Simon Wiesenthal
Jewish Documentation Center
Salztorgasse 6
1010 Vienna
Austria


Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

In my letter to you of August 28, 1997, I wondered how you had managed to escape from German captivity not once but several times, and how each time you were neither executed upon recapture, nor do you report other prisoners being subjected to punishment or execution in reprisal for your escape.

In the present letter, I begin by bringing to your attention other statements that I have come across in reading Leni Yahil's book, The Holocaust: The Fate of European Jewry, Oxford, New York, 1990 � which statements reinforce my expectation that there should have been some such dire consequences following each of your several escapes:

The [Lviv] ghetto was proclaimed a Jewish camp (Julag) and placed directly under SS command.  Fugitive Jews or escapees who were apprehended were given "immediate special treatment," in other words, shot on the spot.  (p. 447)

The chances of getting away safely were not very good, and anyone who was caught was, of course, promptly executed.  But there were also two other daunting problems: if the escape attempt succeeded, the remaining laborers were subjected to severe punishment in retaliation.  Consequently, the Jews themselves often objected to the idea of trying to escape.  (p. 565)

From the very beginning escape was our greatest desire.  Some fled the camp during the first days; others tried their luck during their second month there.  Occasionally people fled on the very day they arrived in the camp, unaware that the commanders would respond to their escape by killing some of us � the sick, sometimes the healthy too � so that this threat did not deter them.  (Eyewitness testimony of Eliahu Yones in Leni Yahil, p. 565)

But of particular relevance to your case, Mr. Wiesenthal, is the following statement, which I found chilling to read:

When a prisoner escaped, ten were executed in retaliation, and any of the escapee's relatives still living in the Lwow ghetto were hanged.  (p. 326)

The reason that I found the above statement chilling to read, Mr. Wiesenthal, is that in The Wiesenthal File, you report losing 89 relatives "to the Second World War" (p. 41), to "extermination camps" (p. 46), or "in the Holocaust" (p. 77).  Thus, you had a large number of relatives, you must have known that your escape would lead to the execution of any of your relatives that were under German jurisdiction, you escaped again and again, and (with the sole exception of your wife) not a single one of your relatives survived.  Whether or not there is any causal connection between these events is for you to explain.

At first, I had been hoping that you would be able to defend yourself by claiming that you had been unaware of the severe punishment inflicted upon the captured escapee, or unaware of reprisals against other prisoners or hostages or relatives � but then upon reading The Wiesenthal File, I find that you were fully aware of all these things:

In Janowska's early days, escape attempts proliferated even when the number of captives executed for each try was doubled from five to ten.  The first successful escape meant twenty-five camp killings plus even more drastic consequences: a truck drew up to the man's home in the ghetto and took his entire family � plus some visitors who had dropped by � to the camp as hostages awaiting his return.  They were placed in solitary confinement without light or food.  Their ordeal lasted three days � until the remorse-stricken escapee returned and was beaten to death before the eyes of his family and their friends, who were then released.  The next time a man escaped, the procedure was repeated.  After three days, when he hadn't turned himself in, his mother, sister, niece, sister-in-law, and a neighbour's child were shot to death.  After that, escape attempts were few.  (Alan Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, pp. 39-40).

Would you be able now to throw some light on this matter?  What I am hoping to hear from you is that you were not responsible for the deaths of any of your relatives, but rather that the stories of your several escapes are embellishments of your wartime experiences.  In the alternative, could you have been sure that not a single one of your 89 relatives was reachable by vengeful Germans during any one of your escapes?


Sincerely yours,


Lubomyr Prytulak