notorious history of being presented in various publications with wildly different
interpretations - of which Time Magazine's "Wallowing Photograph" fiasco of 22Feb93 is but one
instance. In fact, this photograph is taken from the wallowing-in-the-gutter German propaganda
film that we have been discussing above. Whereas Time magazine editors did not go so far as to
concede this, they were able to muster enough integrity to express ignorance and confusion, and
also to retract and to apologize:
Despite our best efforts, we have not been able to pin down exactly what
situation the photograph portrays. But there is enough confusion about it for
us to regret that our caption, in addition to misdating the picture, may well
have conveyed a false impression. (Time, April 19, 1993)
And yet this same notorious photograph has been recycled yet again by 60 Minutes and broadcast
as if it had unequivocal significance. Time admitted that it was wrong, Morley Safer cannot
escape having to do the same.
It is a curious incongruity that while professing to oppose Naziism, Morley Safer nevertheless
broadcasts a Nazi propaganda film and invites 60 Minutes' viewers to take it at face value. The
propaganda of one era is, half a century later, dredged up to become the propaganda of another
era, but with a switch from approval to disapproval - the Germans used the film to portray
Ukrainians as good anti-Semites, and so why shouldn't Mr. Safer use the same film to portray
Ukrainians as bad anti-Semites?
CONTENTS:
Preface
The Galicia Division
Quality of Translation
Ukrainian Homogeneity
Were Ukrainians Nazis?
Simon Wiesenthal
What Happened in Lviv?
Nazi Propaganda Film
Collective Guilt
Paralysis of the Comparative
Function
60 Minutes' Cheap Shots
Ukrainian Anti-Semitism
Jewish Ukrainophobia
Mailbag
A Sense of Responsibility
What 60 Minutes Should Do
PostScript
Collective Guilt
What was the rate of Ukrainian criminal collaboration with the Nazis during the Second World
War? I do not ask here for the rate of perfunctory and non-culpable collaboration - not, for
example, for a count which includes Ukrainian prisoners of war who, to save their lives, donned
German uniforms and then found themselves serving out the war as reluctant camp guards, which
have been more accurately referred to as "prisoner guards" because even while serving as guards,
such Ukrainians continued to be themselves prisoners. No, not that low level of culpability,
but rather an active collaboration palpably greater than would have been necessary for survival,
well beyond the minimum that would be offered by all but the few saints and martyrs among us
in short, collaboration of a magnitude that could plausibly lead to criminal prosecution. Let
us imagine several possibilities. As the population of Ukraine at the time was 36 million,
different collaboration rates give us a different number of collaborators:
Rate of Criminal Collaboration
Number of Criminal Collaborators
1/100,000
1/ 10,000
1/ 1,000
360
3,600
36,000
Were there 360 Ukrainians known to have criminally collaborated with the Nazis during World War
II? Perhaps there were, though I do not know of any such definitive list, and wonder if one
exists. However, 360 criminal collaborators only makes for one criminal collaborator out of
every 100,000 Ukrainians.
Could there have been 3,600 criminal collaborators? I doubt it, and I challenge anyone to come
up with a credible list this long. Note that I do not challenge someone to pull a number out of
the air equal to or exceeding 3,600 - likely there is more than one researcher at 60 Minutes who
would find such a task not difficult - but rather, I challenge someone to come up with a
documented list of names of Ukrainians who criminally participated in Nazi war crimes, where the
list includes a description of the crimes, their locations, their dates, and credible supportive
evidence. I repeat - this has not been done and cannot be done. And yet 3,600 certified
criminal collaborators would make for only one criminal collaborator out of every 10,000
Ukrainians.
And what about 36,000 criminal collaborators? The notion is preposterous. No documentation
exists to support such a fantastic claim. And yet 36,000 criminal collaborators would make for
only one criminal collaborator out of every 1,000 Ukrainians.
The middle figure - one criminal collaborator for every 10,000 Ukrainians - is possibly a wild
exaggeration, and would give us 3,600 criminal collaborators - more than enough to account for
all the stories of Ukrainian savagery, brutality, and sadism, even the ones that aren't true.
Such speculations as the above happen to coincide approximately with published estimates. For
example Professor Stefan Possony reports that "The records of Israel's War Crimes Investigations
Office indicate that throughout occupied Europe some 95,000 nazis and nazi collaborators were
directly connected with anti-Jewish measures, massacres, and deportations...." (The
Ukrainian-Jewish Problem, Plural Societies, Winter 1974). The middle column below contains the
