Posted by Be careful about information source on March 10, 2001 at 13:47:54:
In Reply to: Dear Markian posted by Bohdan A. Oryshkevich on March 05, 2001 at 21:55:17:
Demjanjuk was a forced guard similar to a forced laborer and there was no evidence to prove otherwise. If there was proof he would not have made it from Israel alive.
Those Ukrainians who joined German army did not know what Nazis were about they only understood this to be opportunity to fight the Russian occupation of killers of Ukrainian people.
The history that you read from legitimate Ukrainain historians and from the survivors is correct.
: Dear Markian:
: I have reason to believe that you are not even eighteen years old. So I am going to give you some information.
: Mr. Demjanjuk admitted to being a guard in a concentration camp in one camp in order to be able to beat the charge that he was not the Ivan the Terrible in another. So he was a guard who has lied to everyone about his case. No one that he knows knew him before or during World War II. He probably is not Ivan the Terrible as the court admitted. But that did not make him innocent.
: The Waffen SS is a tragic story in Ukrainian history. Poor Ukrainian peasants, largely not the children of the Intelligentsia, were used as cannon fodder by Germans against the Soviets. The Soviets in turn had many Ukrainian soldiers in their ranks. So this was another sad case in Ukrainian history where Ukrainian fought Ukrainian for issues far removed from their mutual interests. The Galicia Division was egged on by misguided and often self serving Ukrainian nationalists who had sympathies for the Germans and their cause. I have copies of some of the original documents. Both your parents and grandparents are too young to know what happened. They did not experience this. Only careful detective work and speaking with the survivors can lead one close to the truth. I am old enough to know some of these people.
: There is no doubt that Ukraine suffered tremendously as a result of World War II. While Ukraine may have suffered much more under the Soviets in the nineteen thirties, both Germans and Soviets helped destroy Ukraine in World War II. To see those who fought for the Germans as the heroes in this conflict without giving the same credit to those who fought against the Germans is not fair. Both died. I do not wish to condemn. I only wish to understand the tragic nature of Ukrainian history.
: You are an American. You were born in America. You do not need false myths about some tragicically dead teenagers far away who made the wrong decision. You do not need to make a hero of a man who is at best a survivor of World War II and whose alibis did not pass muster. You need to develop a world view based on democracy, knowledge, experience, and patriotism of both your country and of the country of your ancestors.
: If you want to explore your Ukrainian roots go to Ukraine for a year and experience the beauty and the problems of Ukraine first hand. Learn to read Ukrainian beyond what is done in the Diaspora. But do not live in the past and do not build your identity on the basis of past mistakes by other people. That would only double the tragedy.
: But learn and read first and do not believe everything that you read.
: Liar at
: usa.usa@attglobal.net