hypothesis, but is one, rather, that is upheld from more than one direction:

As a Jew, I'm interested in another question entirely: Why were there so many

Jews among the NKVD-MVD investigators - including many of the most terrible?

It's a painful question for me but I cannot evade it. (Yevgenia Albats, The

State Within a State: The KGB and its Hold on Russia, Past, Present and Future,

1994, p. 147)

Jews abounded [also] at the lower levels of the Party machinery especially in

the Cheka and its successors, the GPU, the OGPU and the NKVD.... It is

difficult to suggest a satisfactory reason for the prevalence of Jews in the

Cheka. It may be that having suffered at the hand of the former Russian

authorities they wanted to seize the reins of real power in the new state for

themselves. (Leonard Shapiro, The Role of Jews in the Russian Revolutionary

Movement, Slavonic and East European Review, 1961, 40, p. 165)

More recently, I have compiled statistics from data presented by Shapoval which suggests that

out of every ten leading members of the Cheka-GPU-NKVD in Ukraine, 6 were Jewish, 2 Russian, 1

Ukrainian, and 1 other.

Now within this historical context - the Ukrainian Holocaust eight years previously, the

21-month Communist reign of terror, and the recent slaughter of Ukrainians by the retreating

Communists - would it be surprising if upon the arrival of the Germans, these Western Ukrainians

had felt liberated by the Germans and at the same time vengeful toward the Communists, and would

it be surprising if among their first actions was the seeking out and punishment of any

perpetrators and collaborators who had not been able to flee with the retreating Communists?

No, it would not be surprising - and yet that is not what happened.

Zero Retribution

Prior to the arrival of the Germans, there was no anti-Jewish or anti-Communist violence. If

any impulse for vengeance existed, then it was inhibited - the Ukrainian population had been

decimated, deprived of its leadership, throttled into submission. For all they knew, the

Communists who had just left might return that very same day and resume the slaughter, starting

first with any who had dared to lift a vengeful hand. For all they knew, this was just the calm

before a new storm, just a few hours' respite while names were taken for the next round of NKVD

executions. And the last person to lift a hand against would be a Jew because the Jew had

traditionally occupied the position of authority:

From the Ukraine Einsatzkommando 6 of Einsatzgruppe C reported as follows:

Almost nowhere can the population be persuaded to take

active steps against the Jews. This may be explained by the

fear of many people that the Red Army may return. Again and

again this anxiety has been pointed out to us. Older people

have remarked that they had already experienced in 1918 the

sudden retreat of the Germans. In order to meet the fear

psychosis, and in order to destroy the myth ... which, in the

eyes of many Ukrainians, places the Jew in the position of

the wielder of political power, Einsatzkommando 6 on several

occasions marched Jews before their execution through the

city. Also, care was taken to have Ukrainian militiamen

watch the shooting of Jews.

This "deflation" of the Jews in the public eye did not have the desired

effect. After a few weeks, Einsatzgruppe C complained once more that the

inhabitants did not betray the movements of hidden Jews. The Ukrainians were

passive, benumbed by the "Bolshevist terror." Only the ethnic Germans in the

area were busily working for the Einsatzgruppe. (Raul Hilberg, The Destruction

of the European Jews, 1961, p. 202)

The picture painted by Raul Hilberg is not at all the one of Ukrainians enthusiastically

slaughtering Jews that was painted by Morley Safer in his 60 Minutes broadcast:

The Slavic population stood estranged and even aghast before the unfolding

spectacle of the "final solution." There was on the whole no impelling desire

to cooperate in a process of such utter ruthlessness. The fact that the Soviet