Лев Гунин - ГУЛаг Палестины

However, having reached his prime

showing so much promise, it was not

given Volodymyr Ivasiuk to develop his

talents further. He was dead at the age

of 30. To the right is a photograph of

his funeral procession, attended by

thousands of mourners despite the

suppression by the state of the

publication of information concerning

his burial, despite official warnings to

not attend funeral services, and despite

the calling of Komsomol meetings, which

carried mandatory attendance, on the

same day. The magazine Halas, on whose

information I rely in the present

letter, states that Rostyslaw Bratun who

was the first to step forward and speak

at Volodymyr's funeral lost his job two

months later. Words spoken at the

funeral by the Sichko family landed them

in prison.

To the right is a second photograph

showing the statue that was eventually

erected in Volodymyr Ivasiuk's memory.

And just how did Volodymyr Ivasiuk meet

his end? His death certificate which

appears below states that he died on

24-27 April 1979 from mechanical

asphyxiation caused by hanging in a

noose, and attributes the hanging to

suicide.

The details of Volodymyr Ivasiuk's death, however, do not support the official view that

he killed himself:

They waited and searched for Volodya for 24 days. Following the

mysterious disappearance of the composer, the search for him was not

disclosed to the public, the explanation being given that such an

announcement would create a disturbance. However, the mass media are

daily used not only to help locate people, but sometimes even their

pets. [...]

It was not until May 18, 1979 that Volodymyr Ivasiuk's body was

accidentally discovered in the heavy forest near the village

Briukhovych near Lviv.

One couldn't bring oneself to believe it. The parents were allowed to

identify their son only on the following day, even though it was only a

five-minute walk from the apartment where Volodya lived to the morgue;

and the identification was conducted with gross violations of law. The

father was allowed to view the body only after he repeatedly telephoned

the Oblast Procurator threatening to send a telegram of complaint to

the General Procurator of Ukraine. The local authorities eventually

gave in with the exasperated reply: "Take your son home, and look at

him there at least a hundred years!" His death certificate reported

that he died 24-27 April 1979 at the age of 30. The cause of death:

mechanical asphyxiation. Hanging from a noose - suicide. The death

certificate was issued on May 21, 1979, and even back then, a mere

three days after the body had been discovered, without any evidence or

investigation it had been written in black and white that Volodymyr

Ivasiuk had committed suicide.

There immediately arises the question that if the composer had indeed

hung himself on 24-27 April, and was not found until 18 May, whether he

could have remained hanging from a tree for 21-24 days. Volodya

weighed 80 kg (176 lb), such that hanging for so long, the noose would

have cut into his neck to the depth of the bones. Also during May the

weather was warm and dry. The body would have decomposed during this

interval, and from it would have emanated an intolerable odour. All

these substantiating signs were missing, and missing too were the

autopsy photographs.

On May 22 of every year let us remember that Volodymyr Ivasiuk became

another innocent victim of a totalitarian regime.

M. Masly, Volodymyr Ivasiuk: Light and Shadow of a Legend, Halas

(Clamor), 3Jun97, pp. 11-12, as translated by Lubomyr Prytulak.

Halas is a Ukrainian-language magazine which reviews popular music and

is published in Kyiv. The section commemorating Volodymyr Ivasiuk in

the 3Jun97 issue was sponsored and supported by Coca Cola Ukraine.

And truly, the administration hated him while he was alive, and feared

him once he was dead. Volodya's mother, Sophia Ivanivna Ivasiuk met

with the first secretary of the Lviv administration, V. Dobryk to plead

with him to permit a monument to be placed on the grave of her son.

"The war took from me my father and three brothers. My sister's

husband did not return from the front," wept the woman, "and now my son

too has been lost. Do I not after all that have the right to

consecrate his memory?" In reply, Dobryk (what evil irony that such a

soulless individual should have a name denoting goodness) pressed a

concealed button and said in Russian to the lackey who entered, "Take

that lady out." Following this visit, Sophia Ivanivna Ivasiuk received

the "insult in the name of Dobryk." She has been in ill health ever

since.

Sooner or later will arrive the day when truth will emerge victorious.

But in the meantime, those who come too near to the truth concerning

what happened to Volodymyr Ivasiuk find themselves the victims of an

unusual number of accidents. One man's wife unexpectedly hangs

herself, another man throws himself from a balcony, still another

drowns, yet another falls under the wheels of a car.... But remember,

butchers, God's punishment will descend even upon you!

M. Masly, Volodymyr Ivasiuk: Light and Shadow of a Legend, Halas

(Clamor), 3Jun97, p. 12, as translated by Lubomyr Prytulak.

Mr. Safer, you went to Ukraine determined to come back with a story of Ukrainians

persecuting Russians and Jews. You failed to find any substantiation for such a story.

You failed to find any Russian composer and poet who had been found hanging in a forest

under mysterious circumstances. You failed to find any Jewish composer and poet who had

been found hanging in a forest under mysterious circumstances. And you were not

interested in a Ukrainian composer and poet who had indeed been found hanging in a

forest under mysterious circumstances. You went to Ukraine determined to prove that

Ukrainians persecute Russians and Jews, and you reported that story to tens of millions

of 60 Minutes viewers despite a lack of evidence, and despite plentiful evidence that it

is Russians and Jews who persecute Ukrainians, as they have done throughout history.

In your 23Oct94 60 Minutes broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, then, you sided with the

strong against the weak. You sided with the oppressors against the oppressed. You

sided with the butchers against the butchered. You sided with those who hang composers

and poets and against Volodymyr Ivasiuk.

Lubomyr Prytulak

cc: Yaakov Bleich, Ed Bradley, Jeffrey Fager, Don Hewitt, Steve Kroft, Andy Rooney,

Lesley Stahl, Mike Wallace, Simon Wiesenthal.

Morley Safer Letter 10 17May99 Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?

It is conceivable that had you not broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom, Volodymyr

Katelnytsky would be alive today. And it is all the more conceivable that had you used

the opportunity of your broadcast to defend Ukrainians against their oppressors,

Volodymyr Katelnytsky would be alive today.

May 17, 1999

Morley Safer

60 Minutes, CBS Television

51 W 52nd Street

New York, NY

USA 10019

Morley Safer:

Who Murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?

The death of Volodymyr Katelnytsky

My source is a Ukrainskyi Holos (Ukrainian Voice) article mailed to me by someone that

knew Volodymyr Katelnytsky. The citation that is hand-written on the article is "4-20

August, 1997, p. 1."

The Ukrainskyi Holos article reports that Volodymyr Katelnytsky was tortured to death in

his apartment in Kyiv, Ukraine on the night of 7-8 July 1997. His mother, Lykeria, who

was 81 years old, was tortured and died before the eyes of her son; her body was found

with 21 stab wounds. When Katelnytsky's sister tried to enter the apartment in which

the crime had been committed, she was roughed up by Kyiv police. Some members of the

Katelnytsky family were arrested. The murders are considered to have been politically

motivated. Volodymyr Katelnytsky's funeral was attended by some two thousand mourners.

The life of Volodymyr Katelnytsky

Volodymyr Katelnytsky was a professional journalist. He was active in the Ukrainian

Orthodox Church, Kyiv Patriarchate, was head of the Brotherhood of St. Andrej

Pervozvanyi in Kyiv, and supervised the tour of the chief cities of Ukraine by

Metropolitan Wasyl in May 1993. He was also active politically, serving as Deputy Head

of the Ukrainian Christian Democratic Party. In Canada and the United States, he may be

best remembered for the role he played as President of the Committee for the Defense of

John Demjanjuk.

Also prominent among Volodymyr Katelnytsky's activities was the dissemination of a

Ukrainian version of what happened at Babyn Yar, similar, I believe, to the version

advocated on the Ukrainian Archive. One result of Volodymyr Katelnytsky's Babyn Yar

activities is that he was sued for them by Jewish organizations in Ukrainian court, that

in his defense he brought forward historical aerial reconnaissance photographs showing

that none of the activities said to have taken place at Babyn Yar was visible from the

air - not visible, that is, were signs of the execution and burial of 33,771 Jews, or

the later disinterment and burning of their bodies. As a result of his convincing

defense, the court acquitted Volodymyr Katelnytsky of the charges brought against him.

Who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky?

As we have no direct evidence of who murdered Volodymyr Katelnytsky, we can only perform

a Cui bono? analysis which will at least tell us where to start looking. That is, if it

is the case that the three most prominent events in Volodymyr Katelnytsky's life were:

(1) that he defended John Demjanjuk, (2) that he contradicted the Soviet-inspired

Holocaust version of the Babyn Yar story, and (3) that he was tortured to death along

with his mother, then it would take a mental paralysis with which I have not as yet been

seized to refuse to consider the first two of these events as possibly having caused the

third.

I don't accuse you of having failed to cover the Katelnytsky assassination.

As you broadcast the Ugly Face of Freedom on 23 October 1994 and Volodymyr Katelnytsky's

assassination did not take place until 7-8 July 1997, I obviously do not accuse you of

having failed to cover the Katelnytsky assassination in your broadcast.

But I do accuse you of having missed the big story of which Katelnytsky's

assassination is but one piece.

However, the persecution and assassination of Ukrainians did not begin in 1997. It

began hundreds of years earlier, carried right up until your broadcast in 1994, and

continued through 1997 to this day. What I do accuse you of, then, is ignoring a

centuries-long stream of evidence attesting to the persecution of Ukrainians, and of

broadcasting instead the story of the persecution of Russians and Jews even in the

absence of evidence. Your investigations in Ukraine failed to turn up anything like a

story of a prominent Russian activist being tortured to death in his apartment, whether

along with his mother or alone. And your investigations in Ukraine failed to turn up

anything like a story of a prominent Jewish activist being tortured to death in his