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 approval, his
church hid a number of Jews throughout western Ukraine, 150 Jews alone in and
around his L'viv headquarters. Perhaps some of his parishioners were among
those brave and precious few "righteous gentiles" who risked an automatic death
penalty for themselves and their families by harbouring a Jew under their roof.
The towering humanity of Sheptytsky remains an inspiration today. (Harold
Troper Morton Weinfeld, Old Wounds, 1988, pp. 17-18)
Raul Hilberg adds concerning Sheptytsky:
He dispatched a lengthy handwritten letter dated August 29-31, 1942 to the
Pope, in which he referred to the government of the German occupants as a
regime of terror and corruption, more diabolical than that of the Bolsheviks.
(Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p. 267)
Unbiased reporting might have mentioned such details as the following:
One of those saved by Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky was Lviv's Rabbi Kahane
whose son is currently the marshal commander of the Israeli Air Force.
(Ukrainian Weekly, June 21, 1992, p. 9)
Sheptitsky himself hid fifteen Jews, including Rabbi Kahane, in his own
residence in Lvov, a building frequently visited by German officials. (Martin
Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p. 410)
Vast Ukrainian Sacrifices to Save Jews
And Sheptytsky's actions are not unique - Ukrainians risking their lives and giving their lives
to save Jews was not a rare occurrence. In the first Jewish Congress of Ukraine held in Kiev in
1992, "48 awards were handed out to Ukrainians and people of other nationalities who had rescued
Jews during the second world war" (Ukrainian Weekly, November 8, 1992, p. 2). References to
specific cases are not hard to find:
Prof. Weiss [head of the Israeli Knesset] reminisced about Ukraine, the country
of his childhood, and gratefully acknowledged he owed his life to two Ukrainian
women who hid him from the Nazis during World War II. (Ukrainian Weekly,
December 13, 1992, p. 8)
In the Volhynian town of Hoszcza a Ukrainian farmer, Fiodor Kalenczuk, hid a
Jewish grain merchant, Pessah Kranzberg, his wife, their ten-year-old daughter
and their daughter's young friend, for seventeen months, refusing to deny them
refuge even when his wife protested that their presence, in the stable, was
endangering a Christian household. (Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust, 1986, p.
403)
Help was given even though the probability of detection was substantial and the penalties were
severe:
Sonderkommando 4b reported that it had shot the mayor of Kremenchug, Senitsa
Vershovsky, because he had "tried to protect the Jews." (Raul Hilberg, The
Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
Consulting the original Einsatzgruppe report reveals that a Catholic priest, Protyorey Romansky,
was involved in the above plot to save Jews, though Romansky's punishment is not specified:
The fact that Senitsa, the mayor of Kremenchug, was arrested for sabotaging
orders, demonstrates that responsible officials are not always selected with
the necessary care and attention. Only after the Einsatzkommandos had
interrogated the official could it be established that he had purposely
sabotaged the handling of the Jewish problem. He used false data and
authorized the chief priest Protyorey Romansky to baptize the Jews whom he
himself had selected, giving them Christian or Russian first names. His
immediate arrest prevented a larger number of Jews from evading German
control. Senitsa was executed. (Einsatzgruppe C, Kiev, Operational Situation
Report USSR No. 177, March 6, 1942, in Yitzhak Arad, Shmuel Krakowski, and
Shmuel Spector, editors, The Einsatzgruppen Reports: Selections From the
Dispatches of the Nazi Death Squads' Campaign Against the Jews July
1941-January 1943, 1989, p. 304)
Similarly illustrative of help being given despite severe penalties is the following:
A German police company in the village of Samary, Volhynia, shot an entire
Ukrainian family, including a man, two women, and three children, for harboring
a Jewish woman. (Raul Hilberg, Perpetrators, Victims, Bystanders, 1992, p.
201)
This is not to say that all or most Jews found refuge with Ukrainians, nor that all or most
Ukrainians offered refuge to Jews. Far from it. Many stories can be found of Jews being
refused refuge or even being betrayed - but what else could anyone expect? To expect more from
Ukrainians would be to expect them to be saints and martyrs, which would be setting a very high
standard:
Whoever attempted to help Jews acted alone and exposed himself as well as his
family to the possibility of a death sentence from a German Kommando. (Raul
Hilberg, The Destruction of the European Jews, 1985, p. 308)
But despite the severity of the punishment, Ukrainians did help. Andrew Gregorovich (Forum, No.
