inserted into the pre-German interval two events which gave the viewer the impression
      that the pre-German pogrom in question was well-documented and incapable of being
      doubted: (1) the arrest of your mother, and (2) the shooting of your mother-in-law:
      SAFER: But even before the Germans entered Lvov, the Ukrainian militia,
      the police, killed 3,000 people in 2 days here.
      LUBACHIVSKY: It is not true!
      SAFER: It's horribly true to Simon Wiesenthal - like thousands of Lvov
      Jews, his mother was led to her death by the Ukrainian police.
      These are remnants of a film the Germans made of Ukrainian
      brutality. The German high command described the Ukrainian behavior as
      'praiseworthy.'
      WIESENTHAL: My wife's mother was shot to death because she could not go
      so fast.
      SAFER: She couldn't keep up with the rest of the prisoners.
      WIESENTHAL. Yes. She was shot to death by a Ukrainian policeman
      because she couldn't walk fast.
      SAFER: It was the Lvov experience that compelled Wiesenthal to seek out
      the guilty, to bring justice.
      The above passage starts by mentioning Lviv prior to arrival of the Germans, and it
      ends with a reference to "the Lvov experience," which invites the viewer to imagine
      that the events bracketed in Mr. Safer's discourse by these two references happened
      during that same pre-German interval. Specifically, Mr. Safer gives the distinct and
      unmistakable impression that the pre-German anti-Jewish activities on the part of
      Ukrainians cannot be doubted because among the events that occurred during these
      activities were the arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law.
      However, examining your biographies for confirmation of these two events - the
      arrest of your mother and the shooting of your mother-in-law - turns up the following
      (it will help at this point to recollect that Lviv was occupied by the Germans on June
      30, 1941):
      In August [1942] the SS was loading elderly Jewish women into a goods
      truck at Lvov station. One of them was Simon Wiesenthal's mother, then
      sixty-three. ... His wife's mother was shortly afterwards shot dead
      by a Ukrainian police auxiliary on the steps of her house. (Peter
      Michael Lingens, in Simon Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p.
      8)
      "My mother was in August 1942 taken by a Ukrainian policeman," Simon
      says, lapsing swiftly into the present tense as immediacy takes hold.
      ... Around the same time, Cyla Wiesenthal [Mr. Wiesenthal's wife]
      learned that, back in Buczacz, her mother had been shot to death by a
      Ukrainian policeman as she was being evicted from her home. (Alan
      Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 41)
      We see, therefore, that Morley Safer seems to have advanced the date of arrest of your
      mother as well as the shooting of your mother-in-law by more than a year in order to
      lend credibility to the claim of Ukrainian-initiated actions against Jews prior to the
      German occupation of Lviv.
      As this error appears to be Mr. Safer's and not your own, I do not ask you to
      account for it. However, I do ask if you at any time subsequent to the 60 Minutes
      broadcast became aware of Mr. Safer's error, and if so, if you as a result asked him to
      issue a correction?
      Also, if you are only now for the first time learning of Mr. Safer's error, I
      wonder if you could tell me if you now intend to ask Mr. Safer to issue a correction?
      Sincerely yours,
      Lubomyr Prytulak
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      Wiesenthal Letter 23 Sep 23/97 The pious executioners
      September 23, 1997
      Simon Wiesenthal
      Jewish Documentation Center
      Salztorgasse 6
      1010 Vienna
      Austria
      Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
      I wonder if you are aware that during the German occupation of Lviv, the Greek
      Catholic church, headed by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky, was courageous and outspoken
      in defense of Jews? Here are four quotations which provide some details as to the role
      played by Sheptytsky, and which demonstrate that this role is widely acknowledged:
      There is little doubt as to the almost saintly role of Ukrainian
      (Greek) Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky. Sheptytsky,
      Archbishop of L'viv and head of the church, was widely known as being
      sympathetic to the Jews. ... The elderly metropolitan wrote directly
      to SS commander Heinrich Himmler in the winter of 1942 demanding an end
      to the final solution and, equally important to him, an end to the use
      of Ukrainian militia and police in anti-Jewish action. His letter
      elicited a sharp rebuke, but Sheptytsky persisted even though the death
      penalty was threatened to those who gave comfort to Jews. In November
      1942 he issued a pastoral letter to be read in all churches under his
      authority. It condemned murder. Although Jews were not specifically
      mentioned, his intent was crystal clear.
      We can never know how many Ukrainians were moved by Sheptytsky's
      appeal. Certainly the church set an example. With Sheptytsky's tacit