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This program was recorded in one, 60-minute segment [6].
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 [7], we have noted the Orwellian rewrite [8] 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 [9] (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 [10] 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 [11]–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 [12] (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 [13] 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 [14]: ‘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 [15], 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 [16] role as speaker of the Ukrainian Parliament.
- Poroshenko ally Volodymir Groysman’s law degree [17] 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 [18] position as a faculty member at MAUP.
- The dispatching of a contingent of the Nazi Azov Battalion [19] to Odessa on the second anniversary of the burning to death of ethnic Russian, anti-government protesters.
1. In numerous broadcasts [7], we have noted the Orwellian rewrite [8] 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 [9] (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 [10] 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 [11]–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 [12] (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 [13] 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 [14]: ‘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. [9]
. . . . 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 [20] 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 [21]. . . .
. . . . 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 [22] tens of thousands of Jews and carried out a brutal campaign of ethnic cleansing that killed as many as 100,000 Poles. Created [23] in 1929 to free Ukraine from Soviet control, the OUN embraced [24] 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 [25] 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 [26] 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 [27] 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 [28], 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 [8] Viatrovych to head the Ukrainian Institute of National Memory — a prestigious appointment for a relatively young scholar. . . .
. . . . To that effect, Viatrovych has dismissed [29] 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 book [30], The 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 [31] by Western historians. University of Alberta professor John-Paul Himka, one of the leading scholars of Ukrainian history for three decades, described it [32] 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 [33] 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 [34] furiously. Shukhevych, the son of UPA leader Roman Shukhevych and a longtime far-right political activist himself, fired off a letter [34] 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 [35] 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 [14]: “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 [13] 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 [36] 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.
. . . . 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.
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. [16]
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 [39] 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 [10] was on its board of directors.
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 [40] 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 [41] 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
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.
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 [19]!
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 [43] 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 2014 [44]and 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.