Spitfire List Web site and blog of anti-fascist researcher and radio personality Dave Emory.

For The Record  

FTR #907 Update on Ukraine

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This pro­gram was record­ed in one, 60-minute seg­ment.

 

Intro­duc­tion: As indi­cat­ed, this pro­gram brings up to date our long-run­ning cov­er­age of the cri­sis in Ukraine. Much of the analy­sis cen­ters on the role of the long-stand­ing Ukrain­ian Fifth Col­umn in the Unit­ed States in the sus­tain­ing and pro­jec­tion of Ukrain­ian fas­cism over the years and around the world.

The broad­cast begins with cov­er­age of the dra­mat­i­cal­ly revi­sion­ist nature of Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal and his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry.

In numer­ous broad­casts, we have not­ed the Orwellian rewrite of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry to deny the per­pe­tra­tors of the Holo­caust in that coun­try and white­wash the Nazi-allied OUN/B and UPA.

A recent arti­cle in For­eign Pol­i­cy (pub­lished by the CFR and con­se­quent­ly VERY main­stream), fur­ther devel­ops the activ­i­ties of Volodymyr Via­tro­vych, appoint­ed as head of the Insti­tute of Nation­al mem­o­ry by Vik­tor Yuschenko and then re-appoint­ed by Petro Pet­roshenko.

After the Yushc­neko gov­ern­ment left pow­er and pri­or to the Maid­an coup, Via­tro­vych was in the U.S., work­ing as a fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute. This is in line with the fun­da­men­tal role of the OUN/B‑based Amer­i­can emi­gre com­mu­ni­ty in the gen­er­a­tion of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion and the Maid­an coup.

 . . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

Recall that Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko–Rea­gan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son and a key oper­a­tive of the OUN/B’s Amer­i­can front orga­niz­tion the U.C.C.A.–and had Roman Zvarych (Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s) as his Min­is­ter of Jus­tice.

Note, also, that Ser­hiy Kvit, the Ukrain­ian Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion is a bird of the same feath­er as Via­tro­vych.  . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a ‘sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine” and Ban­dera as an ‘out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. . . .’ ”

The mea­sure of the revi­sion­ism under­way in Ukraine can be gauged by this: “. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed: ‘We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.’ Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .”

It is depress­ing and remark­able to see such ele­ments being por­trayed as “hero­ic!”

Via­tro­vy­ch’s sojourn in the U.S. in between terms serv­ing as head of the Insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry opens a vista on the high­ly impor­tant, long-stand­ing Ukrain­ian fas­cist pres­ence in the Unit­ed States. Serv­ing as a Fifth Col­umn in the run-up to World War II, the Ukrain­ian exile com­mu­ni­ty in the U.S. was wed­ded to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the Anti-Bol­she­vik Bloc of Nations, the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and the GOP.

We begin our explo­ration of the Ukrain­ian pres­ence in the U.S. with review of the Pelypenko affair. A Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Priest, Pelypenko was also an agent of Ger­man intel­li­gence. Fol­low­ing the Hitler-Stal­in Pact, Pelypenko piv­ot­ed from his sup­port for Nazi Ger­many to sup­port for the U.S., which he saw as a bet­ter tick­et back into Ukraine.

 ” . . . . Hitler’s inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union renewed the enthu­si­asm of some of the Ukraini­ans for Nazism and an entire Waf­fen-SS divi­sion, com­prised of Ukrain­ian troops, was formed (and even­tu­al­ly many of these reset­tled in the Unit­ed States after the war). This his­tor­i­cal episode has oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions, for it led to the for­ma­tion of sev­er­al impor­tant lob­by groups that agi­tat­ed for polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary resis­tance against the Sovi­ets under the gen­er­al rubric of “cap­tive nations” orga­ni­za­tions such as the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL). The Pelypenko affair reveals the extent of the Amer­i­can Nazi net­work and the inten­tion of its per­pe­tra­tors to over­throw the US gov­ern­ment and install a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship that would remove Jew­ish and “Com­mu­nist” influ­ence at all lev­els of Amer­i­can life. . . .”

Much of the pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt of the 1942 anti-fas­cist clas­sic Sab­o­tage: The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca, deal­ing with the pro­found Ukrain­ian Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Note that the Ger­man Gen­er­al Staff was devel­op­ing the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra as a vehi­cle for con­quest in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War I. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty was an impor­tant part of this Fifth Col­umn, deeply involved in Axis espi­onage and sab­o­tage.

Note the gen­e­sis of the OUN as an exten­sion of the Ger­man order of bat­tle. ” . . . . The inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion of spies and sabo­teurs which Kono­valetz set up under the super­vi­sion of the Intel­li­gence Depart­ment of the Ger­man War Office went by the name of Ukra­jin­s­ka Orga­ni­zace Nacional­is­tov (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists), com­mon­ly referred to as the OUN.

Wher­ev­er there were Ukrain­ian communities–in Sovi­et Rus­sia, France, Roma­nia, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, South Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, the Unit­ed States–Colonel Kono­valet­z’s emis­saries trav­eled at the expense of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment and estab­lished OUN cells. Spe­cial schools for OUN mem­bers were opened in Ger­many, where the stu­dents were care­ful­ly trained in the arts of espi­onage, sab­o­tage and assas­si­na­tion. The first of these schools was found­ed by the Ger­man War Office in Danzig around 1928. Ger­man intel­li­gence offi­cers act­ed as instruc­tors.

The OUN stu­dents were taught the var­i­ous meth­ods of steal­ing mil­i­tary secrets, mak­ing bombs, blow­ing up fac­to­ries and car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal mur­ders. Cours­es in reg­u­lar Ger­man army train­ing were also part of the cur­ricu­lum. OUN grad­u­ates from this Danzig school destroyed scores of fac­to­ries and farms by sab­o­tage fires and explo­sions in Poland dur­ing the years 1928–31. They also assas­si­nat­ed a num­ber of promi­nent Pol­ish politi­cians before the Pol­ish author­i­ties final­ly arrest­ed sev­er­al OUN ter­ror­ists and impris­oned or exe­cut­ed them. The remain­ing OUN mem­bers were tem­porar­i­ly with­drawn from Poland and were put to work, with oth­er of Kono­valet­z’s fol­low­ers, in the Nazi Par­ty in Ger­many. When Hitler came to pow­er, a cen­tral acad­e­my for the OUN was found­ed in Berlin. The Nazis spared no expense in build­ing this acad­e­my and sup­ply­ing it with expert instruc­tors and sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment. The acad­e­my’s address is 75 Meck­lens­bur­gis­che Strasse, Berlin. Its title is ‘School for Espi­onage, Sab­o­tage and Ter­ror­ism.’ . . . .”

The pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can branch of the OUN was titled Svo­bo­da, a word that trans­lates as “free­dom” in sev­er­al East­ern Euro­pean lan­guages. “. . . . With Myshuha at its head, Svo­bo­da was con­vert­ed into an organ of Axis pro­pa­gan­da and a medi­um for con­vey­ing instruc­tions to ODWU spies. The Svo­bo­da offices at 83 Grand Street, Jer­sey City, became a clear­ing house for espi­onage direc­tives com­ing in from Berlin, Tokyo and Rome. For many years, these direc­tives have been reg­u­lar­ly reach­ing the Svo­bo­da offices by mail from Span­ish and South Amer­i­can “drops,” or through the spe­cial “couri­ers” of the Axis spy sys­tems. Liai­son offi­cers from Ger­many and Japan made their head­quar­ters at 83 Grand Street when they vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States. Senyk-Gribi­wisky’s mail was always sent to this address. Here cer­tain Axis agents paid their last calls before sail­ing for Europe, and from here, they were accom­pa­nied to the pier where last con­fi­den­tial words were exchanged, to remain as sealed secrets until “couri­ers” arrived with fur­ther orders. . . .”

Pro­gram High­lights Include:

  • Svo­bo­da Par­ty mem­ber Andriy Paru­biy’s role as speak­er of the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment.
  • Poroshenko ally Volodymir Groys­man­’s law degree from MAUP Uni­ver­si­ty, the epi­cen­ter of anti-Semit­ic ide­ol­o­gy in Ukraine. (Shills for the seat­ed gov­ern­ment in Ukraine have hailed Groys­man­’s ascen­sion as progress, cit­ing Groys­man­’s Jew­ish faith.)
  • David Duke’s posi­tion as a fac­ul­ty mem­ber at MAUP.
  • The dis­patch­ing of a con­tin­gent of the Nazi Azov Bat­tal­ion to Odessa on the sec­ond anniver­sary of the burn­ing to death of eth­nic Russ­ian, anti-gov­ern­ment pro­test­ers.

1. In numer­ous broad­casts, we have not­ed the Orwellian rewrite of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry to deny the per­pe­tra­tors of the Holo­caust in that coun­try and white­wash the Nazi-allied OUN/B and UPA.

A recent arti­cle in For­eign Pol­i­cy (pub­lished by the CFR and con­se­quent­ly VERY main­stream), fur­ther devel­ops the activ­i­ties of Volodymyr Via­tro­vych, appoint­ed as head of the Insti­tute of Nation­al mem­o­ry by Vik­tor Yuschenko and then re-appoint­ed by Petro Pet­roshenko.

After the Yushc­neko gov­ern­ment left pow­er and pri­or to the Maid­an coup, Via­tro­vych was in the U.S., work­ing as a fel­low at Har­vard Uni­ver­si­ty’s Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute. This is in line with the fun­da­men­tal role of the OUN/B‑based Amer­i­can emi­gre com­mu­ni­ty in the gen­er­a­tion of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion and the Maid­an coup.

 . . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

Recall that Yuschenko mar­ried the for­mer Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko–Rea­gan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son and a key oper­a­tive of the OUN/B’s Amer­i­can front orga­niz­tion the U.C.C.A.–and had Roman Zvarych (Jaroslav Stet­sko’s per­son­al sec­re­tary in the ear­ly 1980’s) as his Min­is­ter of Jus­tice.

Note, also, that Ser­hiy Kvit, the Ukrain­ian Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion is a bird of the same feath­er as Via­tro­vych.  . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a ‘sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine’ and Ban­dera as an ‘out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive’ of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple. . . .’ ”

The mea­sure of the revi­sion­ism under­way in Ukraine can be gauged by this: “. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed: ‘We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.’ Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .”

It is depress­ing and remark­able to see such ele­ments being por­trayed as “hero­ic!”

“The His­to­ri­an White­wash­ing Ukraine’s Past” by Josh Cohen; For­eign Pol­i­cy; 5/02/2016.

. . . . Advo­cat­ing a nation­al­ist, revi­sion­ist his­to­ry that glo­ri­fies the country’s move to inde­pen­dence — and purges bloody and oppor­tunis­tic chap­ters — [Volodymyr] Via­tro­vych has attempt­ed to redraft the country’s mod­ern his­to­ry to white­wash Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups’ involve­ment in the Holo­caust and mass eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles dur­ing World War II. And right now, he’s win­ning. . . .

. . . . In May 2015, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Petro Poroshenko signed a law that man­dat­ed the trans­fer of the country’s com­plete set of archives, from the “Sovi­et organs of repres­sion,” such as the KGB and its dece­dent, the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine (SBU), to a gov­ern­ment orga­ni­za­tion called the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry. . . .

. . . . The con­tro­ver­sy cen­ters on a telling of World War II his­to­ry that ampli­fies Sovi­et crimes and glo­ri­fies Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist fight­ers while dis­miss­ing the vital part they played in eth­nic cleans­ing of Poles and Jews from 1941 to 1945 after the Nazi inva­sion of the for­mer Sovi­et Union. . . .

. . . . And more point­ed­ly, schol­ars now fear that they risk reprisal for not toe­ing the offi­cial line — or call­ing Via­tro­vych on his his­tor­i­cal dis­tor­tions. Under Viatrovych’s reign, the coun­try could be head­ed for a new, and fright­en­ing, era of cen­sor­ship. . . .

. . . . The revi­sion­ism focus­es on two Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist groups: the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) and the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA), which fought to estab­lish an inde­pen­dent Ukraine. Dur­ing the war, these groups killed tens of thou­sands of Jews and car­ried out a bru­tal cam­paign of eth­nic cleans­ing that killed as many as 100,000 Poles. Cre­at­ed in 1929 to free Ukraine from Sovi­et con­trol, the OUN embraced the notion of an eth­ni­cal­ly pure Ukrain­ian nation. When the Nazis invad­ed the Sovi­et Union in 1941, the OUN and its charis­mat­ic leader, Stepan Ban­dera, wel­comed the inva­sion as a step toward Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dence. [This is mod­i­fied lim­it­ed hang­out. The OUN/B was part of the Third Reich’s polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary order of battle.–D.E.] Its mem­bers car­ried out a pogrom in Lviv that killed 5,000 Jews, and OUN mili­tias played a major role in vio­lence against the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion in west­ern Ukraine that claimed the lives of up to 35,000 Jews. . . . [A street in the Lviv dis­trict has been renamed in hon­or of the Ein­satz­gruppe Nachti­gall or Nachti­gall Bat­tal­ion, com­mand­ed by Roman Shukhevych (named a “Hero of Ukraine” and the father of Yuri Shukhevych, a top archi­tect of the cur­rent Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal landscape.)–D.E.]

. . . . The new law, which promis­es that peo­ple who “pub­licly exhib­it a dis­re­spect­ful atti­tude” toward these groups or “deny the legit­i­ma­cy” of Ukraine’s 20th cen­tu­ry strug­gle for inde­pen­dence will be pros­e­cut­ed (though no pun­ish­ment is spec­i­fied) also means that inde­pen­dent Ukraine is being par­tial­ly built on a fal­si­fied nar­ra­tive of the Holo­caust.

By trans­fer­ring con­trol of the nation’s archives to Via­tro­vych, Ukraine’s nation­al­ists assured them­selves that man­age­ment of the nation’s his­tor­i­cal mem­o­ry is now in the “cor­rect” hands. . . .

. . . . In 2008, in addi­tion to his role at TsD­VR, Vik­tor Yushchenko, then pres­i­dent, appoint­ed Via­tro­vych head of the Secu­ri­ty Ser­vice of Ukraine’s (SBU) archives. Yuschenko made the pro­mo­tion of OUN-UPA mythol­o­gy a fun­da­men­tal part of his lega­cy, rewrit­ing school text­books, renam­ing streets, and hon­or­ing OUN-UPA lead­ers as “heroes of Ukraine.” As Yuschenko’s lead­ing mem­o­ry man­ag­er — both at TsD­VR and the SBU — Via­tro­vych was his right-hand man in this cru­sade. He con­tin­ued to push the state-spon­sored hero­ic rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the OUN-UPA and their lead­ers Ban­dera, Yaroslav Stet­sko, and Roman Shukhevych. . . .

. . . . After Vik­tor Yanukovych was elect­ed pres­i­dent in 2010, Via­tro­vych fad­ed from view. . . . Dur­ing this peri­od Via­tro­vych spent time in North Amer­i­ca on a series of lec­ture tours, as well as a short sojourn as a research fel­low at the Har­vard Ukrain­ian Research Insti­tute (HURI). He also con­tin­ued his aca­d­e­m­ic activism, writ­ing books and arti­cles pro­mot­ing the hero­ic nar­ra­tive of the OUN-UPA. In 2013 he tried to crash and dis­rupt a work­shop on Ukrain­ian and Russ­ian nation­al­ism tak­ing place at the Har­ri­man Insti­tute at Colum­bia. When the Maid­an Rev­o­lu­tion swept Yanukovych out of pow­er in Feb­ru­ary 2014, Via­tro­vych returned to promi­nence. . . .

. . . . The new pres­i­dent, Poroshenko, appoint­ed Via­tro­vych to head the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry — a pres­ti­gious appoint­ment for a rel­a­tive­ly young schol­ar. . . .

. . . . To that effect, Via­tro­vych has dis­missed his­tor­i­cal events not com­port­ing with this nar­ra­tive as “Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da.” [This is true of infor­ma­tion pre­sent­ed by any­one that tells the truth about the OUN/B heirs now in pow­er in Ukraine–they are dis­missed as “Russ­ian dupes” or “tools of the Krem­lin” etc.–D.E.] In his 2006 bookThe OUN’s Posi­tion Towards the Jews: For­mu­la­tion of a posi­tion against the back­drop of a cat­a­stro­phe, he attempt­ed to exon­er­ate the OUN from its col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Holo­caust by ignor­ing the over­whelm­ing mass of his­tor­i­cal lit­er­a­ture. The book was wide­ly panned by West­ern his­to­ri­ans. Uni­ver­si­ty of Alber­ta pro­fes­sor John-Paul Him­ka, one of the lead­ing schol­ars of Ukrain­ian his­to­ry for three decades, described it as “employ­ing a series of dubi­ous pro­ce­dures: reject­ing sources that com­pro­mise the OUN, accept­ing uncrit­i­cal­ly cen­sored sources ema­nat­ing from émi­gré OUN cir­cles, fail­ing to rec­og­nize anti-Semi­tism in OUN texts.” . . . . Even more wor­ri­some for the future integri­ty of Ukraine’s archives under Via­tro­vych is his noto­ri­ety among West­ern his­to­ri­ans for his will­ing­ness to alleged­ly ignore or even fal­si­fy his­tor­i­cal doc­u­ments. “Schol­ars on his staff pub­lish doc­u­ment col­lec­tions that are fal­si­fied,” said Jef­frey Burds, a pro­fes­sor of Russ­ian and Sovi­et his­to­ry at North­east­ern Uni­ver­si­ty.“ I know this because I have seen the orig­i­nals, made copies, and have com­pared their tran­scrip­tions to the orig­i­nals.” . . .

. . . . Sev­en­ty his­to­ri­ans signed an open let­ter to Poroshenko ask­ing him to veto the draft law that bans crit­i­cism of the OUN-UPA. . . .

. . . . After the open let­ter was pub­lished, the legislation’s spon­sor, Yuri Shukhevych, react­ed furi­ous­ly. Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and a long­time far-right polit­i­cal activist him­self, fired off a let­ter to Min­is­ter of Edu­ca­tion Ser­hiy Kvit claim­ing, “Russ­ian spe­cial ser­vices” pro­duced the let­ter and demand­ed that “patri­ot­ic” his­to­ri­ans rebuff it. Kvit, also a long­time far-right activist and author of an admir­ing biog­ra­phy one of the key the­o­reti­cians of Ukrain­ian eth­nic nation­al­ism, in turn omi­nous­ly high­light­ed the sig­na­to­ries of Ukrain­ian his­to­ri­ans on his copy of the let­ter. . . .

. . . . UPA supreme com­man­der Dmytro Kliachkivs’kyi explic­it­ly stat­ed: “We should car­ry out a large-scale liq­ui­da­tion action against Pol­ish ele­ments. Dur­ing the evac­u­a­tion of the Ger­man Army, we should find an appro­pri­ate moment to liq­ui­date the entire male pop­u­la­tion between 16 and 60 years old.” Giv­en that over 70 per­cent of the lead­ing UPA cadres pos­sessed a back­ground as Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, none of this is sur­pris­ing. . . .

 . . . . Last June, Kvit’s Min­istry of Edu­ca­tion issued a direc­tive to teach­ers regard­ing the “neces­si­ty to accen­tu­ate the patri­o­tism and moral­i­ty of the activists of the lib­er­a­tion move­ment,” includ­ing depict­ing the UPA as a “sym­bol of patri­o­tism and sac­ri­fi­cial spir­it in the strug­gle for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine” and Ban­dera as an “out­stand­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tive” of the Ukrain­ian peo­ple.” More recent­ly, Viatrovych’s Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry pro­posed that the city of Kiev rename two streets after Ban­dera and the for­mer supreme com­man­der of both the UPA and the Nazi-super­vised Schutz­mannschaft Roman Shukhevych. . . .

2. Via­tro­vy­ch’s sojourn in the U.S. in between terms serv­ing as head of the Insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry opens a vista on the high­ly impor­tant, long-stand­ing Ukrain­ian fas­cist pres­ence in the Unit­ed States. Serv­ing as a Fifth Col­umn in the run-up to World War II, the Ukrain­ian exile com­mu­ni­ty in the U.S. was fused on to the Gehlen orga­ni­za­tion, the Anti-Bol­se­vik Bloc of Nations, the for­mer World Anti-Com­mu­nist League and the GOP.

We begin our explo­ration of the Ukrain­ian pres­ence in the U.S. with review of the Pelypenko affair. A Ukrain­ian Ortho­dox Priest, Pelypenko was also an agent of Ger­man intel­li­gence. Fol­low­ing the Hitler-Stal­in Pact, Pelypenko piv­ot­ed from his sup­port for Nazi Ger­many to sup­port for the U.S., which he saw as a bet­ter tick­et back into Ukraine.

The Hitler Lega­cy by Peter Lev­en­da; IBIS Press [HC]; Copy­right 2014 by Peter Lev­en­da; ISBN 978–0‑89254–210‑9; p. 97.

 . . . . Alex­ei Pelypenko was ordained in 1915 and in the 1930s, he worked as a teacher in Munich dur­ing the time of the Third Reich. By 1937, he was in Argenti­na, work­ing for the local Gestapo chief, and by 1940 was in Val­paraiso, Chile, still work­ing for the Nazis. As a Ukrain­ian, he was opposed to the occu­pa­tion of his coun­try by the Rus­sians and as a priest, he was opposed to Com­mu­nist athe­ism. Many Ukraini­ans saw in Hitler a viable alter­na­tive to the regime in Moscow and were orga­niz­ing them­selves into a rev­o­lu­tion­ary force to sup­port the Nazis at the time of their inva­sion of Rus­sia. How­ev­er, these same Ukraini­ans were dis­il­lu­sioned when the Hitler-Stal­in pact was signed and it appeared that Rus­sia and Ger­many would work togeth­er, thus rob­bing the Ukraini­ans of any hope of lib­er­a­tion.

Hitler’s inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union renewed the enthu­si­asm of some of the Ukraini­ans for Nazism and an entire Waf­fen-SS divi­sion, com­prised of Ukrain­ian troops, was formed (and even­tu­al­ly many of these reset­tled in the Unit­ed States after the war). This his­tor­i­cal episode has oth­er ram­i­fi­ca­tions, for it led to the for­ma­tion of sev­er­al impor­tant lob­by groups that agi­tat­ed for polit­i­cal and mil­i­tary resis­tance against the Sovi­ets under the gen­er­al rubric of “cap­tive nations” orga­ni­za­tions such as the World Anti-Com­mu­nist League (WACL). The Pelypenko affair reveals the extent of the Amer­i­can Nazi net­work and the inten­tion of its per­pe­tra­tors to over­throw the US gov­ern­ment and install a mil­i­tary dic­ta­tor­ship that would remove Jew­ish and “Com­mu­nist” influ­ence at all lev­els of Amer­i­can life.

Pelypenko even­tu­al­ly decid­ed that work­ing for the Amer­i­cans for a Com­mu­nist-free bloc in East­ern Europe made more sense than wait­ing for Hitler to lib­er­ate his coun­try. He con­tact­ed the FBI direct­ly in 1940, and offered his sup­port in infil­trat­ing the Nazi net­works that he knew exist­ed in the Unit­ed States.

What he had to tell them was noth­ing short of astound­ing. . . .

3. Much of the pro­gram con­sists of an excerpt of the 1942 anti-fas­cist clas­sic Sab­o­tage: The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca, deal­ing with the pro­found Ukrain­ian Fifth Col­umn in this coun­try pri­or to, and dur­ing, World War II. Note that the Ger­man Gen­er­al Staff was devel­op­ing the Ukrain­ian dias­po­ra as a vehi­cle for con­quest in the imme­di­ate after­math of World War I. The Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can com­mu­ni­ty was an impor­tant part of this Fifth Col­umn, deeply involved in Axis espi­onage and sab­o­tage.

Note the gen­e­sis of the OUN as an exten­sion of the Ger­man order of bat­tle. The pub­li­ca­tion of the Amer­i­can branch of the OUN was titled Svo­bo­da, a word that trans­lates as “free­dom” in sev­er­al East­ern Euro­pean lan­guages.

Svo­bo­da is the name of one of the OUN/B suc­ces­sor par­ties cur­rent­ly admin­is­ter­ing Ukraine. The speak­er of the Rada, the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment, is a mem­ber of this par­ty.

Sab­o­tage! The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca by Michael Say­ers and Albert E. Kahn; Harp­er Broth­ers [HC]; 1942; pp. 80–96.

In 1938, a sen­sa­tion­al series of kid­nap­pings occurred in New York City. A num­ber of well-to-do per­sons were seized by a mys­te­ri­ous gang, which blind­fold­ed them, gagged them, and took them by car to a secret hide­out in the city. Ran­soms rang­ing from $100,000 to $200,000 were demand­ed. In cer­tain cas­es the kid­napped vic­tims were tor­tured to make them write plead­ing notes to their rel­a­tives and friends. One of the vic­tims, Nor­man Miller, who had been forced to pay $15,000 ran­som, remem­bered that while he had been held cap­tive, he had heard church bells ring­ing and the sound of bil­liard balls had been led, blind­fold­ed, by his kid­nap­pers. These clues helped the police to locate the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Home, “a mutu­al ben­e­fit soci­ety” at 217–19 East 6th Street, New York City, as the place that fit­ted Miller’s descrip­tion.

On Novem­ber 2, 1938, the police raid­ed the Ukrain­ian Nation­al Home. In the base­ment, they found a tor­ture cham­ber, its walls pit­ted with bul­let holes. They also found a Ger­man-made machine gun and oth­er weapons. The police dug up the base­ment floor and came upon human bones. One of the kid­napped men, Arthur Fried of White Plains, had died under the tor­ture. His body had been stuffed in the heat­ing fur­nace, and the bones lat­er hid­den under the base­ment floor.

The four gang­sters who made up the kid­nap­ping gang were arrest­ed. Two of them were sen­tenced to life-impris­on­ment. The oth­er two, Demetrius Gula and Joseph Saco­da, were con­vict­ed of mur­der and exe­cut­ed in the elec­tric chair at Sing Sing.

One high­ly sig­nif­i­cant fact not men­tioned at the tri­al was that Gula and Saco­da were both mem­bers of a Berlin-direct­ed Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist orga­ni­za­tion known as the ODWU. At the time no one thought of con­nect­ing these bru­tal kid­nap­pers with the Nazi espi­onage-sab­o­tage machine in the Unit­ed States. . . .

The Berlin-direct­ed ODWU again hov­ered just behind the head­lines when, ear­ly in 1941, a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can cap­tain in the Unit­ed States Army was court­mar­tialed and deprived of his com­mis­sion for betray­ing con­fi­den­tial infor­ma­tion to a for­eign agent. This cap­tain was the leader of an ODWU unit in Penn­syl­va­nia. The for­eign agent in the case had been Omelin Senyk-Gribi­wisky, a Ukrain­ian ter­ror­ist who had come from Berlin in 1931 to found the ODWU in the Unit­ed States. . . .

Anoth­er hint of the inner nature of the ODWU came on July 13, 1940, when the New York police arrest­ed a Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can named William Piz­nak on charges of vio­lat­ing the Sul­li­van Law. In a base­ment store­room of Piznak’s res­i­dence at 225 East 95th Street, detec­tives of the New York sab­o­tage squad found a ver­i­ta­ble arse­nal which includ­ed two machine guns, tear gas grenades, rifles, sets of brass knuck­les, a trench knife and 1,112 rifle car­tridges of assort­ed cal­ibers.

William Piznak’s broth­er, Michael Piz­nak, is an attor­ney of the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist Asso­ci­a­tion, an old Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can soci­ety, which the ODWU has sought to infil­trate and dom­i­nate. Until short­ly before the police raid, the two Piz­nak broth­ers lived togeth­er in the house which con­tained the base­ment arse­nal. The usu­al­ly cau­tious attor­ney, Michael Piz­nak revealed his own polit­i­cal pro­cliv­i­ties at a Ukrain­ian meet­ing in Belvedere Park, New York, on July 1, 1938, when he declared: “Now Hitler calls the youth to orga­nize. Now, also, Mus­soli­ni calls the youth to orga­nize. And now, we, the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, too, must call the youth to orga­nize!”

In August 1940, the Het­man, anoth­er Berlin-direct­ed Ukrain­ian orga­ni­za­tion, staged a pub­lic Storm Troop demon­stra­tion in Chica­go. The “Order of the Day,” issued by the Chica­go Het­man “Dis­trict Com­mand,” called upon “the uni­formed Male Youth Hun­dreds” to appear “armed with rifles” . . .

There are close to one mil­lion Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans in the Unit­ed States. The over­whelm­ing major­i­ty of them are pro-demo­c­ra­t­ic; but a Naziphile minor­i­ty make up the ODWU and the Het­man, two of the most dan­ger­ous espi­onage-sab­o­tage orga­ni­za­tions in the world. . . .

. . . . The Het­man oper­ates under the super­vi­sion of Alfred Rosenberg’s Aussen poli­tis­ches Amt, For­eign Polit­i­cal Office of the Nazi par­ty.

The ODWU is more pow­er­ful than the Het­man and, if pos­si­ble, more vio­lent. Both orga­ni­za­tions have built their cells in Amer­i­can indus­tri­al cen­ters. Their agents work in muni­tions plants, mines, steel foundries, air­craft fac­to­ries, ship­yards, freight­yards and docks. A num­ber of them have gained access to the Unit­ed States Army.

Both the ODWU and the Het­man are inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tions with branch­es through­out Europe, Asia and North and South Amer­i­ca. Their activ­i­ties include spy­ing, sab­o­tag­ing, spread­ing pro-Axis pro­pa­gan­da and, not infre­quent­ly, com­mit­ting assas­si­na­tions. The Unit­ed States lead­ers of the ODWU and Het­man have been in reg­u­lar com­mu­ni­ca­tion with Ger­man, Japan­ese and Ital­ian agents, and with spies in South and Cen­tral Amer­i­ca. In the spring of 1941, one of the con­fi­den­tial ODWU bul­letins ema­nat­ing from Berlin tri­umphant­ly described the sink­ing of sev­er­al British ships sab­o­taged by ODWU mem­bers in Argenti­na and Brazil. . . . .

It is remark­able that in all the lit­er­a­ture deal­ing with the world-wide machi­na­tions of the Axis, prac­ti­cal­ly no men­tion has been made of this most impor­tant aux­il­iary of the inter­na­tion­al Nazi espi­onage and sab­o­tage machine: the fas­cist Ukrain­ian fifth col­umn. Among fifth columns, it is unique in that the only land in which it can­not func­tion is its native land. Its activ­i­ties in the Ukraine were brought to an abrupt halt in 1938 when the Sovi­et author­i­ties round­ed up and exe­cut­ed its chief ring-lead­ers there. In almost every oth­er coun­try in the world, and par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Unit­ed States, this crim­i­nal and ruth­less fifth col­umn is still at work.

Just how Hitler got hold of these ter­ror­ists among the Ukraini­ans and con­vert­ed a sec­tion of them into the Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­can fifth col­umn makes a sto­ry of inter­na­tion­al treach­ery and vio­lence unpar­al­leled in all the weird annals of the under­world of polit­i­cal crime. . . .

A famil­iar sight in Berlin in recent years was a lit­tle old man with a scrub­by white beard who usu­al­ly wan­dered about in over­size plus-fours. The Nazis called him “Pro­fes­sor of the Ukraine.” His name was Dr. Paul Rohrbach. Like his clos­est friend, the Nazi philoso­pher Dr. Alfred Rosen­berg, Rohrbach was a Baltic Ger­man who con­tributed some impor­tant “the­o­ries to the Nazi Par­ty.

Rohrbach was still a young schol­ar when he evolved the the­o­ry that the Ukraini­ans are a Ger­man­ic-type peo­ple and should there­fore come under Ger­man rule. To win the sup­port of the Ukraini­ans, then sub­jects of the Russ­ian Czar, the young Ger­manophile schol­ar wrote innu­mer­able pro­pa­gan­da works urg­ing the estab­lish­ment of an “Inde­pen­dent Ukraine.” The idea appealed strong­ly to Kaiser Wil­helm who had his Impe­r­i­al eye on Ukrain­ian wheat and oil.

In 1918, after the Treaty of Brest-Litovsk, the Kaiser estab­lished an “Inde­pen­dent Ukraine” under Ger­man “pro­tec­tion.” Rohrbach was dis­patched to Kiev to act as per­son­al advis­er to Field Mar­shal Her­mann von Eich­horn, com­man­der of the Ger­man forces in the Ukraine. A Quis­ling Ukrain­ian gov­ern­ment was set up, head­ed by a hith­er­to unrenowned Russ­ian cav­al­ry­man named Gen­er­al Pavel Petro­vitch Sko­ropad­s­ki. The Gen­er­al, who did not know one word of Ukrain­ian, received the title of The Het­man (Head Man) of the Ukraine, and a cab­i­net was formed around him com­posed of var­i­ous Russ­ian and Ukrain­ian adven­tur­ers chiefly dis­tin­guished for their mur­der­ous records as ter­ror­ists and anti-Semit­ic pogromists.

But Rohrbach’s tri­umph was short­lived. The new­ly-formed Red Army, togeth­er with the fore­run­ners of today’s doughty guer­ril­la bands, dec­i­mat­ed the Kaiser’s armies of occu­pa­tion and drove them out of the Ukraine. Rohrbach hasti­ly packed his books and returned to Berlin along with Gen­er­al Sko­ropad­s­ki and his cut­throat cab­i­net. Field Mar­shal von Eich­horn, less for­tu­nate, was buried in the Ukraine, after he had been shot by a Ukrain­ian guer­ril­la.

Back in Berlin, Rohrbach and his friends became the pro­teges of the Ger­man High Com­mand which by the ear­ly 1920’s, was already plot­ting with the Nazi Par­ty to over­throw the Weimar Repub­lic and make a sec­ond bid for world con­quest. Cap­tain Franz von Papen joined the grow­ing cir­cle of Rohrbach’s admir­ers, and the con­cept of an “Inde­pen­dent Ukraine” appealed as strong­ly to Adolf Hitler as it had for­mer­ly done to the Kaiser. The “Het­man Orga­ni­za­tion” was placed under the per­son­al super­vi­sion of Dr. Alfred Rosen­berg, the chief Nazi advo­cate of East­ward expan­sion. Gen­er­al Sko­ropad­s­ki, who could still bare­ly stut­ter in Ukrain­ian retained his title as The Het­man of the Ukraine and leader of the Het­man Orga­ni­za­tion. . . .

At this point, Colonel Nico­lai of the Intel­li­gence Ser­vice of the High Com­mand took a hand in the Ukrain­ian game. For var­i­ous rea­sons, Nico­lai felt that Gen­er­al Sko­ropad­s­ki was not the man to head the Ukrain­ian fifth col­umn. While Nico­lai did not inter­fere in any way with Alfred Rosen­berg’s orga­ni­za­tion of the Het­man appa­ra­tus, he went to orga­nize an inter­na­tion­al Ukrain­ian appa­ra­tus of his own. From the start, Nico­lai had his eye on the large Ukrain­ian com­mu­ni­ty in the Unit­ed States.

The man cho­sen by [Ger­man intel­li­gence chief Colonel Wal­ter] Nico­lai to head this inter­na­tion­al fifth col­umn was Colonel Kono­valetz, who had served with the Kaiser’s armies of occu­pa­tion in the Ukraine. Kono­valetz was a tall, blondish man with gray, watery eyes, a mil­i­tary bear­ing, and a pas­sion for jew­els. He had earned him­self con­sid­er­able noto­ri­ety in the Ukraine as a rapist and killer. When he left with the Ger­mans in 1919, he brought out with him two large trunks loaded with loot­ed gold, sil­ver and jew­els. Hitler met him in 1922 and took an imme­di­ate lik­ing to him.

By 1930, Kono­valetz was known to the intel­li­gence bureaus of the world’s pow­ers as one of Ger­many’s lead­ing espi­onage agents. He was also work­ing for the Japan­ese Gen­er­al Staff. His var­i­ous “mis­sions” took him to every cor­ner of the Euro­pean con­ti­nent, to Asia, and to North and South Amer­i­ca.

The inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion of spies and sabo­teurs which Kono­valetz set up under the super­vi­sion of the Intel­li­gence Depart­ment of the Ger­man War Office went by the name of Ukra­jin­s­ka Orga­ni­zace Nacional­is­tov (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists), com­mon­ly referred to as the OUN.

Wher­ev­er there were Ukrain­ian communities–in Sovi­et Rus­sia, France, Ruma­nia, Czecho­slo­va­kia, Poland, South Amer­i­ca, Cana­da, the Unit­ed States–Colonel Kono­valet­z’s emis­saries trav­eled at the expense of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment and estab­lished OUN cells.

Spe­cial schools for OUN mem­bers were opened in Ger­many, where the stu­dents were care­ful­ly trained in the arts of espi­onage, sab­o­tage and assas­si­na­tion. The first of these schools was found­ed by the Ger­man War Office in Danzig around 1928. Ger­man Intel­li­gence offi­cers act­ed as instruc­tors. The OUN stu­dents were taught the var­i­ous meth­ods of steal­ing mil­i­tary secrets, mak­ing bombs, blow­ing up fac­to­ries and car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal mur­ders. Cours­es in reg­u­lar Ger­man army train­ing were also part of the cur­ricu­lum.

OUN grad­u­ates from this Danzig school destroyed scores of fac­to­ries and farms by sab­o­tage fires and explo­sions in Poland dur­ing the years 1928–31. They also assas­si­nat­ed a num­ber of promi­nent Pol­ish politi­cians before the Pol­ish author­i­ties final­ly arrest­ed sev­er­al OUN ter­ror­ists and impris­oned or exe­cut­ed them. The remain­ing OUN mem­bers were tem­porar­i­ly with­drawn from Poland and were put to work, with oth­er of Kono­valet­z’s fol­low­ers, in the Nazi Par­ty in Ger­many.

When Hitler came to pow­er, a cen­tral acad­e­my for the OUN was found­ed in Berlin. The Nazis spared no expense in build­ing this acad­e­my and sup­ply­ing it with expert instruc­tors and sci­en­tif­ic equip­ment. The acad­e­my’s address is 75 Meck­lens­bur­gis­che Strasse, Berlin. Its title is “School for Espi­onage, Sab­o­tage and Ter­ror­ism.” . . . .

. . . . The OUN lat­er sent [Kono­valet­z’s suc­ces­sor Omelian] Senyk-Gribi­wisky on spe­cial errands of mur­der, sab­o­tage or intrigue as far afield as Cana­da, South Africa, South Amer­i­ca, Italy and Japahn. His com­pa­tri­ots gave him a nick­name which, freely trans­lat­ed, means “Sales­man of Ter­ror.”

This was the man who arrived in the Unit­ed States in 1931 to orga­nize the ODWU–the Orga­ni­za­tion for the Rebirth of the Ukraine–which was to serve as the Amer­i­can coun­ter­part of Berlin’s OUN.

Two years lat­er, with the Nazis in pow­er, and unlim­it­ed funds at his dis­pos­al, the “Sales­man of Ter­ror” returned to the Unit­ed States to devel­op the ODWU and spread its sin­is­ter branch­es across the forty-eight states.

With Ger­man mon­ey, Senuk-Gribisky financed scores of ODWU “front” orga­ni­za­tions which mush­roomed under his expert guid­ance in the indus­tri­al cities where Ukrain­ian-Amer­i­cans lived. . . . .

. . . . On the last evening he spent in the Unit­ed States before leav­ing for Ger­many, Senyk-Gribi­wisky vis­it­ed an office at 83 Grand Street, Jer­sey City, New Jer­sey. He went there to pick up con­fi­den­tial mail, which he was to car­ry to Europe, and to leave final orders for ODWU work in the Unit­ed States.

Eighty-three Grand Street, Jer­sey City, is the head­quar­ters of the pow­er­ful Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist Asso­ci­a­tion and of its offi­cial pub­li­ca­tion, Svo­bo­da, which is edit­ed by Luke Myshuha, oth­er­wise known as the “Big Mouse.” . . .

. . . . In 1933, when the Nazis took over in Ger­many and start­ed their orga­ni­za­tion of the ODWU in Amer­i­ca, Myshuha became the edi­tor of Svo­bo­da. . . . .

. . . . With Myshuha at its head, Svo­bo­da was con­vert­ed into an organ of Axis pro­pa­gan­da and a medi­um for con­vey­ing instruc­tions to ODWU spies. The Svo­bo­da offices at 83 Grand Street, Jer­sey City, became a clear­ing house for espi­onage direc­tives com­ing in from Berlin, Tokyo and Rome. For many years, these direc­tives have been reg­u­lar­ly reach­ing the Svo­bo­da offices by mail from Span­ish and South Amer­i­can “drops,” or through the spe­cial “couri­ers” of the Axis spy sys­tems. Liai­son offi­cers from Ger­many and Japan made their head­quar­ters at 83 Grand Street when they vis­it­ed the Unit­ed States. Senyk-Gribi­wisky’s mail was always sent to this address. Here cer­tain Axis agents paid their last calls before sail­ing for Europe, and from here, they were accom­pa­nied to the pier where last con­fi­den­tial words were exchanged, to remain as sealed secrets until “couri­ers” arrived with fur­ther orders. . . .

4a. Svo­bo­da mem­ber and Maid­an forces com­man­der Andriy Paru­biy has been named speak­er of the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment.

“Rada Appoints Andriy Paru­biy Its Speak­er” [AFP]; The Kiev Post; 4/14/2016.

The Ukrain­ian Verk­hov­na Rada has relieved Andriy Paru­biy of his duties as first deputy par­lia­men­tary chair­man and appoint­ed him its chair­man.

The res­o­lu­tion on appoint­ing Paru­biy Rada chair­man was sup­port­ed by 284 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans at the morn­ing ses­sion on April 14.

4b. A degree of offi­cial “celebration/relief” has been expressed over the nam­ing of Petro Poroshenko’s pro­tege Volodymir Groys­man as Prime Min­is­ter of Ukraine. Part of the offi­cial sigh of relief con­cerns the fact that Groys­man is Jew­ish, as is Poroshenko.

Poroshenko’s  Jew­ish affil­i­a­tion has done noth­ing to atten­u­ate his col­lab­o­ra­tion with the OUN/B heirs who came to pow­er in Ukraine.

In addi­tion to being a crony of Poroshenko, Groys­man has a “law degree” from MAUP. In addi­tion to being a diplo­ma mill, of sorts, MAUP is the point of ori­gin of the bulk of anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture in Ukraine. Among its fac­ul­ty mem­bers is David Duke. For­mer pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yuschenko was on its board of direc­tors.

“New Wun­derkind Ukrain­ian PM Has Some Skele­tons in His Clos­et” by Mikhail Klikushin; The Observ­er; 4/21/2016.

Last week’s res­ig­na­tion of Ukrain­ian Prime Min­is­ter Arse­ny Yat­senyuk and seem­ing­ly unex­pect­ed pro­mo­tion of the Speak­er of the Par­lia­ment Volodymir Groys­man to lead the Cab­i­net puz­zled only those who do not close­ly fol­low Ukrain­ian pol­i­tics.

Right after his can­di­da­cy was announced, the per­sona of Mr. Groysman—who is vir­tu­al­ly unknown out­side of Ukraine—got under the mag­ni­fy­ing glass the country’s friends and foes. And the more observers dug into his past, the less hope­ful they were about “the path of change” that the Maid­an rev­o­lu­tion had tried to put the coun­try on.

In May of 2014, right before the first post-Maid­an pres­i­den­tial elec­tions in Ukraine, Germany’s DerSpiegel mag­a­zine wrote that those want­i­ng to under­stand Petro Poroshenko should vis­it Vin­nit­sa, a provin­cial cap­i­tal of 370,000 inhab­i­tants, 124 miles from Kiev.

Vin­nit­sa is a hub of the choco­late busi­ness of the Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent, and he used to rep­re­sent the town in the Supreme Rada, the Ukrain­ian par­lia­ment. Here, the Ukrain­ian bil­lion­aire pres­i­dent has two ROSHEN can­dy fac­to­ries, the back-bone of his choco­late empire. Vin­nit­sa is his home turf.

Mr. Groys­man, 38, was born and raised in Vin­nit­sa. Fif­teen years ago, he was tak­en under Mr. Poroshenko’s pro­tec­tive wing, and on mul­ti­ple occa­sions proved him­self the loy­al vicegerent of the pow­er­ful oli­garch. They’ve had a long his­to­ry together—and shared polit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic inter­ests in their shared home­town of Vin­nit­sa. . . .

. . . . In 2003, a cov­et­ed diplo­ma of a lawyer from the so-called Inter-Region­al Acad­e­my of Per­son­nel Man­age­ment (MAUP) appeared in the port­fo­lio of the ambi­tious Vin­nit­sa politi­cian.  After Mr. Groysman’s recent appoint­ment to the posi­tion of the Prime Min­is­ter, Vitaly Kupriy, the Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment deputy, accused him of buy­ing his lawyer’s diplo­ma for “lard.” (The expres­sion comes from a Ukrain­ian vil­lage folk char­ac­ter com­ing to Kiev with his back­pack full of home-salt­ed lard hop­ing with this sim­ple-mind­ed bribe to get accept­ed into the uni­ver­si­ty.)

“Judg­ing by the doc­u­ments, Groys­man stud­ied at the Acad­e­my only for 1.5 years [instead of usu­al 4–5]. This doesn’t look right. It looks like [his diplo­ma] was bought for ‘lard’,” he said.

As far as his for­mal edu­ca­tion is concerned—it doesn’t real­ly mat­ter if Mr. Groys­man ever stepped into the doors of this “Acad­e­my” with or with­out lard—the institution’s rep­u­ta­tion is high­ly bizarre. In 2005, for exam­ple, MAUP became world-famous for invit­ing Amer­i­can Ku Klux Klans­man David Duke to give lec­tures there; Mr. Duke lat­er received his PhD degree in his­to­ry from this “Acad­e­my.” . . . .

. . . . Since 2011, the biggest danc­ing waters show in Europe, with installed foun­tains that shoot water 229 feet into the air, is in Vin­nit­sa. It is called Foun­tain Roshen on Roshen quay, named after Petro Poroshenko’s can­dy con­glom­er­ate. The arti­fi­cial water gey­sers are accom­pa­nied by a music-and-laser show that resem­ble the Bel­la­gio in Las Vegas. Tourists from all over Ukraine come to see what is con­sid­ered one of the 10 most impres­sive water shows in the world. It was built by a Ger­man com­pa­ny and cost 1.5 mil­lion euros, which was was donat­ed by Petro Poroshenko.

4c. Note that Groys­man­’s appar­ent­ly bogus law degree came from MAUP Uni­ver­si­ty, an epi­cen­ter of Ukrain­ian anti-Semi­tism. Note, also, that the above-men­tioned Vik­tor Yuschenko was on its board of direc­tors

Orga­nized Anti-Semi­tism in Con­tem­po­rary Ukraine: Struc­ture, Influ­ence and Ide­ol­o­gy” by Pers Anders Rudling; Cana­di­an Slavon­ic Papers; Vol. 48, No. 1/2 (March-June 2006): pp. 81–118.

ABSTRACT: In the wake of the Orange Rev­o­lu­tion, Ukraine has wit­nessed a sub­stan­tial growth in orga­nized anti-Semi­tism. Cen­tral to this devel­op­ment is an orga­ni­za­tion, known as the Inter­re­gion­al Acad­e­my of Human Resources, bet­ter known by its Ukrain­ian acronym MAUP. It oper­ates a well-con­nect­ed polit­i­cal net­work that reach­es the very top of the Ukrain­ian soci­ety. MAUP is the largest pri­vate uni­ver­si­ty in Ukraine, with 57,000 stu­dents at 24 region­al cam­pus­es. MAUP is con­nect­ed to the KKK; David Duke is teach­ing cours­es in his­to­ry and inter­na­tion­al rela­tions at the uni­ver­si­ty. Fund­ed by Sau­di Ara­bia, Libya and Iran, MAUP’s print­ing house pub­lish­es about 85% of the anti-Semit­ic lit­er­a­ture in Ukraine. Until very recent­ly, Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dent Yushchenko and For­eign Min­is­ter Tara­siuk served on its board; for­mer Pres­i­dent Kravchuk still does. This paper is a study of anti-Semi­tism in Ukraine, of its intel­lec­tu­al roots, influ­ence and strength. It traces the Sovi­et, Chris­t­ian, Ger­man and racist polit­i­cal tra­di­tions and out­lines the polit­i­cal ambi­tions of orga­nized anti-Semi­tism in post-Orange Rev­o­lu­tion Ukraine.

Emblem of the Ukrain­ian Azov Bat­tal­ion

5. Author­i­ties request­ed addi­tional secu­rity ser­vices for Odessa with ten­sions run­ning high on the sec­ond anniver­sary of the Odessa mas­sacre and the poten­tial for clash­es between the neo-Nazi Right Sec­tor and those mourn­ing the May 2 deaths. And they did indeed received addi­tional secu­rity ser­vices: the Azov Bat­tal­ion!

“Ten­sions Run High in Odessa on Anniver­sary of Dead­ly Clash­es” by Shaun Walk­er; The Guardian; 5/2/2016.

Huge police and secu­rity pres­ence in Ukrain­ian city two years after unrest left 48 dead and hun­dreds injured 

A huge police and secu­rity oper­a­tion has been launched to keep the calm in Odessa on Mon­day, the sec­ond anniver­sary of one of the blood­i­est days in Ukraine’s recent his­to­ry.

Two years ago, clash­es left 48 dead and hun­dreds injured in the Black Sea city. Most of the dead were pro-Rus­sia pro­test­ers who died in a fire at the trade union build­ing.

Polit­i­cal and social ten­sions con­tinue to bub­ble under the sur­face. On Mon­day author­i­ties cor­doned off the area around the trade union build­ing, sur­round­ing it with police and Nation­al Guard forces and keep­ing out those who had come to pay their respects. More than 1,000 peo­ple gath­ered out­side the police cor­don, furi­ous at not being allowed in.

The Odessa gov­er­nor, Mikheil Saakashvili, said police had received infor­ma­tion about “provo­ca­tions” planned for the anniver­sary. Author­i­ties said there had been an anony­mous bomb threat ear­ly in the morn­ing and the area had been closed off for a search. Those out­side were cer­tain the bomb threat was a pre­text to pre­vent them from gath­er­ing, and no offi­cials made any attempt to keep the crowds informed about when or whether they would be let in. 

There were shouts of “Shame!” and “Fas­cists!” as the crowd became angri­er. Many peo­ple left flow­ers out­side the perime­ter and went home. At one point, a bus arrived car­ry­ing a the moth­ers of some of those who died. A group of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists shout­ed: “Glo­ry to Ukraine!” as they dis­em­barked from the bus, leav­ing the women vis­i­bly shak­en.

The events in Odessa were one of the most con­tro­ver­sial chap­ters of the peri­od that began with the Maid­an protests in Kiev in Feb­ru­ary 2014and end­ed with a sep­a­ratist upris­ing in parts of east Ukraine that received Russ­ian mil­i­tary and finan­cial back­ing.

On 2 May 2014, as pro-Russ­ian protests were grow­ing in many of the cities in south and east Ukraine, street clash­es between pro-Rus­sians and Ukraini­ans nation­al­ists end­ed with the pro-Rus­sians blocked into the five-storey Trade Unions build­ing, which was then set on fire. Dozens burned to death inside.

The deaths were por­trayed as a “fas­cist mas­sacre” by Russ­ian media, and act­ed as a recruit­ing sergeant for the sep­a­ratist cause in east Ukraine. In Kiev, Russ­ian media and secu­rity agen­cies were accused of stir­ring up and manip­u­lat­ing local dis­con­tent, furi­ous at the pro-west­ern turn Ukraine’s post-Maid­an gov­ern­ment want­ed to take.

After events in Donet­sk and Luhan­sk regions led to a war and thou­sands of deaths, some have claimed the Odessa events marked a “vic­tory” over pro-Russ­ian sen­ti­ment in the city. Nation­al­ist MP Ihor Mosiy­chuk wrote on Face­book that 2 May should be a “great nation­al hol­i­day”, as it was the day in which sep­a­ratist sen­ti­ment was crushed in Odessa.

In the run-up to the sec­ond anniver­sary, Saakashvili had plead­ed with Kiev to send rein­force­ments into the city, fear­ing “provo­ca­tions” from Rus­sia or local sep­a­ratist groups. About 300 mem­bers of Azov, for­merly a vol­un­teer bat­tal­ion with many far-right mem­bers and now part of the offi­cial Nation­al Guard, were dis­patched to Odessa.

By the ear­ly evening, the day appeared to have passed more or less peace­fully, though police report­ed 14 arrests for pub­lic order offences.

Yuri Tkachev, who runs a news web­site many believe is sym­pa­thetic to the sep­a­ratist cause, said the “pro-Russ­ian” move­ment in the city was actu­ally not pro-Moscow but more anti-Kiev and against the Maid­an protest move­ment. “Of course there are peo­ple who would cheer if Putin came, but they are not the major­ity,” he said.

Odessa remains a divid­ed city, said Tkachev, but with the lead­ers of the sep­a­ratist move­ment either fled or jailed, there “are no achiev­able goals or any under­stand­ing of how to act” among their sup­port­ers.

An inves­ti­ga­tion into the events has stalled. While 20 pro-Russ­ian activists are stand­ing tri­al for the riots that took place ear­lier in the day, nobody has been charged with the events in the Trade Unions build­ing that led to most of the deaths.

 

Discussion

5 comments for “FTR #907 Update on Ukraine”

  1. Here’s a nice sto­ry from last month that’s almost hard to imag­ine these days: Ear­li­er this year, var­i­ous Ukrain­ian offi­cials, includ­ing for­mer Pres­i­dents Leonid Kravchuk and Vik­tor Yushchenko, wrote an open let­ter to Poland ask­ing for­give­ness for past atroc­i­ties. And last month, three for­mer Ukrain­ian pres­i­dents respond­ed in kind:

    Ukraine Today

    Pol­ish pres­i­dents, intel­lec­tu­als, pub­lic fig­ures ask Ukraine to for­give his­tor­i­cal crimes

    On 2 June 2016, Ukrain­ian reli­gious and polit­i­cal lead­ers addressed the Poles in an open let­ter of “repen­tance and for­give­ness”

    12:46 Jul. 5, 2016

    Pol­ish media pub­lished an open let­ter from three for­mer Pol­ish Pres­i­dents, intel­lec­tu­als, jour­nal­ists, com­mu­ni­ty and reli­gious lead­ers address­ing the Ukrain­ian nation: “Thank you for your let­ter, and please for­give the wrong­do­ings com­mit­ted by the Pol­ish against their broth­ers — Ukrain­ian peo­ple”.

    This is a response to the let­ter “of repen­tance and for­give­ness” sub­mit­ted by for­mer Ukrain­ian Pres­i­dents Leonid Kravchuk and Vik­tor Yushchenko, Ukrain­ian church bish­ops and pub­lic fig­ures to the Pol­ish soci­ety, ask­ing Poles to for­give Ukraini­ans for their his­tor­i­cal faults.

    ...

    “Thank you for your let­ter, and please for­give the wrong­do­ings com­mit­ted by the Pol­ish against their broth­ers — Ukrain­ian peo­ple”.

    Warm fuzzies for every­one! Maybe there is hope for the future after all.

    But if there is hope, it pre­sum­ably includes hope that peo­ple like Andriy Paru­biy, Ukraine’s neo-Nazi Speak­er of the Rada, some­how expe­ri­ence a rad­i­cal per­son­al trans­for­ma­tion and basi­cal­ly become born-again nice peo­ple. Soon­er or lat­er. Prefer­ably soon­er:

    Founder of Ukraine Nazi par­ty, speak­er of Ukrain­ian Par­lia­ment calls Vol­hy­nia Mas­sacre “arguable his­tor­i­cal top­ic”. https://t.co/vtcoxpFVTZ— NedoUkraïn­ka (@ValLisitsa) July 6, 2016

    The Vol­hy­nia Mas­sacre is an “arguable his­tor­i­cal top­ic”? Paru­biy does­n’t seem to be into repen­tance and for­give­ness. It would be unfor­tu­nate if he was just a ran­dom indi­vid­ual but since he’s one of the most pow­er­ful politi­cians in Ukraine it’s pret­ty trag­ic. Regard­less, mak­ing nice with Poland via the acknowl­edg­ment of past atroc­i­ties by groups like the UPA is clear­ly a line the Speak­er of the Rada is unwill­ing to cross. Imag­ine that.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | July 6, 2016, 2:44 pm
  2. Ugh. It looks like Ukraine’s offi­cial under­stand­ing of its own WWII his­to­ry and the Holo­caust had anoth­er flir­ta­tion with offi­cial ‘up-is-down’ his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. And this time it was by Ukraine’s pres­i­dent doing the ‘up-is-down’ revis­ing, although in this case he at least reversed him­self when it became utter­ly unde­ni­able:

    Defend­ing His­to­ry

    More Fake News, Again from Ukraine and Once More — About the Holo­caust

    11 Jan­u­ary 2018

    While much is said in some Amer­i­can media out­lets about “fake news” in the US, the small­ness of the mat­ters being dis­cussed might come into focus when com­pared with Ukraine, which is of late pro­duc­ing rather much fake news about the Holo­caust and ele­men­tary points in World War II his­to­ry.

    As we report­ed back in Octo­ber, Ukrain­ian media out­let Radio Svo­bo­da — the Ukrain­ian arm of the US Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed arm of RFERL — post­ed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um. It is an image of Pol­ish Jews being deport­ed to a death camp. There was just one prob­lem. Radio Svo­bo­da claimed the pic­ture was from 1949 of Ukraini­ans being deport­ed to Siberia. In fact, so effec­tive was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that Pres­i­dent Poroshenko him­self tweet­ed it claim­ing it showed Ukraini­ans being deport­ed. To Poroshenko’s cred­it, his office took it down almost imme­di­ate­ly after we point­ed this out.

    Today it emerged that a major Ukrain­ian media out­let has struck again. In a Decem­ber 20th arti­cle about the hor­rors of the NKVD (Sovi­et fore­run­ner of the KGB), media out­let “Ukrin­form” also bor­rowed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um, this time of Ukrain­ian Aux­il­iary Police­men shoot­ing a Jew­ish child and moth­er — and fraud­u­lent­ly claimed it was actu­al­ly of the NKVD shoot­ing peo­ple. The cap­tion reads in trans­la­tion: “Atroc­i­ties of the Chekhists: the exe­cu­tion of a moth­er and child by the NKVD”.

    Ukrin­form got away with it for three weeks until Ukrain­ian Jew­ish activist Eduard Dolin­sky called them out. And once again, poof, Ukrin­form took down the Holo­caust Muse­um pic­ture, nat­u­ral­ly with no apol­o­gy, com­ment or cor­rec­tion note.

    Ukrin­form for­got about one thing though: Noth­ing ever com­plete­ly dis­ap­pears from the inter­net, and so now there is, for the record, the cached ver­sion of the orig­i­nal arti­cle show­cas­ing Ukrinform’s abom­inable forgery. Com­pare the orig­i­nal Ukrin­form arti­cle from Decem­ber (pic­ture is toward the bot­tom; as PDF) with the actu­al image from the US Holo­caust Muse­um here and below.

    ———-
    “More Fake News, Again from Ukraine and Once More — About the Holo­caust”; Defend­ing His­to­ry; 01/11/2018

    “Today it emerged that a major Ukrain­ian media out­let has struck again. In a Decem­ber 20th arti­cle about the hor­rors of the NKVD (Sovi­et fore­run­ner of the KGB), media out­let “Ukrin­form” also bor­rowed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um, this time of Ukrain­ian Aux­il­iary Police­men shoot­ing a Jew­ish child and moth­er — and fraud­u­lent­ly claimed it was actu­al­ly of the NKVD shoot­ing peo­ple. The cap­tion reads in trans­la­tion: “Atroc­i­ties of the Chekhists: the exe­cu­tion of a moth­er and child by the NKVD”.

    That’s right, a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um was recast as a 1949 act by the Sovi­ets:

    ...
    As we report­ed back in Octo­ber, Ukrain­ian media out­let Radio Svo­bo­da — the Ukrain­ian arm of the US Gov­ern­ment-fund­ed arm of RFERL — post­ed a pic­ture from the US Holo­caust Muse­um. It is an image of Pol­ish Jews being deport­ed to a death camp. There was just one prob­lem. Radio Svo­bo­da claimed the pic­ture was from 1949 of Ukraini­ans being deport­ed to Siberia. In fact, so effec­tive was Radio Svoboda’s forgery that Pres­i­dent Poroshenko him­self tweet­ed it claim­ing it showed Ukraini­ans being deport­ed. To Poroshenko’s cred­it, his office took it down almost imme­di­ate­ly after we point­ed this out.
    ...

    “To Poroshenko’s cred­it, his office took it down almost imme­di­ate­ly after we point­ed this out.”

    So at least Poroshenko will reverse these kinds of absurd white­wash­ings when it’s con­clu­sive­ly point­ed out to him. Like when a pic­ture is tak­en from the US Holo­caust Muse­um and turned into Sovi­et atroc­i­ty.

    Unfor­tu­nate­ly, such retrac­tions are increas­ing­ly the excep­tion, not the rule in Ukraine. Because the new offi­cial rules are that Ukraine’s under­stand­ing of its own his­to­ry needs to be com­plete­ly rewrit­ten. And rewrit­ten in such a way that almost entire­ly absolves the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist units out of any mean­ing­ful role in the eth­nic cleans­ing at all.

    For a par­tic­u­lar­ly egre­gious exam­ple of this, let’s look at a piece that was trans­lat­ed and put out by The Ukraine Cri­sis Media Cen­ter, a pro-Maid­an NGO set up in 2014. The piece pur­ports to be a his­toric ‘debunk­ing’ of the idea that the Nachti­gall, Roland, and Gali­cia bat­tal­ions were ulti­mate­ly under SS con­trol and played an real role the mas­sacres like the pogroms of Lviv. And it’s co-authored by Ser­hiy Riabenko of the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry, the offi­cial gov­ern­ment agency for rewrit­ing Ukraine’s his­to­ry.

    So what was being debunked in this piece? This:

    Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War the Nazi estab­lished Nachti­gall (Nightin­gale) and Roland bat­tal­ions as well as the Gali­cia divi­sion, the units were com­posed of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists. These units were formed of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, were part of the Waf­fen-SS struc­ture and sub­or­di­nat­ed to its com­mand, their mem­bers had the Waf­fen-SS ranks. Gali­cia, Roland and Gali­cia divi­sion were formed to kill civil­ians in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

    That’s what the fol­low­ing piece claims to debunk.

    And in terms of his­tor­i­cal white­wash­ing tac­tics it’s a pret­ty good choice of a ‘myth’ to ‘debunk’ because that par­tic­u­lar myth is easy to par­tial­ly debunk. The Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions were formed under the Ger­man Abwehr (mil­i­tary intel­li­gence), which says noth­ing about who was ulti­mate­ly com­mand­ing them. So all the authors had to do was point this out, and say, “Aha! Look at how inac­cu­rate this myth is!” Which is basi­cal­ly what the authors did in the piece.

    But the rest of that ‘myth’ isn’t so easy to ‘debunk’. The Gali­cia divi­sion was unam­bigu­ous­ly work­ing under the SS, and the role these groups played in the mass killing of civil­ians as part of the eth­nic cleans­ing oper­a­tions is well doc­u­ment­ed. And it’s rather dif­fi­cult not to cat­e­go­rize the mem­bers of these units as “Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors”.

    So how were these aspects of the ‘myth’ addressed? Well, the authors basi­cal­ly did­n’t address the eth­nic cleans­ing at all when it came to the Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions oth­er than to say they weren’t set up com­bat bat­tal­ions. And then they dis­missed any role the Gali­cia divi­sion played by refer­ing to the Deschênes Com­mis­sion — a 1985 Cana­di­an inves­ti­ga­tion into the claim that Cana­da had become a haven for Nazi war crim­i­nals — and sim­ply stat­ed that the some mem­bers of the Gali­cia divi­sion inves­ti­gat­ed were found not to have com­mit­ted war crimes.

    The “Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor” label is refut­ed by argu­ing that the Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions thought they were get­ting set up and trained by the Ger­man army sole­ly for the pur­pose form­ing a new Ukrain­ian army lat­er (the UPA), imply­ing that the mem­bers of these units were basi­cal­ly tricked into col­lab­o­rat­ing and ignor­ing UPA atroc­i­ties.

    So that’s an exam­ple of one tech­nique what the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry is using to white­wash the his­to­ry of the role these WWII units played in Holo­caust: by ‘debunk­ing’ tan­gen­tial claims as a form of proxy ‘debunk­ing’ of the entire doc­u­ment­ed his­to­ry of the roles these groups played the Holo­caust:

    Ukraine Cri­sis Media Cen­ter

    10 myths about the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA). Myth no.2: Were Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions, and Gali­cia divi­sion death squads of the SS?

    Kyiv, May 30, 2017

    Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions were not part of the SS struc­ture, their mem­bers did not bear SS ranks and were gen­er­al­ly accom­plish­ing sup­port­ing func­tions. Gali­cia divi­sion was pri­mar­i­ly used as a com­bat unit. Why are they called death squads then?

    UCMC pub­lish­es a trans­lat­ed short ver­sion of the orig­i­nal Ukrain­ian-lan­guage arti­cle by Novoe Vre­mya. Authors of the orig­i­nal text are Ole­sia Isaiuk of the Cen­ter for Research of the Ukrain­ian Resis­tance Move­ment; and Ser­hiy Riabenko of the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.

    The myth

    Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War the Nazi estab­lished Nachti­gall (Nightin­gale) and Roland bat­tal­ions as well as the Gali­cia divi­sion, the units were com­posed of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists. These units were formed of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, were part of the Waf­fen-SS struc­ture and sub­or­di­nat­ed to its com­mand, their mem­bers had the Waf­fen-SS ranks. Gali­cia, Roland and Gali­cia divi­sion were formed to kill civil­ians in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

    The facts

    The above myth was formed in Sovi­et times. As the myth goes, all par­tic­i­pants of the Ukrain­ian nation­al resis­tance move­ment dur­ing World War II were trai­tors of their moth­er­land and pup­pets in ser­vice with the Nazi eager to imple­ment all the orders of their “mas­ters”. The Nazi entrust­ed them only the “dirt­i­est” work – killing unarmed civil­ians.

    Authors of these “sen­sa­tion­al” mate­ri­als often have lit­tle under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ence between the mil­i­tary units that were active in the ter­ri­to­ry of present-day Ukraine dur­ing World War II.

    Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions had nev­er been units of the Waf­fen-SS. Their cre­ation was ini­ti­at­ed by OUN (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists) in coop­er­a­tion with Wehrma­cht offi­cers, in par­tic­u­lar with those from the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion Abwehr.

    How­ev­er each of the bat­tal­ion founders was fol­low­ing their own pur­pose. For OUN the two bat­tal­ions were to some extent the basis for the future Ukrain­ian army. In ear­ly 1941 the OUN com­mand was aware of the upcom­ing war between Ger­many and the USSR. They were hop­ing that at the out­break of the war they will orga­nize a revolt to estab­lish an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state.

    To pre­pare for the revolt and to be able to fur­ther hold the ter­ri­to­ry peo­ple with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and weapons were need­ed. How­ev­er, in the sit­u­a­tion OUN found itself after the west­ern Ukraine was annexed by the Sovi­et Union, its mem­bers could have been trained only in the ranks of the Ger­man army. West­ern Euro­pean states did not treat OUN as an inde­pen­dent actor and did not sup­port it. Mean­while, nego­ti­a­tions with the main ene­my – the USSR – was unac­cept­able for OUN.

    Nego­ti­at­ing with the Abwehr com­mand OUN rep­re­sen­ta­tives insist­ed on the set­up of spe­cial units in which the orga­ni­za­tion mem­bers were sup­posed to get trained to lat­er become the basis for form­ing of the new Ukrain­ian army.

    How­ev­er the Ger­man side had dif­fer­ent plans. The Abwehr com­mand saw Nachti­gall and Roland as sub­ver­sive and recon­nais­sance bat­tal­ions that were sup­posed to orga­nize sub­ver­sive acts against the Sovi­et mil­i­tary units as well as to safe­guard rede­ploy­ment of the Ger­man troops, unarm­ing the remains of the Red Army troops, safe­guard­ing the ech­e­lons with cap­tives and ammu­ni­tion.

    Tasks for the bat­tal­ions intro­duced by both the Abwehr and OUN dif­fered con­sid­er­ably from the tasks that the Waf­fen-SS units were sup­posed to ful­fill in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

    The sol­diers and part of the battalion’s com­mand were Ukraini­ans. They had mil­i­tary, not SS ranks, while their com­man­ders from the Ger­man side were also from the Wehrma­cht. Nei­ther Nachti­gall nor Roland were sub­or­di­nat­ed to the SS com­mand.

    Despite the hopes of the OUN, par­tic­i­pa­tion in com­bat actions by both bat­tal­ions was lim­it­ed. In sum­mer 1941 Roland was rede­ployed to Moldo­va and Ukraine’s Ode­sa region where its war­riors were await­ing the order sev­er­al weeks. It was sub­se­quent­ly rede­ployed to Aus­tria.

    The Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion took part in the seizure of Lviv as part of the Ger­man army and moved fur­ther to reach Vin­nyt­sia. In August 1941 it was called back from the front, on Sep­tem­ber 16 both bat­tal­ions were reor­ga­nized.

    The his­to­ry of the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. It was estab­lished two years after the Nachti­gall and Roland batal­lions, in spring 1943, in east­ern Gali­cia that was part of the Ger­man Gen­er­al Gov­ern­ment back then.

    Despite the fact that until April 1945 the division’s offi­cial name – the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the SS (1st Gali­cian) had the “SS” abbre­vi­a­tion in it, since its ear­ly days the divi­sion was a mere­ly mil­i­tary unit. That’s why it was not part of the gen­er­al SS (All­ge­meine SS) but instead of the so-called SS troops (Waf­fen-SS). Such divi­sions were over forty, half of them were most­ly com­posed of the peo­ple resid­ing in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries and in the states being Germany’s allies (includ­ing Croa­t­ians, Lat­vians, Esto­ni­ans, Hun­gar­i­ans, French etc.). Gali­cia divi­sion was formed to take part in com­bat actions at the front along­side the Wehrma­cht.

    Its sol­diers and junior offi­cers were Ukraini­ans – most­ly res­i­dents of Gali­cia. Until 1945 the com­mand posts that ranked high­er than the bat­tal­ion com­man­der were most­ly cov­ered by Ger­mans, how­ev­er there were the cas­es when there were Ukraini­ans.

    Ukraini­ans enlist­ed in the divi­sion guid­ed by var­i­ous motives. Part of then took their ser­vice with Gali­cia as a chance to get mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and weapons to lat­er join UPA that at that time was not able to pro­vide nei­ther train­ing nor arms for such a num­ber of com­bat­ants. Oth­ers were hop­ing that the divi­sion will serve the basis to form the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary units that would fight against the USSR, even on the side of Ger­mans. Ukraini­ans also enlist­ed in the divi­sion not to be forcibly moved to work to Ger­many or not to remain in the ter­ri­to­ry in which the Sovi­et troops were sup­posed to come soon. Part of the Gali­cia divi­sion com­bat­ants were mobi­lized forcibly.

    [In 1940 OUN split into two parts: OUN(B) head­ed by Stepan Ban­dera and OUN(M) head­ed by Andriy Mel­nyk. – UCMC] Offi­cial­ly OUN(B) was against the form­ing of the divi­sion and was even spread­ing the calls to Ukraini­ans not to enlist in the Gali­cia divi­sion. How­ev­er a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tion mem­bers actu­al­ly turned to be part of the divi­sion. They want­ed to get trained and to receive the weapons as well as to serve as the link between the division’s com­bat­ants and UPA to arrange for their tran­si­tion to the Ukrain­ian under­ground when such the occa­sion aris­es. Instead OUN(M) on the con­trary called on the youth to enlist into the divi­sion con­sid­er­ing the unit an oppor­tu­ni­ty for armed fight against the USSR.

    Gali­cia divi­sion took part in com­bat against the advance of the Red Army. In sum­mer 1944 the divi­sion was deployed to near Brody, Lviv region, sub­or­di­nat­ed to the 13th Army Corps as part of the Army Group “North­ern Ukraine”. The divi­sion was encir­cled in com­bat and suf­fered loss­es. Out of the 11 thou­sand fight­ers only about three thou­sand got out of the encir­clement. About 1,5 thou­sand of them head­ed by Gen­er­al Fre­itag stepped back towards Tran­scarpathia (Zakarpat­tia). Rest were either killed or tak­en cap­tive by the Sovi­et troops, or joined the UPA. The division’s loss­es amount­ed to 70 per cent of its per­son­nel.

    ...

    There is a myth say­ing that the Gali­cia divi­sion alleged­ly sup­pressed the War­saw Upris­ing in August – Sep­tem­ber 1944, how­ev­er it does not sit well with the facts.

    In April 1945 the divi­sion was fight­ing for some time at the front near the Schloss Gle­ichen­berg cas­tle in Aus­tria. In the end of April, it was exclud­ed from the Waf­fen-SS troops struc­ture and renamed into the 1st Ukrain­ian divi­sion.

    After the Ger­man sur­ren­der the division’s fight­ers were interned in the British and Amer­i­can zones of occu­pa­tion, after 1948 they moved across the world – to the US, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, Argenti­na and oth­er coun­tries. In 1985 the so-called Deschênes Com­mis­sion was estab­lished to inves­ti­gate the facts of pos­si­ble pres­ence of war crim­i­nals in Cana­da includ­ing those who came from Ukraine and the Baltic states. The Com­mis­sion stud­ied archive mate­ri­als and inter­ro­gat­ed wit­ness­es in Cana­da and West­ern Europe to lat­er pro­duce a report. Accord­ing to the report nei­ther of the emi­grants – for­mer par­tic­i­pants of the Gali­cia divi­sion, was guilty in hav­ing com­mit­ted war crimes dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    ———-

    “10 myths about the Ukrain­ian Insur­gent Army (UPA). Myth no.2: Were Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions, and Gali­cia divi­sion death squads of the SS?” by Ukraine Cri­sis Media Cen­ter; Ukraine Cri­sis Media Cen­ter; 05/30/2017

    “UCMC pub­lish­es a trans­lat­ed short ver­sion of the orig­i­nal Ukrain­ian-lan­guage arti­cle by Novoe Vre­mya. Authors of the orig­i­nal text are Ole­sia Isaiuk of the Cen­ter for Research of the Ukrain­ian Resis­tance Move­ment; and Ser­hiy Riabenko of the Ukrain­ian Insti­tute of Nation­al Mem­o­ry.”

    Yep, this trans­la­tion was just a short ver­sion of the orig­i­nal Ukrain­ian-lan­guage arti­cle. It would be inter­est­ing to read a trans­la­tion of the full ver­sion. Nau­se­at­ing, but still inter­est­ing.

    So let’s review the ‘myth’ and the ‘debunk­ing’:

    ...
    The myth

    Dur­ing the Sec­ond World War the Nazi estab­lished Nachti­gall (Nightin­gale) and Roland bat­tal­ions as well as the Gali­cia divi­sion, the units were com­posed of Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists. These units were formed of the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, were part of the Waf­fen-SS struc­ture and sub­or­di­nat­ed to its com­mand, their mem­bers had the Waf­fen-SS ranks. Gali­cia, Roland and Gali­cia divi­sion were formed to kill civil­ians in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.
    ...

    That’s the alleged ‘myth’.

    Now here’s the ‘debunk­ing’. First it por­trays the above ‘myth’ as a prod­uct of Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da (which should sound famil­iar):

    ...
    The facts

    The above myth was formed in Sovi­et times. As the myth goes, all par­tic­i­pants of the Ukrain­ian nation­al resis­tance move­ment dur­ing World War II were trai­tors of their moth­er­land and pup­pets in ser­vice with the Nazi eager to imple­ment all the orders of their “mas­ters”. The Nazi entrust­ed them only the “dirt­i­est” work – killing unarmed civil­ians.
    ...

    “The above myth was formed in Sovi­et times.” LOL, yeah, “Sovi­et time.” In oth­er words, 1917–1991. It’s the kind of approach to his­to­ry that allows for vir­tu­al­ly any aspect of Ukraine’s offi­cial records from that peri­od to be writ­ten off mere­ly by label­ing it ‘Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da’ that does­n’t just enable his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism. The basic assump­tion of ‘all things Sovi­et are evil and must be opposed’ is a bias that makes mas­sive his­tor­i­cal revi­sion­ism unavoid­able. That’s a key ele­ment of the dynam­ic here as a con­se­quence of Ukraine’s civ­il war: the reha­bil­i­ta­tion of the his­tor­i­cal nar­ra­tive around Ukraine’s far-right war heroes is being framed as part of the fight against ‘the Sovi­ets’ a.k.a Rus­sia.

    Yes, there is obvi­ous­ly going to be plen­ty of self-serv­ing pro­pa­gan­da from that peri­od. But that’s not an excuse to respond with self-serv­ing counter-pro­pa­gan­da. Espe­cial­ly when that self-serv­ing counter-pro­pa­gan­da serves the pur­pose of absolv­ing the per­pe­tra­tors of war crimes. But that’s what’s hap­pen­ing in Ukraine through the offi­cial gov­ern­ment agency of ‘Nation­al Mem­o­ry.’ And as we’ll see, the under­ly­ing argu­ment that’s being used to absolve these Ukrain­ian Ger­man-direct­ed local col­lab­o­ra­tionist units can used to be absolved vir­tu­al­ly all the Ger­man-direct­ed local col­lab­o­ra­tionist units in all coun­tries that fell under the con­trol of the Sovi­et Union. It’s a mech­a­nism for declar­ing the col­lec­tive under­stand­ing that emerged from the post WWII peri­od and the fol­low­ing decades of research and wit­ness tes­ti­mo­ny as all Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da. That’s part of the gov­ern­men­t’s agen­da in Ukraine right now.

    Next, the piece goes on to point out that the Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions were cre­at­ed by the Abwehr (Ger­man mil­i­tary intel­li­gence), not the SS, as if this is a rev­e­la­tion or pre­cludes the pos­si­bil­i­ty that they were effec­tive­ly under SS con­trol and/or car­ry­ing out eth­nic cleans­ing oper­a­tions:

    ...
    Authors of these “sen­sa­tion­al” mate­ri­als often have lit­tle under­stand­ing of the dif­fer­ence between the mil­i­tary units that were active in the ter­ri­to­ry of present-day Ukraine dur­ing World War II.

    Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions had nev­er been units of the Waf­fen-SS. Their cre­ation was ini­ti­at­ed by OUN (Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists) in coop­er­a­tion with Wehrma­cht offi­cers, in par­tic­u­lar with those from the mil­i­tary intel­li­gence orga­ni­za­tion Abwehr.
    ...

    Next, the authors por­tray col­lab­o­rat­ing with the Nazis as basi­cal­ly the only option these nation­al­ists had to get mil­i­tary train­ing in antic­i­pa­tion of form­ing an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state after the pre­sumed war between Ger­many and the USSR broke out. They also assert that the OUN com­man­ders insist­ed to the Abwehr that the Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions were pure­ly sup­posed to be trained by the Ger­mans for this future pur­pose of being the mil­i­tary for an inde­pen­dent Ukraine, but, lo and behold, the Abwehr had oth­er plans in mind and the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists did­n’t have a choice:

    ...
    How­ev­er each of the bat­tal­ion founders was fol­low­ing their own pur­pose. For OUN the two bat­tal­ions were to some extent the basis for the future Ukrain­ian army. In ear­ly 1941 the OUN com­mand was aware of the upcom­ing war between Ger­many and the USSR. They were hop­ing that at the out­break of the war they will orga­nize a revolt to estab­lish an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state.

    To pre­pare for the revolt and to be able to fur­ther hold the ter­ri­to­ry peo­ple with mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and weapons were need­ed. How­ev­er, in the sit­u­a­tion OUN found itself after the west­ern Ukraine was annexed by the Sovi­et Union, its mem­bers could have been trained only in the ranks of the Ger­man army. West­ern Euro­pean states did not treat OUN as an inde­pen­dent actor and did not sup­port it. Mean­while, nego­ti­a­tions with the main ene­my – the USSR – was unac­cept­able for OUN.

    Nego­ti­at­ing with the Abwehr com­mand OUN rep­re­sen­ta­tives insist­ed on the set­up of spe­cial units in which the orga­ni­za­tion mem­bers were sup­posed to get trained to lat­er become the basis for form­ing of the new Ukrain­ian army.

    How­ev­er the Ger­man side had dif­fer­ent plans. The Abwehr com­mand saw Nachti­gall and Roland as sub­ver­sive and recon­nais­sance bat­tal­ions that were sup­posed to orga­nize sub­ver­sive acts against the Sovi­et mil­i­tary units as well as to safe­guard rede­ploy­ment of the Ger­man troops, unarm­ing the remains of the Red Army troops, safe­guard­ing the ech­e­lons with cap­tives and ammu­ni­tion.
    ...

    “How­ev­er the Ger­man side had dif­fer­ent plans. The Abwehr com­mand saw Nachti­gall and Roland as sub­ver­sive and recon­nais­sance bat­tal­ions that were sup­posed to orga­nize sub­ver­sive acts against the Sovi­et mil­i­tary units as well as to safe­guard rede­ploy­ment of the Ger­man troops, unarm­ing the remains of the Red Army troops, safe­guard­ing the ech­e­lons with cap­tives and ammu­ni­tion.

    Note how the “dif­fer­ent plans” the Abwehr had in mind was things like “unarm­ing the remains of the Red Army troops” and “safe­guard­ing the ech­e­lons with cap­tives and ammu­ni­tion”. But not men­tion of any eth­nic cleans­ing.

    Next, the authors point out that the Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions had Wehrma­cht com­man­ders, not SS com­man­ders. And there were some Ukraini­ans in the com­mand struc­ture and the Ukraini­ans had mil­i­tary and not SS ranks, assert­ing that these units were not “sub­or­di­nat­ed to the SS com­mand”:

    ...
    Tasks for the bat­tal­ions intro­duced by both the Abwehr and OUN dif­fered con­sid­er­ably from the tasks that the Waf­fen-SS units were sup­posed to ful­fill in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries.

    The sol­diers and part of the battalion’s com­mand were Ukraini­ans. They had mil­i­tary, not SS ranks, while their com­man­ders from the Ger­man side were also from the Wehrma­cht. Nei­ther Nachti­gall nor Roland were sub­or­di­nat­ed to the SS com­mand.
    ...

    So that was the alleged debunk­ing of the notion the Nachti­gall and Roland bat­tal­ions were com­mand­ed by the SS. As we’ll see below, that’s a high­ly ques­tion­able asser­tion when you look at the Ger­man mil­i­tary fig­ure who was ulti­mate­ly com­mand­ing these units, Theodor Ober­laen­der. But the gen­er­al thrust of the meta-argu­ment they appear to be mak­ing is that if these bat­tal­ions weren’t under SS com­mand they clear­ly played no role in any of the pograms and mass slaugh­ters of Jews.

    Final­ly, the authors give a brief descrip­tion of some of the mil­i­tary actions of these units, not­ing that the Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion took part in the seizure of Lviv. What it does­n’t men­tion, at all, is the pogram against the Jews of Lviv that took place while the bat­tal­ion con­trolled the town. All they say is, “The Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion took part in the seizure of Lviv as part of the Ger­man army and moved fur­ther to reach Vin­nyt­sia”:

    ...
    Despite the hopes of the OUN, par­tic­i­pa­tion in com­bat actions by both bat­tal­ions was lim­it­ed. In sum­mer 1941 Roland was rede­ployed to Moldo­va and Ukraine’s Ode­sa region where its war­riors were await­ing the order sev­er­al weeks. It was sub­se­quent­ly rede­ployed to Aus­tria.

    The Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion took part in the seizure of Lviv as part of the Ger­man army and moved fur­ther to reach Vin­nyt­sia. In August 1941 it was called back from the front, on Sep­tem­ber 16 both bat­tal­ions were reor­ga­nized.
    ...

    The Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion appar­ent­ly just sort of passed through Lviv. Noth­ing of note hap­pened there it would seem based on this telling of the his­to­ry. And this is com­ing from Ukraine’s offi­cial ‘nation­al mem­o­ry’ insti­tute. It’s what pass­es as author­i­ta­tive his­to­ry in Ukraine today. ‘Debunk­ing’ via ahis­tor­i­cal proxy rea­son­ing.

    So now let’s look at how they treat the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion: There was no way they could deny it was an SS unit. The offi­cial name of the unit was “the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the SS (1st Gali­cian)”. So instead they attempt to quib­ble over whether or not it was part of the (All­ge­meine SS) or Waf­fen-SS, not­ing that the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion was part of the Waf­fen-SS. Since the All­ge­meine SS was the part of the SS in charge of enforc­ing the Nazis’ ‘racial poli­cies’, and the Waf­fen-SS units fought along­side the Ger­man mil­i­tary, this dis­tinc­tion is clear­ly being done to imply that the Gali­cia divi­sion could­n’t have played a role in any atroc­i­ties and was real­ly under SS com­mand. Which is of course non­sense since Waf­fen-SS units were involved in a mas­sive num­ber of atroc­i­ties and were ulti­mate­ly under the com­mand of the SS com­mand struc­ture, unless you believe that’s all Sovi­ety pro­pa­gan­da:

    ...
    The his­to­ry of the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion was com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent. It was estab­lished two years after the Nachti­gall and Roland batal­lions, in spring 1943, in east­ern Gali­cia that was part of the Ger­man Gen­er­al Gov­ern­ment back then.

    Despite the fact that until April 1945 the division’s offi­cial name – the 14th Waf­fen Grenadier Divi­sion of the SS (1st Gali­cian) had the “SS” abbre­vi­a­tion in it, since its ear­ly days the divi­sion was a mere­ly mil­i­tary unit. That’s why it was not part of the gen­er­al SS (All­ge­meine SS) but instead of the so-called SS troops (Waf­fen-SS). Such divi­sions were over forty, half of them were most­ly com­posed of the peo­ple resid­ing in the occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries and in the states being Germany’s allies (includ­ing Croa­t­ians, Lat­vians, Esto­ni­ans, Hun­gar­i­ans, French etc.). Gali­cia divi­sion was formed to take part in com­bat actions at the front along­side the Wehrma­cht.
    ...

    “...since its ear­ly days the divi­sion was a mere­ly mil­i­tary unit.”

    That’s the heart of the spin for the Gali­cia Bat­tal­ion: it was “a mere­ly mil­i­tary unit.” And there­fore did noth­ing like all the hor­ri­ble things peo­ple asso­ciate with the SS. This is what Ukraini­ans are being taught now.

    Next, the ‘debunk­ing’ once again points out that the high­er ranks were most­ly cov­ered by Ger­mans, which of course was the case. But it’s not like the Ger­man com­man­ders were the ones car­ry­ing out the mass killings. The Ukrain­ian mem­bers were the ones car­ry­ing out their Ger­man com­man­ders’ orders. To do things like car­ry out eth­nic clean­ing. And there’s no spe­cif­ic men­tion of the Ukrain­ian com­man­ders like Roman Shukhevych at all. Despite the new fes­ti­val cel­e­brat­ing him on the anniver­sary of the June 30th, 1941 dec­la­ra­tion of an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state in Lviv that coin­cid­ed with the start of the Lviv(Lvov) Pogroms car­ried out by the Nachti­gal Bat­tal­ion in the town. Unless that was all Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da:

    ...
    Its sol­diers and junior offi­cers were Ukraini­ans – most­ly res­i­dents of Gali­cia. Until 1945 the com­mand posts that ranked high­er than the bat­tal­ion com­man­der were most­ly cov­ered by Ger­mans, how­ev­er there were the cas­es when there were Ukraini­ans.
    ...

    Then the arti­cle reit­er­ates the argu­ment that peo­ple joined these units pret­ty much just to get train­ing for their planned Ukrain­ian inde­pen­dent state. Or to get train­ing in the hopes of join­ing the UPA lat­er (which had a lot of mas­sacres of its own). And while it’s no doubt true that a large per­cent­age of the mem­bers of these units want­ed to see an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state, that does­n’t changed the fact that the his­tor­i­cal record demon­strates that a lot of the mem­bers of these units want­ed a Ukrain­ian state that was a lot like Nazi Ger­many. They saw them­selves as fel­low Aryan suprema­cists. Ban­dera and Shukhevych want­ed an ‘eth­ni­cal­ly pure’ Ukraine! And that all is get­ting white­washed away:

    ...
    Ukraini­ans enlist­ed in the divi­sion guid­ed by var­i­ous motives. Part of then took their ser­vice with Gali­cia as a chance to get mil­i­tary expe­ri­ence and weapons to lat­er join UPA that at that time was not able to pro­vide nei­ther train­ing nor arms for such a num­ber of com­bat­ants. Oth­ers were hop­ing that the divi­sion will serve the basis to form the Ukrain­ian mil­i­tary units that would fight against the USSR, even on the side of Ger­mans. Ukraini­ans also enlist­ed in the divi­sion not to be forcibly moved to work to Ger­many or not to remain in the ter­ri­to­ry in which the Sovi­et troops were sup­posed to come soon. Part of the Gali­cia divi­sion com­bat­ants were mobi­lized forcibly.

    [In 1940 OUN split into two parts: OUN(B) head­ed by Stepan Ban­dera and OUN(M) head­ed by Andriy Mel­nyk. – UCMC] Offi­cial­ly OUN(B) was against the form­ing of the divi­sion and was even spread­ing the calls to Ukraini­ans not to enlist in the Gali­cia divi­sion. How­ev­er a num­ber of orga­ni­za­tion mem­bers actu­al­ly turned to be part of the divi­sion. They want­ed to get trained and to receive the weapons as well as to serve as the link between the division’s com­bat­ants and UPA to arrange for their tran­si­tion to the Ukrain­ian under­ground when such the occa­sion aris­es. Instead OUN(M) on the con­trary called on the youth to enlist into the divi­sion con­sid­er­ing the unit an oppor­tu­ni­ty for armed fight against the USSR.
    ...

    Again, the UPA, which was estab­lished by Shukhevych, engaged in eth­nic cleans­ing too. So this attempt to por­tray the mem­bers of the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion as not guilty of war crimes because they mere­ly want­ed to get train­ing to join the UPA is decep­tive on mul­ti­ple lev­els.

    And, final­ly, the piece attempts to explic­it­ly absolve the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion of any cul­pa­bil­i­ty in war crimes and eth­nic cleans­ing by point­ing to a 1985 inves­ti­ga­tion in Cana­da that absolved two Gali­cia mem­bers of war crimes:

    ...
    After the Ger­man sur­ren­der the division’s fight­ers were interned in the British and Amer­i­can zones of occu­pa­tion, after 1948 they moved across the world – to the US, Cana­da, Aus­tralia, Argenti­na and oth­er coun­tries. In 1985 the so-called Deschênes Com­mis­sion was estab­lished to inves­ti­gate the facts of pos­si­ble pres­ence of war crim­i­nals in Cana­da includ­ing those who came from Ukraine and the Baltic states. The Com­mis­sion stud­ied archive mate­ri­als and inter­ro­gat­ed wit­ness­es in Cana­da and West­ern Europe to lat­er pro­duce a report. Accord­ing to the report nei­ther of the emi­grants – for­mer par­tic­i­pants of the Gali­cia divi­sion, was guilty in hav­ing com­mit­ted war crimes dur­ing the Sec­ond World War.

    So a Can­da­di­an com­mis­sion looks into whether or not some Gali­cia bat­tal­ion mem­bers who emi­grat­ed there were involved with war crimes and con­clud­ed that was­n’t the case. And this is used as some sort of proxy con­clu­sion that the Gali­cia bat­tal­ion was­n’t engaged in these atroc­i­ties.

    This is now offi­cial Ukrain­ian his­to­ry: con­trary to the long-stand­ing his­tor­i­cal under­stand­ing that the Nazis used local par­ti­sans to car­ry out some of the worst acts that took place in occu­pied ter­ri­to­ries, the Ukain­ian nation­al­ists fight­ing under the Nazi com­mand were actu­al­ly not involved at all.

    So, hav­ing digest­ed all of that, let’s take a look at a cou­ple excerpts from “The New Ger­many and the Old Nazis” by T.H. Tetens about Theodor Ober­laen­der, the Ger­man ‘liai­son’ to the Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion. So, basi­cal­ly, he was the guy ulti­mate­ly call­ing the shots. And as we’ll see, when Ober­laen­der was ques­tioned about evens like the pograms of Lviv(Lvov/Lemberg), he claimed that, not only did he play no role, but that it nev­er hap­pened while he was there com­mand­ing the Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion and no shots were fired dur­ing the peri­od of the pogrom. Yep.

    First here’s a descrip­tion of Ober­lan­der as one of many high rank­ing Nazis who direct­ed the eth­nic cleans­ing and had their rep­u­ta­tions so pro­tect­ed that they became high-rank­ing gov­ern­ment min­is­ters in the post-war peri­od:

    5 The Hid­den Ene­my

    ...

    When Chan­cel­lor Ade­nauer formed his sec­ond cab­i­net after the 1953 elec­tion, it was pre­sent­ed to the world as a team of stanch democ­rats. How­ev­er, the record showed a num­ber of his min­is­ters either as mem­bers of the Nazi par­ty and the SS or as extreme nation­al­ists who had served the Hitler cause in impor­tant posi­tions. Min­is­ters Theodor Ober­laen­der, Emanuel Preusker, and Wald­mar Kraft had been offi­cers in Hitler’s Elite Guard. Dr. Ger­hard Schroed­er, a par­ty mem­ber, served the Nazis as a legal advis­er and storm troop leader. As Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or he now has con­trol over the police and is respon­si­ble for the inter­nal secu­ri­ty of the Bonn Repub­lic.

    For­mer New York Times cor­re­spon­dent Del­bert Clark report­ed that the record of the Min­is­ter of Eco­nom­ics, Dr. Lud­wig Erhard, “was one of full co-oper­a­tion with the Nazi regime.” He was “advis­er to Nazi Gauleit­er Buer­ck­el in the Saar, and chief of the Hit­lerite Insti­tute for Indus­tri­al Research.” 10 Dr. Fritz Scha­ef­fer, the Min­is­ter of Finance (lat­er Min­is­ter of Jus­tice), praised Hitler in glow­ing terms as the “sav­ior of the Reich.” Del­bert Clark described Scha­ef­fer as “a clever and high­ly dan­ger­ous char­ac­ter.” Under Unit­ed States occu­pa­tion Scha­ef­fer was appoint­ed Min­is­ter-Pres­i­dent of Bavaria. How­ev­er, mount­ing evi­dence soon revealed that he had been a Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, and in 1946 he was removed from office and banned for sev­er­al years from all polit­i­cal activities.11

    The Min­is­ter of Trans­porta­tion, Dr. Hans Christoph See­bohm, served the Nazi regime as an eco­nom­ic advis­er in Sile­sia and in occu­pied Czecho­slo­va­kia. Dr. See­bohm is known all over Europe as an ultra­na­tion­al­is­tic trou­ble­mak­er. Der Spiegel of March 23, 1960, pub­lished a two-col­umn pro­file which depict­ed See­bohm as the “pro­to­type of the eter­nal Nazi.” His rab­ble-rous­ing Sun­day speech­es have become a con­tro­ver­sial top­ic in the Euro­pean press and have fte­quent­ly been a source of uneasi­ness to Dr. Ade­nauer. As leader of the Right­ist Ger­man par­ty, Dr. See­bohm has open­ly expressed his deep rev­er­ence for the swasti­ka and has vicious­ly attacked the West­ern pow­ers. On Sep­tem­ber 15, 1951, he addressed a mass meet­ing of the Sude­ten Ger­mans at Stuttgart in which he denounced the “mon­strous crime the vic­tors had com­mit­ted against Ger­many, Europe and the whole world.”

    Anoth­er cab­i­net mem­ber, Dr. Her­mann Schae­fer, served dur­ing the war as an impor­tant offi­cial in Reichs­marschal Goer­ing’s Arma­ments Office.

    Of all his cab­i­net mem­bers, the Min­is­ter for Expellees, Dr. Theodor Ober­laen­der, caused the Chan­cel­lor most cha­grin. As a high Nazi offi­cial and offi­cer of the SS (he was Reichs­fuehrer of the Ger­man Alliance in the East), Dr. Ober­laen­der had used the Nazi press to demand the expul­sion and exter­mi­na­tion of the Slav­ic peo­ples and the rapid col­o­niza­tion of the vast con­quered ter­ri­to­ries by the Ger­man mas­ter race. 12 For years Ger­man demo­c­ra­t­ic papers had charged Dr. Ober­laen­der with pack­ing the ranks of his min­istry with for­mer Nazis. 13 In 1959 Ober­laen­der was the cen­ter of a storm that final­ly forced his res­ig­na­tion in May 1960. He was blamed for the mass mur­der of thou­sands of Jews and Pol­ish intel­lec­tu­als who had been liq­ui­dat­ed in July 1941 when a spe­cial SS task force under his com­mand occu­pied the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg (Lvov). *

    With a cab­i­net of such back­ground, it comes as no sur­prise to hear that the min­istries are stud­ded with for­mer high­rank­ing Nazis. The excuse has often been heard that qual­i­fied appli­cants with a sol­id demo­c­ra­t­ic record were not avail­able. This has been vehe­ment­ly denied by demo­c­ra­t­ic crit­ics. In the case of the For­eign Office, there was a list of more than a thou­sand appli­cants, men of demo­c­ra­t­ic prin­ci­ples with diplo­mat­ic and for­eign-lan­guage expe­ri­ence. Dr. Blanken­horn chose to hire his old Ribben­trop asso­ciates.

    The Min­is­tery for Expellees, once head­ed by Ober­laen­der, is still known as a haven for for­mer high-rank­ing Nazis. The per­son­al assis­tant to the min­is­ter is today Dr. Wol­fram, a for­mer SS offi­cer. The fanat­i­cal race pro­pa­gan­dist Wern­er Ventz­ki, ex-may­or of Lodz, serves as direc­tor of a depart­ment. Head of the press office, Dr. Schlick­er, was a storm troop leader.

    ...

    * At that time Dr. Ober­laen­der was an SS offi­cer and a mem­ber of the noto­ri­ous Abwehr. Accord­ing to Die Zeit of Ham­burg, he was an expert “for the treat­ment of oth­er races” and the polit­i­cal offi­cer of the Ein­satz (ter­ror) Nachti­gal­li­gal unit. Ober­laen­der’s unit entered Lem­berg on June 30, and remained in the city six days. Accord­ing to Reitlinger and oth­er sources, 7,000 peo­ple were killed, chiefly between July 2 and 4. Obe­rI­aen­der does not deny that he was in Lem­berg in those days, but says that dur­ing his stay “not a sin­gle shot was fired” (Die Zeit, Octo­ber 9, 1959).

    ———-

    The New Ger­many and the Old Nazis by T.H. Tetens; Ran­dom House [HC]; Copy­right 1961 by T.H. Tetens; pp. 50–52

    “Of all his cab­i­net mem­bers, the Min­is­ter for Expellees, Dr. Theodor Ober­laen­der, caused the Chan­cel­lor most cha­grin. As a high Nazi offi­cial and offi­cer of the SS (he was Reichs­fuehrer of the Ger­man Alliance in the East), Dr. Ober­laen­der had used the Nazi press to demand the expul­sion and exter­mi­na­tion of the Slav­ic peo­ples and the rapid col­o­niza­tion of the vast con­quered ter­ri­to­ries by the Ger­man mas­ter race. 12 For years Ger­man demo­c­ra­t­ic papers had charged Dr. Ober­laen­der with pack­ing the ranks of his min­istry with for­mer Nazis. 13 In 1959 Ober­laen­der was the cen­ter of a storm that final­ly forced his res­ig­na­tion in May 1960. He was blamed for the mass mur­der of thou­sands of Jews and Pol­ish intel­lec­tu­als who had been liq­ui­dat­ed in July 1941 when a spe­cial SS task force under his com­mand occu­pied the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg (Lvov). *”

    Yep, Ober­laen­der was the Reichs­fuehrer of the Nazi par­ty’s Ger­man Alliance in the East (Bund Deutsch­er Osten), until 1937, at which point it was merged with the Volks­deutsche Mit­tel­stelle and came under the con­trol of the All­ge­meine-SS and became a key organ for imple­ment­ing the SS’s eth­nic puri­ty cam­paign. That’s the kind of guy Ober­laen­der was.

    And note the foot­note describ­ing him as an SS offi­cer and mem­ber of the Abwehr:

    ...
    * At that time Dr. Ober­laen­der was an SS offi­cer and a mem­ber of the noto­ri­ous Abwehr. Accord­ing to Die Zeit of Ham­burg, he was an expert “for the treat­ment of oth­er races” and the polit­i­cal offi­cer of the Ein­satz (ter­ror) Nachti­gal­li­gal unit. Ober­laen­der’s unit entered Lem­berg on June 30, and remained in the city six days. Accord­ing to Reitlinger and oth­er sources, 7,000 peo­ple were killed, chiefly between July 2 and 4. Obe­rI­aen­der does not deny that he was in Lem­berg in those days, but says that dur­ing his stay “not a sin­gle shot was fired” (Die Zeit, Octo­ber 9, 1959).
    ...

    So accord­ing to Ham­burg’s Die Zeit, “he was an expert “for the treat­ment of oth­er races” and the polit­i­cal offi­cer of the Ein­satz (ter­ror) Nachti­gal­li­gal unit. Ober­laen­der’s unit entered Lem­berg on June 30, and remained in the city six days.” Recall that June 30th is the same day the anti-Jew­ish pogroms start­ed in Lviv coi­cid­ing with the decla­tion of an inde­pen­dent Ukrain­ian state (which is now offi­cial­ly cel­e­brat­ed as a Shukhevych fes­ti­val hol­i­day). And by 1959 he was West­er Ger­many’s min­is­ter of refugees.

    So was T.H. Tetens incor­rect in char­ac­ter­iz­ing Ober­laen­der as an SS offi­cer? Here’s the thing...if that was a mis­take, does it real­ly mat­ter in terms of the larg­er his­tor­i­cal record and under­stand­ing of the role units like the Nachti­gall bat­tal­ion played in these mas­sacres? Accord­ing to the proxy-‘debunking’ tech­nique used by Ukraine’s Nation­al Insti­tute of His­tor­i­cal Mem­o­ry, this would mat­ter a lot...because it could be used for proxy ‘debunk­ing’.

    So what did Ober­laen­der say in his defense when these ques­tions about his war crimes past come up: He admit­ted to com­mand­ing the Nachti­gall bat­tlion when it arrived in Lviv, but claimed that not a sin­gle shot was fired by any­one dur­ing his time there:

    Chap­ter 15 From the Rogues’ Gallery

    The gen­er­al lax­i­ty of the courts in han­dling Nazi war crime cas­es has done much to under­mine the con­fi­dence of world pub­lic opin­ion in a tru­ly reformed Ger­many. Because of the pre­vi­ous close involve­ment of Nazi crim­i­nals and Ger­man law offi­cials, it is quite log­i­cal, and almost nat­ur­al, that pros­e­cu­tors fre­quent­ly hes­i­tate to ini­ti­ate indict­ments. This has been true in cas­es where wit­ness­es and ample evi­dence have been avail­able for years. The sto­ry of the Waf­fen SS Gen­er­al and high police offi­cial, Heinz Reine­far­th, has been pub­lished in lead­ing Ger­man news­pa­pers.

    Gen­er­al Reine­far­th played a promi­nent role in the mur­der­ous sup­pres­sion of the War­saw upris­ing in August 1944. The insur­gents had formed a poor­ly armed free­dom corps of 40,000, who tried to dri­ve the Ger­mans out of the Pol­ish cap­i­tal. Gen­er­al Reine­far­th’s SS moved in with tanks and defeat­ed the resis­tance.

    The doc­u­ment­ed record shows that Reine­far­th and his troops not only fought against the com­bat­ants, but they took their revenge on the civil­ian pop­u­la­tion. More than 200,000 peo­ple were killed with­in one month. All wound­ed Poles, includ­ing doc­tors, nuns, and nurs­es were slain. Thou­sands of women and chil­dren were dri­ven into church­es, locked up, and burned alive. The most heinous acts were com­mit­ted by the SS DirIewanger Brigade, an out­fit com­posed of noto­ri­ous crim­i­nals who had been released from prison so that they could “regain their hon­or” on the war front. Some weeks lat­er, Reine­far­th report­ed with great pride in the Nazi paper Ost­deutsch­er Beobachter (Octo­ber 5, 1944) that his SS force had liq­ui­dat­ed “more than a quar­ter of a mil­lion Poles dur­ing the War­saw fight­ing.” For his hero­ic deeds, Reine­far­th was dec­o­rat­ed by Hitler.

    When the occu­pa­tion author­i­ties ordered demo­c­ra­t­ic elec­tions after the war, the peo­ple of the fash­ion­able North Sea resort of Wes­t­e­rIand vot­ed the for­mer SS Gen­er­al and war crim­i­nal into office as burgher­mas­ter. In 1958, Reine­far­th ran on the Refugee par­ty tick­et as a can­di­date for the Schleswig-Hol­stein State Par­lia­ment. When the press cit­ed Reine­far­th’s record as a major war crim­i­nal, the Senior Pros­e­cu­tor of Flens­burg, Erich Bier­mann (who had Herr Dr. Heyde-Sawade under his pro­tec­tive wing at that time), closed the case and refused to issue an indict­ment. A few days lat­er Reine­far­th was elect­ed as deputy to the Land­tag and accept­ed as an hon­or­able col­league.

    The next case con­cerns the Refugee Min­is­ter, Dr. Theodor Obe­rI­aen­der, who joined the Ade­nauer cab­i­net in 1953. As briefly men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous chap­ter, Min­is­ter Ober­laen­der is accused of hav­ing been involved in the so-called “Lem­berg mas­sacre,” in which sev­er­al thou­sand Poles and more than 5,000 Jews were slaugh­tered. Dr. Ober­laen­der does not deny a] that he was the com­mand­ing offi­cer of a spe­cial SS task force, the Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion, made up of nation­al­ist Ukraini­ans; and b] that this bat­tal­ion was the first Ger­man unit to move into the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg on June 29, 1941, where it remained for six or sev­en days.

    Dr. Obe­rI­aen­der does deny that his troops com­mit­ted any atroc­i­ties in Lem­berg. He has said that dur­ing his stay in that city “not a shot was fired.” This is not even accept­ed by his CDU par­ty col­leagues; they believe only that Ober­laen­der him­self took no part in the mas­sacre. Although for­mal com­plaints were launched against the Refugee Min­is­ter, and although wit­ness­es in West Ger­many, in Israel, and in Poland were will­ing to tes­ti­fy, the Ger­man author­i­ties delayed as long as pos­si­ble before con­sid­er­ing offi­cial court action. 2 In the Bun­destag debate of Decem­ber 10, 1959, a gov­ern­ment spokesman declared: “Dr. Ober­laen­der has the full con­fi­dence of the Ade­nauer cab­i­net.”

    There was no deny­ing that Dr. Ober­laen­der had writ­ten arti­cles advo­cat­ing the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews and Poles in the East, that he was close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the racial war­fare sec­tion of Hitler’s SS, and that he was the appoint­ed leader of the fanat­i­cal Nazi unit, Ger­man Alliance in the East.

    A wide-spread feel­ing pre­vailed in Dr. Ade­nauer’s own par­ty that Hitler’s for­mer expert on the East had become a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty. The pro-Ade­nauer paper Rheinis­ch­er Merkur stat­ed that Dr. Ober­laen­der “as a racial expert has an intel­lec­tu­al co-respon­si­bil­i­ty for the anti-Pol­ish and anti-Jew­ish out­bursts in Lem­berg.” 3 The Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic paper Der Tag (Feb­ru­ary 9, 1960) called for Ober­laen­der’s res­ig­na­tion and described him as “a drag on the Ger­man rep­u­ta­tion.”

    The Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion and the inde­pen­dent press demand­ed Dr. Ober­laen­der’s ouster. Der Spiegel stat­ed edi­to­ri­al­ly: “This man should nev­er have been appoint­ed a min­is­ter.” Point­ing to Ober­laen­der’s long record as a Nazi pro­pa­gan­dist and Leben­sraum expert, the edi­to­r­i­al asked sar­cas­ti­cal­ly: “Is a man suf­fi­cient­ly qual­i­fied to become a cab­i­net mem­ber in Ger­many mere­ly by hav­ing it estab­lished that he does­n’t have a record as a mur­der­er of inno­cent civil­ians?” 4

    Nev­er­the­less, in the sum­mer of 1959, Dr. Ober­laen­der was giv­en the hon­or of rep­re­sent­ing the Chan­cel­lor at the moral rear­ma­ment con­fer­ence in Caux.5 It was only the com­bined pres­sure of Social Democ­rats and a large fac­tion of Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic deputies that final­ly forced Dr. Ober­laen­der to resign in May 1960.*

    Two oth­er unpros­e­cut­ed cas­es among many should be briefly men­tioned to show the scope of the crimes com­mit­ted. The first con­cerns the SS Gen­er­al Erich von dem Bach-Zelews­ki, who was in charge of a spe­cial task force for the liq­ui­da­tion of Jews in the East. As one of Hitler’s top police offi­cers, he is held respon­si­ble for the killing of hun­dreds of Jews long before the out­break of the war. Accord­ing to a DPA report in the New York Staats Zeitung of April 14, 1952, it was Bach-Zelews­ki who orga­nized a pogrom against the Jews all over Sile­sia on the “Crys­tal Night” of 1938. He report­ed to Hitler that his storm troop­ers had set fire to eighty syn­a­gogues and that he had made Sile­sia juden­rein. Dur­ing 1941, Bach-Zelewski’s SS brigade shot more than 100,000 Jews and Poles in the East.

    Although the Bonn author­i­ties had full knowl­edge of Bach-Zelewski’s record, they left the SS Gen­er­al unmo­lest­ed until Decem­ber 1958. At that time he was arrest­ed for being impli­cat­ed in a “pri­vate” mur­der case involv­ing anoth­er SS offi­cer. He has since been sen­tenced to four and a half years in prison.

    Anoth­er exam­ple con­cerns the SS offi­cer Her­mann Krumey who played a deci­sive role in the mur­der of 460,000 Hun­gar­i­an Jews. As an aide to Adolf Eich­mann, Krumey, in the spring and sum­mer of 1944, round­ed up all Jews in Hun­gary and shipped them to Auschwitz. Accord­ing to Die Welt of August 16, 1958, Krumey today owns a drug­store in Kor­bach, Hesse, where he has been active in pol­i­tics for the Nazi infest­ed Refugee par­ty. The for­mer SS offi­cer was tem­porar­i­ly arrest­ed in 1957, but was soon released. He was arrest­ed again in con­nec­tion with the Eich­mann case in May 1960.

    Many new facts about unsolved war crimes have come to light dur­ing the last two years. The extent of unpun­ished Nazi crime was revealed in three major court cas­es which were not tried until 1958. One was a tri­al against ten SS and police offi­cials, held before a court in VIm, Wuert­tem­berg. After months of tes­ti­mo­ny the court found that the accused had slaugh­tered 5,502 Jews in the Tilsit dis­trict. This was part of a larg­er action in which 132,000 Jews were liq­ui­dat­ed in order to pro­vide a Lithuan­ian fron­tier region for Ger­man set­tle­ment. Evi­dence of inde­scrib­able atroc­i­ties was pro­duced. Thanks to bureau­crat­ic thor­ough­ness, the court was able to use the metic­u­lous­ly kept lists in which the police had record­ed their dai­ly num­ber of victims.6 The ten Nazis were giv­en sen­tences from three to fif­teen years.

    The sec­ond court case revealed the sto­ry of the SS sergeant Mar­tin Som­mer, the “butch­er of Buchen­wald.” As mas­ter of the pun­ish­ment cell block, Som­mer whipped hun­dreds of pris­on­ers to death, killed many with hypo­der­mic injec­tions of air, hung oth­ers from trees by their wrists, and amused him­self by trans­form­ing priests into “snow­men” by dous­ing them with buck­ets of water and let­ting them freeze to death. Som­mer was sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment, the max­i­mum penal­ty under Ger­man law, and one rarely imposed.

    Late in 1958, two SS guards were put on tri­al for tor­tures and mass killings at the Sach­sen­hausen con­cen­tra­tion camp. Gus­tav Sorge, the “Iron Gus­tav,” and Wil­helm Schu­bert (“Pis­tol” Schu­bert), were accused by 150 wit­ness­es of hav­ing Sav­age­ly kicked and beat­en inmates to death and of hav­ing Immersed the heads of Jews in latrines until they suf­fo­cat­ed. The indict­ment charged that both sadists were respon­si­ble for the death of 11,000 pris­on­ers. These men too were sen­tenced to life impris­on­ment. In view of the pre­vi­ous reluc­tance on the part of most author­i­ties to call Nazi war crim­i­nals to account, the pros­e­cu­tion of these tri­als was an amaz­ing step for­ward.

    The court cas­es of 1958 dra­ma­tized the fact that the high offi­cials who gave orders for the mass exe­cu­tions and the Nazi judges who legal­ized ter­ror were still liv­ing com­fort­ably as well-paId gov­ern­ment offi­cials, judges, burgher­mas­ters, and police offi­cials. “The mur­der­ers are in our midst,” stat­ed the Frank­furter Rund­schau in an edi­to­r­i­al of Decem­ber 13, 1957. They are gomg around well dressed, and in the evenings they are to be found as jol­ly cit­i­zens crowd­ing our Bier­stuben.”

    As an after­math of the Som­mer-Sorge-Schu­bert tri­als, the Jus­tice Min­is­ters of the Laen­der cre­at­ed, in Decem­ber 1958, a Cen­tral Clear­ing House for Inves­ti­ga­tion of Nazi Crimes, locat­ed in Lud­wigs­burg. The Ger­man press report­ed that thes cen­ter was inves­ti­gat­ing four hun­dred major Nazi war crimes. The head of the cen­ter, Senior Pros­e­cu­tor Dr. Erwin Schuele, has done excel­lent work in fer­ret­ing out major war crim­i­nals. Some observers doubt, how­ev­er, that the work of the cen­ter will ever mate­ri­al­ize into actu­al court pro­ceed­ings, because it would mean that many lead­ing offi­cials would have to stand tri­al. It is argued that under no cir­cum­stances would Dr. Globke and the men around him run such a risk.

    Strong pres­sure is being exert­ed in the Bun­destag, as well as in the press, to make a clean sweep and close the whole chap­ter of the “undi­gest­ed past.” What is sug­gest­ed is a gen­er­al amnesty for all crimes com­mit­ted under the Nazi regime. 7 Such an act would bring the “bureau­cra­cy of mur­der” out of the dan­ger zone.

    * In Sep­tem­ber 1960 it was report­ed that a pros­e­cu­tor in Bonn refused to open
    the case against Dr. Ober­laen­der “for lack of evi­dence that he had par­tic­i­pat­ed
    or was respon­si­ble for the mass killing” (Deutsche Zeitung, Sep­tem­ber 28,
    1960).

    * In his sum­ma­tion the defense lawyer, Herr Aschenauer, declared: “The
    defen­dants only car­ried out those orders which the bureau­crats had issued at
    their desks” (Die Welt, August 12, 1958).

    ———-
    The New Ger­many and the Old Nazis by T.H. Tetens; Ran­dom House [HC]; Copy­right 1961 by T.H. Tetens; pp. 190–196

    “The next case con­cerns the Refugee Min­is­ter, Dr. Theodor Obe­rI­aen­der, who joined the Ade­nauer cab­i­net in 1953. As briefly men­tioned in a pre­vi­ous chap­ter, Min­is­ter Ober­laen­der is accused of hav­ing been involved in the so-called “Lem­berg mas­sacre,” in which sev­er­al thou­sand Poles and more than 5,000 Jews were slaugh­tered. Dr. Ober­laen­der does not deny a] that he was the com­mand­ing offi­cer of a spe­cial SS task force, the Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion, made up of nation­al­ist Ukraini­ans; and b] that this bat­tal­ion was the first Ger­man unit to move into the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg on June 29, 1941, where it remained for six or sev­en days.”

    Yep, Ober­laen­der “does not deny a] that he was the com­mand­ing offi­cer of a spe­cial SS task force, the Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion, made up of nation­al­ist Ukraini­ans; and b] that this bat­tal­ion was the first Ger­man unit to move into the Pol­ish city of Lem­berg on June 29, 1941, where it remained for six or sev­en days”. And yet he denied any­one was shot in the city At ALL dur­ing this peri­od when thou­sands of Jews were slaugh­tered:

    ...
    Dr. Obe­rI­aen­der does deny that his troops com­mit­ted any atroc­i­ties in Lem­berg. He has said that dur­ing his stay in that city “not a shot was fired.” This is not even accept­ed by his CDU par­ty col­leagues; they believe only that Ober­laen­der him­self took no part in the mas­sacre. Although for­mal com­plaints were launched against the Refugee Min­is­ter, and although wit­ness­es in West Ger­many, in Israel, and in Poland were will­ing to tes­ti­fy, the Ger­man author­i­ties delayed as long as pos­si­ble before con­sid­er­ing offi­cial court action. 2 In the Bun­destag debate of Decem­ber 10, 1959, a gov­ern­ment spokesman declared: “Dr. Ober­laen­der has the full con­fi­dence of the Ade­nauer cab­i­net.”
    ...

    He has said that dur­ing his stay in that city “not a shot was fired.” This is not even accept­ed by his CDU par­ty col­leagues; they believe only that Ober­laen­der him­self took no part in the mas­sacre.”

    Even his fel­low CDU mem­bers could­n’t accept that. And note what they did accept: that Ober­laen­der him­self did­n’t actu­al­ly phys­i­cal­ly par­tic­i­pate in the mas­sacre. He ordered it. This is the long-stand­ing under­stand­ing of how these mas­sacres played out in places like Ukraine. The Nazis com­man­der local par­ti­sans to car­ry out the killings. That basic under­stand­ing of how this hap­pened is cen­tral to what is being invert­ed by the new Ukrain­ian offi­cial rewrit­ing of his­to­ry.

    And note how Ober­laen­der wrote arti­cles advo­cat­ing the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews and Poles in the East. That’s the kind of guy he was and some­thing like that is pret­ty hard to deny. He wrote the damn arti­cles. Thus, he was let go because he was just unde­ni­ably cul­pa­ble:

    ...
    There was no deny­ing that Dr. Ober­laen­der had writ­ten arti­cles advo­cat­ing the exter­mi­na­tion of Jews and Poles in the East, that he was close­ly affil­i­at­ed with the racial war­fare sec­tion of Hitler’s SS, and that he was the appoint­ed leader of the fanat­i­cal Nazi unit, Ger­man Alliance in the East.

    A wide-spread feel­ing pre­vailed in Dr. Ade­nauer’s own par­ty that Hitler’s for­mer expert on the East had become a polit­i­cal lia­bil­i­ty. The pro-Ade­nauer paper Rheinis­ch­er Merkur stat­ed that Dr. Ober­laen­der “as a racial expert has an intel­lec­tu­al co-respon­si­bil­i­ty for the anti-Pol­ish and anti-Jew­ish out­bursts in Lem­berg.” 3 The Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic paper Der Tag (Feb­ru­ary 9, 1960) called for Ober­laen­der’s res­ig­na­tion and described him as “a drag on the Ger­man rep­u­ta­tion.”

    The Social Demo­c­ra­t­ic oppo­si­tion and the inde­pen­dent press demand­ed Dr. Ober­laen­der’s ouster. Der Spiegel stat­ed edi­to­ri­al­ly: “This man should nev­er have been appoint­ed a min­is­ter.” Point­ing to Ober­laen­der’s long record as a Nazi pro­pa­gan­dist and Leben­sraum expert, the edi­to­r­i­al asked sar­cas­ti­cal­ly: “Is a man suf­fi­cient­ly qual­i­fied to become a cab­i­net mem­ber in Ger­many mere­ly by hav­ing it estab­lished that he does­n’t have a record as a mur­der­er of inno­cent civil­ians?” 4

    Nev­er­the­less, in the sum­mer of 1959, Dr. Ober­laen­der was giv­en the hon­or of rep­re­sent­ing the Chan­cel­lor at the moral rear­ma­ment con­fer­ence in Caux.5 It was only the com­bined pres­sure of Social Democ­rats and a large fac­tion of Chris­t­ian Demo­c­ra­t­ic deputies that final­ly forced Dr. Ober­laen­der to resign in May 1960.*
    ...

    So THAT’s part of the his­to­ry that Ukraine’s Insti­tute for Nation­al Mem­o­ry and try­ing white­wash out of every­one’s mem­o­ry. Basi­cal­ly the entire par­tic­i­pa­tion of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist units’ roles in the eth­nic cleans­ing of WWII is get­ting mas­sive­ly rewrit­ten. All the wit­ness­es, all the tes­ti­mo­ny, it’s all being tossed away as mali­cious Sovi­et pro­pa­gan­da. Which, obvi­ous­ly, is some incred­i­bly ghast­ly pro­pa­gan­da.

    Posted by Pterrafractyl | January 20, 2018, 2:20 pm
  3. The U.S. Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist is rec­om­mend­ing that their com­pa­tri­ots read a recent book (writ­ten in Ukrain­i­nan) about Colonel Eugene Kono­valetz.

    Colonel Kovo­valetz was dis­cussed in the 1942 book writ­ten by Michael Say­ers and Albert. E. Kah­n’s “Sab­o­tage! The Secret War Against Amer­i­ca”. On page 85–86 of the book they wrote “By, 1930 Kono­valetz was known to the intel­li­gence bureaus of the worlds pow­ers as Germany’s lead­ing espi­onage agents.” … “The inter­na­tion­al orga­ni­za­tion of spies and sabo­teurs which Kono­valetz set up under the super­vi­sion of the Intel­li­gence Depart­ment of the Ger­man War Office went by the name of Ukra­jin­s­ka Orga­ni­zace Nacional­is­tov (orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists), com­mon­ly referred to as OUN.” …. “Spe­cial schools for OUN mem­bers were opened in Ger­many where the stu­dents were care­ful­ly trained in the arts of espi­onage, sab­o­tage and assas­si­na­tion. The first of these schools was found­ed by the Ger­man War Office in Danzig around 1928. Ger­man Intel­li­gence offi­cers act­ed as instruc­tors. The OUN stu­dents were taught the var­i­ous meth­ods of steal­ing mil­i­tary secrets, mak­ing bombs, blow­ing up fac­to­ries and car­ry­ing out polit­i­cal mur­ders. Cours­es in reg­u­lar Ger­man army train­ing were also part of the cur­ricu­lum.”

    Page 87 states “Colonel Kono­valetz, the head of OUN, was rather too well acquaint­ed with the secrets of the Ger­man Gov­ern­ment, and that his inter­na­tion­al influ­ence had reached a point where it might prove dif­fi­cult to con­trol They there­fore arranged for a spe­cial present to be deliv­ered to Kono­valetz in Rot­ter­dam, where he was attend­ing a con­ven­tion of Ukrain­ian “nation­al­ists.” One of Konovaletz’s own aides, who was a trust­ed Gestapo man, hand­ed him the present out­side the con­ven­tion hall, telling him that it was a per­son­al gift. When the Colonel opened the small pack­age, the bomb explod­ed and tore him to bits. He became mar­tyr of the Ukrain­ian “nation­al­ist” move­ment, and high Nazis have since remarked, not with­out sin­cer­i­ty, that Colonel Kono­valetz has proved even more valu­able to them dead than alive.”

    An unan­swered ques­tion that this pat­tern rais­es is if it is pos­si­ble that a sim­i­lar fate was expe­ri­enced by Stephan Ban­dera for sim­i­lar rea­sons?

    Posted by Mary Benton | August 22, 2021, 7:00 pm
  4. Anoth­er key oper­a­tive for the Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ist Move­ment who was affil­i­at­ed with Colonel Kono­valetz was Eugene Lachow­itch. It is worth not­ing that they cre­at­ed a flight school. This may be a sim­i­lar con­cept when con­sid­er­ing how some of the the 9/11 plot­ters and their ring­leader, Mohammed Atta who was trained by Huff­man Avi­a­tion. This is an arti­cle about Mr. Lachow­itch:
    https://szru.gov.ua/en/history/stories/pavel-sudoplatov-versus-eugene-lachowitch

    Some of the com­ments in this arti­cle include the fol­low­ing.

    When Eugene Lachow­itch was first noticed by the State Polit­i­cal Direc­torate (GPU), almost noth­ing was known about him. One of the first papers reads: “Lachow­itch Eugene, a mem­ber of the Provid (lead­er­ship- transl.) and a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the OUN in Eng­land, 36 years old, lives in Lon­don…, Ukrain­ian, has an Amer­i­can pass­port, is flu­ent in Eng­lish. He is con­sid­ered one of the best diplo­mats and intel­li­gence offi­cers among nation­al­ists… In Decem­ber 1933, he had to vis­it the USSR at the head of a group of 15 peo­ple with ter­ror­ist tasks regard­ing com­rades Posty­shev, Balyt­skyi and Zaton­skyi. In 1934 he took part in nego­ti­a­tions with Ito, Advis­er to the Japan­ese Embassy in Paris. One of the orga­niz­ers of the ODVU in Amer­i­ca, a branch of the OUN” (BSA of the SZR of Ukraine. — F. 1. — Case 6964. – P. 53).

    He met Yevhen Kono­valets in 1929, when the lat­ter came to the Unit­ed States, where he vis­it­ed major Ukrain­ian cen­tres, held meet­ings with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of orga­ni­za­tions and indi­vid­u­als inter­est­ed in the devel­op­ment of the Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist move­ment. At that time, with the assis­tance of the Head of the Provid of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists, a foun­da­tion was laid for the future Orga­ni­za­tion for the Rebirth of Ukraine.

    Yevhen Kono­valets made a great impres­sion on Eugene Lachow­itch, and his sto­ries about the state of affairs in his home­land result­ed in the new­ly made US citizen’s leav­ing his job, slow-paced life and going to his native land.

    From 1930 to 1932 he was in Gali­cia and some Euro­pean coun­tries, where he tried to be use­ful for the Ukrain­ian cause. There is no infor­ma­tion about that peri­od of his activ­i­ty in the case. Eugene Lachow­itch wrote about his next steps in his mem­oirs: “Lat­er, in 1932, on my way back to the Unit­ed States after two years in Gali­cia, I met the Colonel again in Gene­va (Switzer­land). Dur­ing the meet­ing, the Colonel asked me in detail about most dif­fer­ent things and events in our native lands… At the end of those con­ver­sa­tions, Colonel Kono­valets sug­gest­ed that I should return to the Unit­ed States, become more active in the ODVU, make efforts for its growth and next year be ready to go to Lon­don and become the Rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists in Great Britain”.

    After a short stay in the Unit­ed States, Eugene Lachow­itch returned to Europe. Lat­er he per­formed per­son­al tasks of Yevhen Kono­valets. The nature of those tasks some­what reveals the secre­tive side of his activ­i­ty and makes it pos­si­ble to under­stand why the GPU doc­u­ments men­tion him as “one of the best diplo­mats and intel­li­gence offi­cers among nation­al­ists”.

    Only then does he go to the heart of the mat­ter and asks, “Could you be so kind as to write “sci­en­tif­ic research” about the pro­duc­tion of air­planes in our lands after the over­throw of the occu­piers, empha­siz­ing our real poten­tial as well as our short­com­ings”. He does not stop there but express­es anoth­er request: “We need at least one air­plane for our work. If we had it, we could cre­ate a pilot school in one of our friend­ly coun­tries. We need this in the inter­ests of the com­mon cause. I am ask­ing you on behalf of the OUN (I apol­o­gize for dar­ing) to make us one plane “as a gift». If it is not com­plete­ly new, it does not matter”(BSA of the SZR of Ukraine. — F. 1. – Case 9860. — Vol. 1. – PP. 22–24).

    The OUN’s inten­tions to buy a plane, even at the expense of Ukrain­ian emi­grants, and to cre­ate a pilot school are men­tioned in oth­er doc­u­ments of the case. But the end of this sto­ry can­not be traced. Nev­er­the­less, this episode is a clear evi­dence of one of the intel­li­gence direc­tions of the OUN lead­er­ship and Eugene Lachowitch’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in it.

    Posted by Mary Benton | August 22, 2021, 7:16 pm
  5. @ Mary Ben­ton–

    As FTR #876 demon­strates, the assas­si­na­tion of Ban­dera was almost cer­tain­ly;

    a) Done by ele­ments of West­ern intel affil­i­at­ed with the WACCFL.

    b) Done to help pave the way for pro­pa­gan­da about KGB assas­si­na­tion teams oper­at­ing in U.S., to which Lee Har­vey Oswald alleged­ly belonged.

    https://spitfirelist.com/for-the-record/ftr-876-the-ounb-and-the-assassination-of-jfk/

    Best,

    Dave Emory

    Posted by Dave Emory | August 23, 2021, 4:36 pm

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