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insufficient to justify your conclusions to the effect that drinking wine prolongs life

(as explained in my letter to you of 21Apr99, already cited above); and that broader

scientific evidence than you reported in your broadcasts, or since, contradicts your

conclusions (as illustrated in the Marin Institute excerpts above). Your unwarranted

and false conclusions advocating wine consumption cannot be left to continue inflicting

harm upon the public as they do today. Your obligation to journalism, to 60 Minutes, to

the public, and to your conscience, demands that you issue such a retraction and

correction without reservation and without delay.

(2) Disclose any conflict of interest relating to The French Paradox. Please

disclose any consideration that you may have received, or that 60 Minutes or CBS may

have received, from the wine or alcohol industries for your two French Paradox

broadcasts. In the absence of affirmations on your part that no such consideration has

traded hands, your broadcasts may tend to be viewed less as defective reporting than as

infomercials. Of particular interest would be the nature of any relationship between 60

Minutes and Edgar Bronfman Senior, chairman of liquor giant Seagram.

(3) Retract and correct The Ugly Face of Freedom. Every day, growing numbers of

people become convinced that you owe a similar retraction and correction for your

similarly incorrect and damaging 23Oc94 broadcast, The Ugly Face of Freedom.

(4) Disclose any conflict of interest relating to The Ugly Face of Freedom. Please

disclose the degree to which your broadcast The Ugly Face of Freedom was requested by

external sources, who these sources were, and what benefits to 60 Minutes or to CBS

accrued from complying with such external requests. Of particular interest would be any

request originating from the direction of Edgar Bronfman Senior. You need to take some

such step in order to disarm the suspicion that your broadcast was no better than an

eruption of the hatred toward non-Jews, and particularly of the special hatred toward

Ukrainians, which is endemic to Jewish culture.

Lubomyr Prytulak

HOME DISINFORMATION PEOPLE WIESENTHAL 747 hits since 18Jan98

Wiesenthal Letter 14 Sep 4/97 The forgotten Bodnar

September 4, 1997

Simon Wiesenthal

Jewish Documentation Center

Salztorgasse 6

1010 Vienna

Austria

Dear Mr. Wiesenthal:

In your testimony on the 60 Minutes broadcast of October 23, 1994 "The Ugly Face of Freedom" I notice a startling

omission:

MORLEY SAFER: I get the impression from people that the actions of the Ukrainians, if anything,

were worse than the Germans.

SIMON WIESENTHAL: About the civilians, I cannot say this. About the Ukrainian police, yes.

That's all you said! You just left it at that! But in that case, there is something very big missing from your

statement, isn't there Mr. Wiesenthal - something very interesting, very important, very relevant? Something that the

60 Minutes viewer would have found to be quite remarkable? Do you know what it is?

It is the story of the Ukrainian policeman with the surname Bodnar the one who saved your life? Remember him?

Don't you think that this forgotten Bodnar is someone who should have been mentioned in your statement? And doesn't

the story of the forgotten Bodnar somewhat contradict your unqualified statement that the Ukrainian police

collectively were worse than the Germans? And if among what you say is the worst of the Ukrainians (the auxiliary

police) some are saving Jews, then what heroic acts can we expect among the rest of the Ukrainian population?

To refresh your memory about this story which seems so forgettable to you now, I may remind you that you were

about to be executed, but:

The shooting stopped. Ten yards from Wiesenthal.

The next thing he remembers was a brilliant cone of light and behind it a Polish voice: "But

Mr. Wiesenthal, what are you doing here?" Wiesenthal recognized a foreman he used to know, by

the name of Bodnar. He was wearing civilian clothes with the armband of a Ukrainian police

auxiliary. "I've got to get you out of here tonight."

Bodnar told the [other] Ukrainians that among the captured Jews he had discovered a Soviet

spy and that he was taking him to the district police commissar. In actual fact he took

Wiesenthal back to his own flat, on the grounds that it was unlikely to be searched so soon

again. This was the first time Wiesenthal survived. (Peter Michael Lingens, in Simon

Wiesenthal, Justice Not Vengeance, 1989, p. 8)

But the story of the forgotten Bodnar is even better than that - Bodnar not only saved you, not only risked his

life to save you, but possibly gave his life to save you. I say that because Bodnar must have known that the

punishment for saving a Jew from execution and then helping him escape would be death. And how could he get away with

it? In fact, I ask you now, Mr. Wiesenthal, whether the forgotten Bodnar did get away with it, or whether he paid for

it with his life, for as you were tiptoeing out, you were stopped, Bodnar offered his fabricated story, and then:

The German sergeant, already a little drunk, slapped Bodnar's face and said: "Then what are you

standing around for? If this is what you people are like, then later we'll all have troubles.

Report back to me as soon as you deliver them [Wiesenthal along with a fellow prisoner]." (Alan

Levy, The Wiesenthal File, 1993, p. 37)

These passages invite several pertinent conclusions which a man of integrity and conscience would have insisted

on bringing to Morley Safer's attention: