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InfoUkes Posting
11-Sep-1997
Bogutin extradition (a NON-action item)
Date: Thu, 11 Sep 1997 13:45:28 -0700
To: [email protected]
From: Lubomyr Prytulak
Subject: Bogutin extradition (a NON-action item)
I am usually a night owl, staying up till the wee hours, but yesterday I
was exhausted from painting the house on the level of the third floor,
dangling high above the ground (it looks worse from above than it does from
below) using equipment from the rock climbing course that I took some
fifteen years ago. Are climbing ropes still good after fifteen years � if
not, that might explain why you suddenly stop hearing from me. So
anyway � uncharacteristically � by 10 p.m. I was asleep, and shortly after
ten, the phone rang, and I answered it only half awake, and didn't catch
who was calling � but the message was that there was a story on war
criminals on CBC television, for which I thanked the caller, and then went
down and watched. Whoever it was that called � thanks again!
And so I caught only a part of the CBC magazine broadcast, and I didn't
tape it for review, and I haven't seen anything in print on the case � so
correct me if I'm wrong:
(1) Bogutin is a Russian name, and whereas all the other villagers spoke
Ukrainian, Bogutin's descendants now living in Ukraine spoke Russian. In
Canada, Bogutin spoke only broken English. Bogutin claimed that his father
was Jewish. Thus, perhaps it is the case that he is ethnically a Russian
Jew, although a Ukrainian in the sense that he was born and lived in the
Ukraine. I don't recall if he was labelled as "Ukrainian" in the
broadcast. In other hands, the Bogutin story could have been used to
demonstrate the extent of Jewish collaboration with the Nazis. In any
case, this point is unimportant, and anybody who tries to make a public
issue of it will not get much attention or sympathy.
(2) The broadcast seemed to gravitate toward scenes that made Ukraine
looked like a primitive nation of old people. Thus, although one
occasionally saw scenes which could have been Canadian � with plenty of
young, good-looking people, dressed nicely, even chic � the lingering
close-ups were often of old people who looked poor � an old woman, shabbily
dressed, walking along with difficulty; an old man struggling to balance a
big sack across the back of his bike. Again, this is not worth objecting
to � a Canadian film crew is bound to zero in on whatever looks to them most
unfamiliar to Canadian eyes, most unlike anything one would see in Canada.
In Canada, cars and trucks are more plentiful, so people do not as often
carry sacks across the backs of bicycles.
Whenever I was on the Kyiv subway, I often scrutinized the people around
me asking myself whether from their appearance and dress alone, I could
distinguish them from the people that might be seen on a Toronto subway,
and my answer usually was that I could not. Well, occasionally there might
be a farmer on the subway lugging produce � which one would not see in
Toronto � and of course a film crew would zoom in on this one person out of
one thousand or out of ten thousand and make the Kyiv subway look like a
conduit for peasant farmers lugging their produce into town for sale. And
I guess in Kyiv there would be more officers in military uniforms that
looked decidedly non-Canadian � and again, a camera crew would zero in on
these and make Ukraine look highy militarized and menacing.
(3) Bogutin predicted that he would never be extradited, and would in fact
end up buried next to his wife right here in Canada. He seemed to be
saying that he would rather commit suicide than be extradited. I am sure
that he never will be extradited, and I don't think that he will need to
commit suicide � the law works slowly, and with his coughing and smoking,
and failing motor coordination, I was surprised that he survived the
interview.
(4) From my reading of Eleni by Nicholas Gage, I would expect that
Bogutin's descendents living in a Ukrainian village would have been
resented because they were receiving aid from Bogutin in Canada, and so
that any slurs and insults against any of these descendents by people in
the village to the effect that their forebear, Bogutin, had been a
policeman and collaborator could have been motivated, at least in part, by
that resentment.
(5) Although it did appear probable that Bogutin had been a policeman,
nobody was able to connect him to any crimes, such as executions. The most
damning thing that I heard was his daughter saying that he never killed
anyone, although he may have beaten someone, and that might have been, she
said, only because that person deserved to be beaten. One of the villagers
denied that Bogutin had really been a mailman, as he seems to be claiming,
saying that such a role had not existed at the time, and that Bogutin had
really been a police investigator. We may be right to suspect Bogutin of
criminal collaboration serious enough to be considered criminal, but we
seem to have nothing that would stand up in court.
(6) There is always the question of degree of coercion to collaborate. If
you happen to be a policeman upon the arrival of the occupying Germans (is
that true in Bogutin's case?), to refuse to carry out orders, or to resign,
might mean hunger for oneself and one's family at best, and might mean
execution for oneself and who knows who else at worst. If Bogutin was
already vulnerable for having a Jewish father, he would have been in
particular danger if on top of that he drew attention to himself by not
cooperating to the fullest.
(7) Bogutin seems to have clearly lied by stating on his immigration
application that he had been born in Romania, when in reality he had been
born in Ukraine. On the one hand, he may have lied to cover up his Nazi
collaboration, but on the other hand he may have lied in order to avoid
being forcibly repatriated to Ukraine where he might have faced execution
or deportation to Siberia whether or not he had been a Nazi collaborator.
If the lie with respect to his place of birth qualifies him for
extradition, then one wonders why the question of the extent of his
collaboration is being brought up at all. Efficiency would dictate that
the investigation stop as soon as sufficient grounds for extradition have
been gathered � but to continue on into an irrelevant probing of the extent
of Nazi collaboration suggests that Bogutin is being used for his value in
educating the public about the Jewish Holocaust.
(8) The broadcast showed the Ukrainian villagers as being opposed to the
German executions and as being critical of Bogutin's collaboration, and so
did not present the offensive and inaccurate picture that is sometimes
presented of Ukrainians being more Nazi than the Nazis and pitching in
enthusiastically to help with any murdering that needed to be done.
(9) My impression of Bogutin was that what was happening to him was
deserved, that he was not being subject to any unfair treatment or
unsympathetic press coverage.
(10) The one big thing that was wrong was the lack of proportion between
the tax dollars being spent and the resulting good. Bogutin is clearly a
dying man. His collaboration, furthermore, was at the bottom end of the
Nazi hierarchy, and the extent of that collaboration is impossible to
determine. There is not much of a story here, and not much of an
invitation for vigorous prosecution. And yet a team of investigators goes
to Ukraine, along with a CBC camera crew. This just might be a non-optimal
use of the Canadian taxpayers' money, and it is not a use that would be
approved by Canadians generally, but is one that is urged by Jewish groups
alone in promotion of their personal agenda. I would have liked to see an
estimate of how much had been spent on the case so far, how much was
projected to be needed to see the case to completion, and a comparison of
how much was typically spent on cases of, say, serial killings here in
Canada. It would appear to me that Bogutin has come to public attention
less because of his crimes and more because of the Jewish need to remind
the public that Ukraine's claim to fame is that it was one of the more
significant settings for the Jewish Holocaust.
As far as I can see, the issue of optimal use of tax dollars is the only
one that can be raised successfully with respect to the Bogutin case.
(11) My own main objection to the Bogutin case is not an objection that
can be argued successfully in a public forum � that objection is centered
not on what is being done to Bogutin, but rather on what is not being done
to others. As I said, I think that Bogutin is being treated fairly � but
what is wrong is that other Canadians who are more guilty than Bogutin are
being treated leniently. Those who are, or who in the last several decades
have been, treated leniently are:
(i) Communists who have been guilty of war crimes and crimes against humanity.
(ii) Immigrants from Israel who are guilty of more recent crimes in
Israel � see the bottom of my posting of August 25/97, "War Criminals (Neal
Sher: Have gun, will travel)".
(iii) Jews guilty of collaborating with the Nazis � see my postings of
August 6/97 "Re: Compensation for the Famine of 1933" and of September
10/97 "Definition of "anti-Semitism."
However, this objection (11), particularly item (iii) reaches the height of
political incorrectness, and cannot be argued publicly because the public
generally, and journalists in particular, will not have heard it before,
and will reject it as implausible on the grounds that it is unfamiliar. My
position is based on the assumption that the vast majority of reporters
merely pass along press releases, and are unequipped to evaluate evidence
and arrive at independent conclusions.
Lubomyr Prytulak
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