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September 12, 1997 |
Simon Wiesenthal
In my letters to you of September 8 and 9, 1997, I have
questioned your assertion made on the 60 Minutes broadcast The
Ugly Face of Freedom of October 23, 1994 to the effect that in
the few days before the arrival of the Germans, Ukrainians
killed some 5 to 6 thousand Jews in Lviv. I have recently come
across some testimony that indicates that your assertion is
correct on all of the details of this event save one.
The fresh testimony that I am referring to is that of Erwin
Schulz, Commander of Einsatzkommando 5 (a subunit of
Einsatzgruppe C), from May until 26 September, 1941. From
Schulz's testimony, it appears that several of the details of
your assertion are correct: namely that the number murdered was
5,000, which is within the bounds of your own estimate; that the
location was indeed Lviv (identified as Lemberg); that the time
was indeed during the few days prior to the arrival of the
Germans; and that the chief participants were indeed Ukrainians
and Jews, although Schulz does mention the secondary involvement
of others.
The point on which Schulz differs from you is that whereas you
say that the slaughter consisted of Ukrainians killing Jews,
Schulz says that it consisted of Jews killing Ukrainians:
Jewish Documentation Center
Salztorgasse 6
1010 Vienna
Austria
Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:
| We learned that, before the Russian troops had left, a very great number of Lemberg citizens, Ukrainians and Polish inhabitants of other towns and villages had been killed in this prison and in other prisons. Furthermore, there were many corpses of German men and officers, among them many Air Corps officers, and many of them were found mutilated. There was a great bitterness and excitement among the Lemberg population against the Jewish sector of the population. (Erwin Schulz, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18) |
| On the next day, Dr. RASCH informed us to the effect that the killed people in Lemberg amounted to about 5,000. It has been determined without any doubt that the arrests and killings had taken place under the leadership of Jewish functionaries and with the participation of the Jewish inhabitants of Lemberg. That was the reason why there was such an excitement against the Jewish population on the part of the Lemberg citizens. (Erwin Schulz, in John Mendelsohn, editor, The Holocaust: Selected Documents in Eighteen Volumes, Garland, New York, 1982, Volume 18, p. 18) |
I wonder if you would care to comment on this discrepancy
between Schulz's testimony and your own?
Sincerely yours,
Lubomyr Prytulak