Лев Гунин - ГУЛаг Палестины

are disrupted, shattered, and even lost.

"Capturing" and "liberating"? Referring to Allied forces "capturing" or

"liberating" the camps is inflating what really happened - which is that Allied

soldiers peacefully walked into camps that German forces had abandoned days

previously. In the words of Philip Latimer, president of the 761st veterans'

organization, "It's no great accomplishment to liberate a concentration camp."

In other words, the Liberators film leaves the impression of Jews attempting to

get black fighting units to falsely take credit for non-accomplishments.

Unreliability of eye-witness testimony. We have already had occasion to notice on

the Ukrainian Archive the unreliability of eye-witness testimony, as in the

cases of falsely accused Frank Walus and John Demjanjuk. The Liberators film

reminds us once again how easy it is to get some old men to say whatever you

want them to. Thus, we find that "two of the company's soldiers assert in the

film that they liberated Dachau," when we know that this could not have been

the case, and we find that "several Holocaust survivors are quoted in the film

and in the companion book published by Harcourt Brace Jovanovich as saying they

were liberated by blacks of these units," again when this is an impossibility.

Of course upon less biased questioning, some of these old men will recant: "But

Christopher Ruddy, a New York writer who has conducted extensive research on

the film, says two of the survivors featured in the Liberators told him they

were no longer sure when they first saw black soldiers."

Responsible Jews and non-Jews oppose irresponsible Jews. It cannot escape

our attention that foremost among those challenging the disinformation in the

Liberators are the apparently-Jewish writer Jeffrey Goldberg, and

possibly-Jewish historians at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. This

reinforces a point introduced earlier in the Ukrainian Archive during the

discussion of Warsaw's 1905 Alphonsenpogrom, to the effect that what may be

taken at first glance to be an expression of antagonism toward Jews may in

reality be an expression of opposition by responsible Jews and non-Jews alike

against irresponsible elements among Jews, and that it is the responsible Jews

themselves who may be in the vanguard of the attack against irresponsible Jews.

We have seen this to be the case repeatedly, not only during Warsaw's

Alphonsenpogrom, but in many prominent incidents - for example, Israeli defense

attorney Yoram Sheftel must be given a large share of the credit for exposing

the duplicity and incompetence of the Israeli justice system, and thereby

saving the life of John Demjanjuk, a case in which other Jews such as Phoenix

attorney William J. Wolf also played leading and heroic roles. The prominent

role played by responsible Jews in opposing irresponsible Jews should not be

surprising - the irresponsible Jews injure all Jews because their

irresponsibility attaches in popular thinking to Jews generally, and thus

serves to smear the good name of all Jews.

Important to note in the Liberators case, then, is that the friction does not

divide cleanly along ethnic lines. The Liberators, and the many other cases

before us, do not illustrate Jews clashing with anti-Semites - rather, they

illustrate the irresponsible clashing with the responsible, the disseminators

of disinformation clashing with the upholders of truth.

Zero repercussions. And so for having told the lies that are told on the

Liberators, have any of the makers of that film suffered any repercussions?

Have any of them been fired? Been demoted? Been censured? Have any of them

suffered a loss of face? Do any of them find that their later work is rejected

because of their earlier loss of credibility? The answer to all these

questions - in all probability - is No!

In American and Canadian society, there is one category of behavior that is

uniquely protected from the repercussions of falsehood - and that is the

category of Jews recounting stories of the Jewish Holocaust. Charges of

falsehood may indeed be levelled, but these are not picked up by the media, and

so make no impact. We have already examined many such cases on the Ukrainian

Archive - the cases of Morley Safer, Neal Sher, Elie Wiesel, and Simon

Wiesenthal standing out - egregious, bald-faced liars all of them, but never

called to task for their lies, honored and even revered despite their lies.

Psychiatric diagnosis of the film's critics. Co-producer of the film, Nina

Rosenblum, accuses critics of the film of being "Holocaust revisionists" and

"racists." But why stop there - why not follow up the two left jabs with the

right-hand haymaker, "anti-Semites"? The answer perhaps is that it may appear

more credible to smear all critics of the film with the same brush, and the

accusation of anti-Semitism does not stick to those critics who happen to be

Jewish. The deployment of terms suggestive of psychological disorder, such as

"revisionist," "racist," or "anti-Semite" exemplifies the stock Jewish ploy of

attempting to silence opposition by dispensing psychiatric diagnoses.

Creating collaborators in disinformation. Jews who lie not only discredit Jews

generally, but also discredit any whom they lure into sharing their lies.

Thus, had the 761st Tank Battalion been seduced into accepting whatever

momentary glory attaches to wrongly claiming to have liberated Buchenwald, then

the 761st would have ultimately suffered a loss of credibility. The 761st does

have genuine achievements, and foresaw only discredit in fabricating any. In

the words of Philip Latimer, president of the 761st veterans' organization,

"The unit has a lot to be proud of ... and I don't want to see it blamed for

this documentary. I don't want the unit to be hurt."

Attempts have been made to seduce Ukrainians, and others, into a similar

complicity in Jewish disinformation, and in the case of Ukrainians, these

attempts have been largely successful. The Ukrainians' reward has been to

receive a Righteous Gentile Award for their efforts in saving Jews during the

Second World War. In accepting such an award, however, such Ukrainians

implicitly acquiesce and lend support to a Jewish history of the war, which is

crammed with disinformation, much of it harmful to Ukrainian interests. Among

the items of disinformation in this false history is that Ukrainians were eager

collaborators of the Nazis (when in reality Ukrainians overwhelmingly served as

opponents), that Ukrainian efforts to save Jews were rare (when in reality

large numbers of Ukrainians took grave risks and even gave their lives to save

Jews), that any anti-Jewish feeling on the part of Ukrainians that did exist

was gratuitous and pathological (when in reality it was founded on a memory of

the recent Jewish domination of the destruction of Ukraine under Communism).

Thus, any Ukrainians who were offered a Righteous Gentile Award should have

declined it for the same reason that the 761st declined to be honored in the

Liberators. Any Ukrainians who have accepted such an award should renounce it.

Ukrainians should consider withdrawing their support from the Public Broadcasting

Service (PBS). The PBS is portrayed by Goldberg as supportive of the

Liberators even after the film had been discredited. Ukrainians may recall,

furthermore, that the PBS broadcast a severely flawed anti-Demjanjuk

documentary despite prior notice on the part of Ukrainian representatives

specifying the nature of these flaws. Observations such as these invite the

conclusion that the PBS acts in sympathy with Jewish disinformation, and in

opposition to Ukrainian interests. For this reason, Ukrainians should consider

withdrawing their support from the PBS.

Ukrainians should consider cancelling their subscriptions to TIME magazine. The

Apollo Theater showing of the Liberators was sponsored by "Time Warner and a

host of rich and influential New Yorkers." Readers of the Ukrainian Archive

will be reminded that TIME magazine was responsible for the calumniation of

Ukraine in the Wallowing Photograph incident. From these two indications, we

may wonder whether Time Warner, and TIME magazine, are not sympathetic toward

Holocaust disinformation and hostile toward Ukrainian interests. After having

been a more than three-decades-long reader of TIME, I recently cancelled my

subscription.

Proven fraud does little to lessen propaganda value. As the Liberators film has

been discredited, it appears to stand little chance of being accepted as

history. However, this does not make the film a failure. The film continues

to be valuable as a tool for shaping public opinion, particularly for molding

the minds of the young. At the time of the writing of the Goldberg article

above, the film was about to be distributed to "all New York City junior and

senior high schools." We may expect, then, that hundreds of thousands of

impressionable students will view the Liberators and will believe it, and that

the refutations of Jeffrey Goldberg, and the soldiers of the 761st Tank

Battalion, and others will reach the ears of only a few. The film may never

succeed as history, but it has a good chance of succeeding as popular history,

and it is popular history that influences elections and that directs the

allocation of government resources.

Choosing between useful lies and harmful truths. One of the weapons within the

armamentarium of the totalitarian controller of information - that a useful lie

is better than a harmful truth - is explicitly wielded by at least one

supporter of the Liberators film:

She [Peggy Tishman] claims that the accuracy of

the film is not the issue. What is important is the

way it can bring Jews and blacks into "dialogue."

There are a lot of truths that are very necessary,"

she says. "This [that the 761st did not liberate

Buchenwald or Dachau] is not a truth that's

necessary."

However, wielding the weapon of the useful lie will succeed only in a context

in which the flow of contrary information can be choked off. In a society that

permits the free flow of information, there is no useful lie, because all lies

stand in danger of being exposed and thus discrediting the liar and his cause.

Thus, we may expect that an ancillary goal of the distributors of

disinformation will be to strangle the free flow of information - and more

specifically, we might expect that those backing efforts such as the Liberators

film will simultaneously back efforts to suppress web sites such as the

Ukrainian Archive. In a totalitarian society, the Liberators film constitutes

a useful day's work for the manipulators of mass opinion; in a free society,

the Liberators film constitutes a self-defeating miscalculation.

Furthermore, such an open avowal of the utility of lying as Peggy Tishman's

above brings to mind the question raised during the discussion of journalistic

fraud Stephen Glass of whether there may exist subcultures which by means of

their tolerance of, or support for, lying produce a disproportionate number of

great liars.

Consorting with Hasidim. In Goldberg's Liberators story above, Hasidic rabbi