the people" were arrested, packed into cattle cars, and shipped to Siberia and

Kazakhstan to work as slave laborers under horrible conditions. Many of these

deportees, including entire families, perished. ... According to Metropolitan

Andrei Sheptytsky, the Soviets deported about 400,000 Ukrainians from Galicia

alone. ... West Ukrainians found their first exposure to the Soviet system to

be a generally negative experience and many concluded that "Bolshevik" rule had

to be avoided at all costs. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, pp.

456-457)

Vasyl Hryshko (Experience with Russia, 1956, p. 117) puts the number killed or deported in

Western Ukraine during the Soviet occupation at 750,000. It was commonly perceived by

Ukrainians that Jews were disproportionately represented among the Communists inflicting this

suffering upon Ukraine.

During the preceding few days. As the Soviets retreated, the NKVD perceived by Ukrainians to

be manned disproportionately by Jews - went on a killing spree. Concerning this event, there

seems to be widespread agreement. Particularly relevant to our discussion, is that even Simon

Wiesenthal can be found adding his voice of assent in the fifth of the series of quotations

below:

While the movement to the East was taking place, the NKVD carried out mass

arrests and executions, chiefly of Ukrainians - especially those who tried to

avoid evacuation. In the jails most prisoners whose period of imprisonment was

more than three years were shot; others were evacuated if possible. In several

cities the NKVD burned prisons with prisoners in them. (Volodymyr Kubijovyc,

editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto Press, Toronto,

1963, Volume I, p. 878, Vsevolod Holubnychy and H. M. wrote this section)

The Bolsheviks succeeded in annihilating some 10,000 political prisoners in

Western Ukraine before and after the outbreak of hostilities (massacres took

place in the prisons in Lviv, Zolochiv, Rivne, Dubno, Lutsk, etc.). (Volodymyr

Kubijovyc, editor, Ukraine: A Concise Encyclopaedia, University of Toronto

Press, Toronto, Volume 1, p. 886)

Before fleeing the German advance the Soviet occupational regime murdered

thousands of Ukrainian civilians, mainly members of the city's [Lviv's]

intelligentsia. (Encyclopedia of Ukraine, Volume 3, p. 222)

The Soviets' hurried retreat had tragic consequences for thousands of political

prisoners in the jails of Western Ukraine. Unable to evacuate them in time,

the NKVD slaughtered their prisoners en masse during the week of 22-29 June

1941, regardless of whether they were incarcerated for major or minor

offenses. Major massacres occurred in Lviv, Sambir, and Stanyslaviv in

Galicia, where about 10,000 prisoners died, and in Rivne and Lutsk in Volhynia,

where another 5000 perished. Coming on the heels of the mass deportations and

growing Soviet terror, these executions added greatly to the West Ukrainians'

abhorrence of the Soviets. (Orest Subtelny, Ukraine: A History, 1994, p. 461)

When the German attack came on 22 June the Soviets had no time to take with

them the people they had locked up. So they simply killed them. Thousands of

detainees were shot dead in their cells by the retreating Soviets. (Simon

Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 35)

Right after the entry we were shown 2,400 dead bodies of Ukrainians liquidated

with a shot at the scruff of the neck at the city jail of Lemberg [Lviv] by the

Soviets prior to their marching off. (Hans Frank, In the Face of the Gallows,

p. 406)

In Lvov, several thousand prisoners had been held in three jails. When the

Germans arrived on 29 June, the city stank, and the prisons were surrounded by

terrified relatives. Unimaginable atrocities had occurred inside. The prisons

looked like abattoirs. It had taken the NKVD a week to complete their gruesome

task before they fled. (Gwyneth Hughes and Simon Welfare, Red Empire: The