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
Leib Glanz embraces Rev. Jesse Jackson on the stage of the Apollo Theater.
However, "the next night Rabbi Glanz was nearly chased out of synagogue by
angry Hasidim for the transgression of consorting with Mr. Jackson." This
brief description is puzzling, and from it alone we would be unable to arrive
at any strong conclusion, were it not for our having read some of the
characteristics of Hasidism in the writings of Israel Shahak.
With Shahak's description in mind, we are tempted to interpret Rabbi Glanz
being nearly chased out of synagogue by angry Hasidim as a further
demonstration that Hasidic Jews generally are hostile to the idea of any
rapprochement with any non-Jews. That is, Israel Shahak depicts Hasidic Jews
as constituting a debasement of Jewish mysticism, of being superstitious,
fanatical, mysogynistic, given to overindulgence in alcohol, and most
importantly, of being committed to the hatred of all non-Jews. I do not
venture such a description on my own initiative, as I have no personal
knowledge of Hasidism - but I do pass the description along as the opinion of a
reputable authority, Israel Shahak.
The incident of Rabbi Glanz being almost chased out of synagogue can only
remind us of the possibility that it may be one of Ukraine's many misfortunes
that the branch of Judaism which appears to have taken deepest root in Ukraine
is Hasidism. We see this in Hasidic Rabbi Yaakov Dov Bleich's prominence, as
witnessed in his frequent appearance on the pages of the Ukrainian Weekly, and
we see it as well in the central role he played - in undermining Ukraine, as it
happens - during the 23 October 1994 60 Minutes broadcast, The Ugly Face of
Freedom.
The second-greatest calamity. And so, the second-greatest calamity to befall
the Jewish people during this century - which, after the Holocaust itself, is