Jeffrey Fager, Producer of The Ugly Face of Freedom

Morley Safer, Program Host

Simon Wiesenthal, one of the two featured program witnesses

Yaakov Bleich, the other of the two featured program witnesses

That attacks upon Ukraine come overwhelmingly from Jews has been amply documented on the

Ukrainian Archive (UKAR), as for example in the discussion of Jerzy Kosinski, where it is noted

that ten out of ten of the leading calumniators of Ukraine are Jews. Possible reasons for this

phenomenon have been discussed throughout UKAR, with three of the chief reasons being: (1) the

acceleration of the brain drain from Ukraine to Israel with the help of a partly-magnified and

partly-incited resentment against Jews, (2) the heightening of Jewish cohesion through the

inculcation of fear and hatred of Gentiles, as by the Jewish keeping alive of a distorted memory

of the Khmelnytsky rebellion of 1648, and (3) the need to discredit the historical observation

that Jews typically victimize Ukrainians by inculcating the opposite image of Ukrainians

victimizing Jews.

On 15 Nov 1994, I mailed a letter to then CBS Chairman Laurence A. Tisch which consisted of a

lengthy critique of the 60 Minutes broadcast. I simultaneously mailed copies of this letter to

the host of the broadcast, Morley Safer, as well as the co-hosts Ed Bradley, Steve Kroft, Lesley

Stahl, and Mike Wallace. I received no reply from any of them. On 17 Dec 1994, I mailed a

covering letter to Laurence Tisch together with an expanded version of my critique (the critique

was now titled The Ugly Face of 60 Minutes, and was dated 11 Dec 1994), with copies to the same

host and co-hosts. I again received no reply.

In an attempt to clarify the accuracy of the 60 Minutes broadcast, other letters were sent,

among them letters to Michael Jordan, Chairman of Westinghouse, following the Westinghouse

purchase of CBS in 1995, letters to Simon Wiesenthal, star witness on The Ugly Face of Freedom,

and letters to Rabbi Yaakov Bleich, supporting witness on the same program. Nor were my letters

the only ones sent - in fact, CBS received some 16,000 pieces of mail protesting the 60 Minutes

broadcast. To my knowledge, not a single one of these letters has ever been answered, or even

acknowledged, the muteness of CBS and others involved leaving the impression that they are

unable to muster any defense for the 60 Minutes broadcast.

At that time, and since, I have circulated copies of my critique widely, and have received many

favorable comments. In a small number of instances, I was grateful for helpful suggestions as

to minor revisions; however, no one challenged any of my major criticisms or arguments,

encouraging me to believe that these were fundamentally correct.

Below you will find the latest version of this same critique, substantially longer and more

detailed than the original, but basically offering no more than an elaboration of the material

already long in the hands of CBS. I will not again waste postage mailing this critique to CBS

with the advent of the internet, there are less costly ways to disseminate information; if CBS

wants to see this latest version, it will have no trouble finding it.

The defects of the 60 Minutes broadcast as so multifarious, that it is difficult to capture them

in one brief statement. If one were to attempt to do so, then the statement might mention that

60 Minutes misrepresented the historical record, provided mistranslations of statements

originally made in Ukrainian, suppressed pertinent information concerning Ukrainian-Jewish

relations during World War II, encouraged retrogressive notions of collective guilt, altered the

dates on which events were supposed to have occurred, doctored the sound track, accepted dubious

and implausible statements from sources whose credibility had not been established or whose

credibility should have been suspect, and generally in numerous instances employed questionable

evidence to point to conclusions that were untrue, provocative, and inflammatory. There follows

below an outline of the chief defects of this 60 Minutes broadcast.

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

The Galicia Division

60 Minutes' chief piece of evidence for Ukrainian anti-Semitism and predilection for Naziism

seems to be the official celebrations commemorating the Galicia Division. Elderly men in

civilian dress are shown wearing military insignia in a recent reunion in the city of Lviv,

Ukraine (Lvov in Russian, Lwow in Polish, formerly Lemberg). Mr. Safer informs us that

"Thousands of Ukrainians joined the SS and marched off to fight for Naziism," and that "Nowhere,

not even in Germany, are the SS so openly celebrated," and that "Many of the Ukrainian men of

Lvov who marched off as members of the SS never returned - killed fighting for Hitler."

The impression created in the viewer's mind is that these veterans are unanimously guilty of war

crimes and crimes against humanity, that they were once supporters of and now continue to be

admirers of Hitler, that they sympathized with Nazi ambitions during World War II, that they are

the remnants of a much larger group of Ukrainians who shared a similar orientation, and that as

their reunion was sanctioned by the Lviv City Council and the Ukrainian Catholic Church, similar

charges must apply to Ukrainians generally. To all this, however, I must echo Cardinal

Lubachivsky's words: "It is not true!"

The Galicia Division was recruited by the Germans only well into the war, in the summer and fall

of 1943 when they were beginning to experience setbacks on their Eastern front. That the

Galicia Division was considered an "SS" division does not bear the significance given it by 60

Minutes - it was a Waffen SS division, which is quite a different thing: "Like other German

volunteer units, the Division Halychyna [Galicia] was included in the 14th Grenadier Division of

the SS-Waffen." (Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, Volume 2, p. 1088.)

Five qualities of the Galicia Division make it a most atypical component of the stereotype of

the SS: (1) it was strictly a combat unit and so played no role in the management of

concentration camps or death camps, (2) its Ukrainian members wore a lion rampant instead of an

"SS" on their right collars during most of the life of the division, (3) it was accompanied by

Ukrainian chaplains who attended to the spiritual needs of the troops, (4) it was kept separate

from other German forces, and (5) it was created with the proviso that it never be used against

the Western Allies, but only against Soviet forces on the Eastern front. These five qualities

alone render the Galicia Division an entity unlike any that was being conjured up in the minds

of 60 Minutes viewers.

Photographs contrasting different insignia of

German and Ukrainian members of the Galicia

Division

Of course the members of any military unit will be required to swear oaths of obedience to the

Commander-in-Chief. No fighting force can function without such an oath, and the members of the