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ceremony, as did representatives of the Ukrainian Orthodox and Ukrainian Catholic

Churches. I have in my possession a photograph of this event which I could forward

to you.

Yes, the fence which you showed, and the dogs, unfortunately are there - but these

are remnants of the past. In any case, a decision has been made to get rid of them

and to build a memorial in the same location. You should have reported this. More

to the point, the very first monument in our new Ukraine dedicated to Jewish victims

was erected not far from Lviv, in the town of Chervonohrad. Following that, three

other monuments were erected in our region.

You reported that two Jews were robbed and beaten. This might have happened, but

most likely not because they were Jews. I imagine that in Lviv, Ukrainians are also

robbed (and significantly more often!), and yet nobody draws from this the sort of

conclusions concerning ethnic hostility that you draw from the robbing of these two

Jews.

Our Jewish Council constantly receives news concerning Jews in Ukraine, but during

the past five years, we have received not a single report of anyone being beaten

because he was a Jew. However, it must be admitted that such a thing may have

occurred without it coming to our attention - there are plenty of miscreants in

every country.

Because the facts selected for your broadcast were excessively biased and one-sided,

it is incumbent upon me to give you a view of the other side of Jewish life.

In Lviv, where seven thousand Jews live, there are thirteen Jewish organizations.

There are also active organizations in the rest of the region - in Drohobych,

Boryslav, Truskavets. I can send you all their addresses. Lviv was the first city

in Ukraine to have a Jewish Society (1988), the first Ukraine-Israel Society (1989),

and the first to publish a Jewish newspaper (1989). A Center for the Study of

Jewish History is functioning in the city. Two Jewish-Ukrainian conferences have

been held here. We have a Jewish ensemble, a Jewish theater, a philharmonic

orchestra which recently, at the opening of the season, performed the works of

Tchaikovsky and of two Jewish composers. A Jew, Kotlyk, head of the Jewish Society,

was elected as a member of the City Council.

Two years ago, in the center of the city, not far from "Hitler Square," a monument

dedicated to the victims of the Lviv ghetto was unveiled. This is the biggest and

most prominent Jewish memorial in all of Europe. Haven't you seen it?

As head of the Jewish Council, I was present at all the events that I am describing,

and I can document them. Your discussing these events in a future broadcast would

present a wonderful balance which together with your video footage would paint an

accurate picture of Jewish life in Ukraine, and not a deliberately one-sided one.

One cannot indict any nation on the grounds that a few of its members were evil.

Evil individuals exist in every nation. But why didn't you show those Ukrainians

and Poles who rescued Jews? There are many of them. Initially, we ourselves didn't

know about them, as they remained silent, and our former regime forbade them to

speak on such topics. In Lviv, Simon Wiesenthal himself was rescued from death, and

in Boryslav, the head of the Israeli parliament, Shevakh Weiss, with whom in 1992 I

personally visited his own rescuers.

We have a list of almost 2,500 Ukrainians who rescued Jews, and many of these are

precisely from the Western region. We have brought these rescuers to Israel,

presented them with certificates, and are now supporting them with pensions. We are

presently in the process of submitting this list of rescuers to the Holocaust Museum

in Washington. Concerning this I have been making particular arrangements, as I

will be in the United States later this year.

You broadcast that Lviv is being depopulated of Jews. However, this has been

happening throughout the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS), and began not

recently, but even during the Bolshevik regime - but nobody is blaming this on

anti-Semitism. Rather, other motives are responsible: economics, Chornobyl, the

reunification of families. Anti-Semitism plays a far weaker role. Our Council

interviews Jewish emigrants and has definitive information on this question.

Jews, perhaps more than others, should avoid throwing blanket insults and

accusations at other peoples because they themselves - as a people and not as

individuals - have been blamed by the Fascists for all sins. Why do you, then,

proclaim all Ukrainians to be genetic anti-Semites? Why, in addition to talking

about the police did you not also talk about the rescuers of Jews, did not show a

single one of them? And in Lviv, there are many of them. Is it that you couldn't

find any, or that you didn't want to look?

I wish to declare to you officially: in the new Ukraine, there is no state-sponsored

anti-Semitism. Not long ago, a Jew fulfilled the obligations of the prime minister

of Ukraine. The mayors of Odessa and Vynnytsia are Jews. The mayor of Cherkasy was