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COMMMENTARY
by Bohdan Vitvitsky
The Ukrainian Weekly
Ukrainian National Association
Parsippany, New Jersey
September 8, 1996
George Will is a major media personality. He is a regular commentator every
Sunday on David Brinkley's "This Week in Washington" on ABC, and he is a
syndicated columnist for the Washington Post, from which his columns are
reprinted throughout the country. George Will is, unfortunately, also a
revisionist on the subject of the Nazi Holocaust.
Earlier this year Mr. Will wrote a column for the Washington Post titled
"The Holocaust Mentality: Just a German Sickness?" that discussed the book
authored by Daniel Goldhagen named "Hitler's Willing Executioners: Ordinary
Germans and the Holocaust." In his column, which appeared in the Star-Ledger
(New Jersey's statewide newspaper) on Sunday, April 14, Mr. Will wrote that
"many Croatians, Ukrainians and others collaborated with Germans in
administering the Holocaust."
That remarkable statement prompted me to write to Mr. Will in order to find
out whether he really intended to write what ended up in print. After all,
even someone with all of the research and editorial resources of a Mr. Will
can sometimes write something that, upon reflection, he did not really mean.
So on April 15 I wrote to George Will at the Washington Post and asked him
briefly to explain: (1) what he meant, in the context of the statement
referred to above, by "many Ukrainians"; (2) what he meant by "administering
the Holocaust"; and (3) I asked him to identify the source or sources for
his beliefs regarding the above. He did not respond.
On May 6, I sent him a second letter, this time by registered mail, to which
I attached a copy of my first letter and in which I once again requested the
courtesy of a brief response. Some months have passed, and he has not
responded, which makes plain that he intended to say exactly what he did.
For reasons explained below, Mr. Will's statement is not merely wrong. It
constitutes something much worse: it is an example of historical
revisionism.
During World War II, Ukraine and Ukrainians were savaged by the Germans.
Approximately 6 million Ukrainians were killed. Of this 6 million, 3 million
were non-Jewish Ukrainian civilians and 900,000 were Ukrainian Jews.
Another 2.4 million Ukrainian men and women were pirated away by the
Germans for slave labor in Germany. More than 2 million Ukrainians died in
combat against the Germans or died in German captivity as Soviet prisoners
of war.
According to Nazi German racist ideology, Jews, Gypsies and Slavs were
"untermenschen," or subhumans. Ukraine was to be resettled by Germans as
part of the "lebensraum" (living space) campaign: one segment of the
Ukrainian population was to be killed, a second deported to Asia and a third
subjugated as slaves.
Nazi officials referred to Ukrainians as helots and half-monkeys. The Nazi
commissioner of occupied Ukraine, Erich Koch, referred to Ukrainians as
Negroes, and the marquee at the Kyiv Ballet Theater had a sign that read
"No Ukrainians or Dogs Admitted."
And yet, George Will writes that "many Ukrainians...collaborated with
Germans in administering the Holocaust."
What planet does George Will come from? A tiny number of persons who
happened to be Ukrainian were among those pressed into service as guards in
concentration camps. What do I mean by "tiny number"? I mean perhaps as
many as 10,000 Ukrainian guards, in comparison to a total pre-war estimated
population of 40 million, and in comparison to 3 million Ukrainian civilians
murdered by the Germans, and in comparison to another 2.4 million Ukrainians
taken off to Germany for slave labor, etc.
George Will's statement becomes even more grotesque when you realize that
most or all of the persons who were Ukrainian and who became guards were
former Soviet prisoners of war who had been captured by the Germans and
whose choice was death by starvation in a prisoner of war camp or agreement
to serve as a perimeter guard at a concentration camp. To collaborate with
someone means to do something voluntarily, and in order to do something
voluntarily you must have an opportunity to choose freely.
What kind of choice did these Ukrainians and other Soviet POWs have when
they were being starved to death by the millions?
And what does it mean to help "administer" the Nazi Holocaust? How could
people whom the Nazis designated as "subhumans" help the Germans
"administer" anything?
Those who deny that the Nazis killed 6 million Jews are rightfully condemned
as revisionists. Happily, they constitute only a lunatic fringe, and there
is no mainstream newspaper or magazine that would give them the time of day.
Those, however, who characterize the situation of Ukrainians during World
War II as mainly on the side of the victimizers rather than on the side of
the victims also engage in Holocaust revisionism. In contrast to the other
type of revisionists, however, this kind gets to write for the Washington
Post and gets to be syndicated throughout the entire country.
Bohdan Vitvitsky, an attorney, has written and lectured on the plight of the
Slavs during the Nazi Holocaust.
http://www.ukrweekly.com/Archive/1996/369613.shtml
The Ukrainian Weekly, September 8, 1996, No. 36, Vol. LXIV,
Ukrainian National Association, P. O. Box 280, Parsippany, NJ 07054
Check out the extensive materials on: http://www.ukrweekly.com.
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