Петр Мирчук: Зустрічі й розмови в Ізраїлі. (Чи українці "традиційні антисеміти")

(Above) Russian Cossacks standing over the bodies of their victims. The outbreak of pogroms in the 1880's led to mass Jewish emigration from Eastern Europe.

"'And they posed for the pictures'. On August 10, 1919 on the route from Bohuslav to Tarascha,Ataman Zeliony's Cossacks unashamedly display the corpses of Jews they have murdered".

Closely examine the two pictures. Can these be any shadow of a doubt that they are identical? This would mean that the authors of the book "My People" accused the Ukrainians of "pogroms" against the Jews in the period between 1918–1920, and as proof for their allegations, produced a photo of a pogrom conducted by Tsarist troops in 1880, changing the caption so it would state that this was a photo of a pogrom conducted by the Ukrainian insurgent leader Zelenyj on August 10, 1919. Can one not logically deduce from this that if the "documentary" proof was faked, a misrepresentation, then the pogrom itself, together with the date, place and perpetrators, werefalsified likewise?

One must keep in mind, moreover, that the author of the second work, "My People", Abba Eban, a university graduate and former Israeli minister of Foreign Affairs, was also the co-author of the first book — which would imply that he knowingly and willingly, falsified documentary proof and represented facts simply to buttress his allegations against Ukrainians. Can he perhaps explain how an unashamed display of the corpses of Jews Ataman Zeliony murdered in Ukraine on August 10, 1919 was photographed in 1880? Since thell, I've learned that this same photograph of the Jewish pogrom by Tsarist Police in 1880 has appeared in other publications, with the caption changed to read "pogrom by Ukrainian nationalists collaborating with the Gestapo" in 1942 and 1943.

Such, then, are the "documentary proofs" backing Jewish allegations of Ukrainian anti-Semitism and pogroms of the Jews.

A silent witness to "Ukrainian anti-Semitism": The Cathedral of St. George in L'viv, Western Ukraine.

On orders of the Head of the Ukrainian Catholic Church, Metropolitan Andrew Count Sheptytskyj, several rabbis with their families and hundreds of Jewish children were hidden in the underground mazes of this medieval building and thus saved from death. Didn't Menachim Begin, the Israeli Premier, know this when he stated time and again that on territories occupied by the Nazis (which would include Ukraine), not a single Catholic priest spoke out in the defense of the Jews, helped them or saved them from deportation and death? Why don't the rabbis whose lives were saved by Metropolitan Sheptytsky, speak up and state the truth to their Premier and co-citizens.

Will there be a small replica of the Lviv's St. George Cathedral erected in Jerusalem by the Jews as a permanent manifestation of gratitude to Ukrainian Catholic Metropolitan Andrey Sheptytsky and scores of Ukrainian priests, monks and nuns who during the reign of Nazi terror risked their own lives by saving hundreds of Jews?

There are some Jews who advocate that idea. But what about all the other Jews in Israel and in the U.S.?

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© Союз Українських Політв'язнів. Ню Йорк — Торонто — Лондон, 1982.

Мірчук П. Зустрічі і розмови в Ізраїлю. (Чи українці “традиційні антисеміти”). — Нью-Йорк, Торонто, 1982. — 128 с.