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Nazi Ghosts of the OUN/B Haunt Soccer in the Ukraine

COMMENT: Before delv­ing into “Aus­ter­i­ty Equals Fas­cism, Part II” it may be use­ful to high­light an instruc­tive arti­cle from the german-foreign-policy.com newslet­ter, which feeds along the bot­tom of the front page of this web­site.

The com­pe­ti­tion for the Euro­pean foot­ball (soc­cer) cham­pi­onship, lead­ing up to the World Cup, is under­way in the Ukraine. The loca­tion for this event has aggra­vat­ed ten­sions between Poland and the Ukraine over the mas­sacres of Pol­ish nation­als com­mit­ted dur­ing the Sec­ond World War by the OUN/B, a Ukrain­ian fas­cist orga­ni­za­tion that allied with the Third Reich.

Sup­ply­ing per­son­nel to the Ein­satz­grup­pen (mobil death squads) and the 14th Waf­fen SS Divi­sion (Gali­cian), the OUN/B has etched a bloody name into his­to­ry run­ning from the peri­od between the World Wars, through World War II and the covert oper­a­tions of the Cold War and its after­math.

In par­tic­u­lar, the orga­ni­za­tion has been deeply involved with covert oper­a­tions and fig­ures into the inves­ti­ga­tion into the assas­si­na­tion of Pres­i­dent Kennedy, as well as the de-sta­bi­liza­tion of the Sovi­et Union dur­ing the cli­mac­tic phase of the Cold War. With a pro­found pres­ence in the GOP’s Eth­nic divi­sion, as well as the con­tem­po­rary Ukrain­ian polit­i­cal infra­struc­ture, the OUN/B is any­thing but an his­tor­i­cal rel­ic.

It is in the con­text of the OUN’s pro­mo­tion of cer­e­monies and awards that cel­e­brate and dis­tort the orga­ni­za­tion’s fas­cist past that the Pol­ish protest of OUN-relat­ed activ­i­ties is to be exam­ined. 

The Ukraine is con­sid­er­ing declar­ing July 11 to be a com­mem­o­ra­tion of OUN/B mil­i­tary actions against Pol­ish cit­i­zens dur­ing the war, which result­ed in the deaths of thou­sands of Poles! 

In the past we have not­ed that Yka­te­ri­na Chu­machenko, head of the OUN/B’s lead­ing front orga­ni­za­tion in the U.S. and Ronald Rea­gan’s Deputy Direc­tor of Pub­lic Liai­son, went on to mar­ry Vik­tor Yuschenko and become First Lady of the Ukraine after the “Orange Rev­o­lu­tion.”

With the Yuschenko regime in pow­er, OUN/B founder Stephan Ban­dera was named a hero of the Ukraine [1]. As we see below, Roman Shukhevych  was also grant­ed that hon­or. Shukhevych lead the OUN/B‑staffed Ein­satz­gruppe “Nightin­gale” in its liq­ui­da­tion of the Lvov Ghet­to! (Lvov has also been known as Lem­berg and Lodz at var­i­ous times in its recent his­to­ry.)

(Worth not­ing in pass­ing is the fact that the SS leader of the Nightin­gale group in its liq­ui­da­tion of the Lvov Ghet­to was Theodor Ober­lan­der, who became a West Ger­man Min­is­ter, in charge of the “expellees”–vertriebene groups. Forced to resign after his role in the Lvov mas­sacre became pub­lic, Ober­lan­der was deeply involved with recruit­ing Mus­lim com­bat­ants who had fought for the Third Reich on behalf of the Fed­er­al Repub­lic’s intel­li­gence ser­vices, as we saw in FTR #721 [2].)

Ober­lan­der also joined Gen­er­al Charles Willough­by [3]’s Inter­na­tion­al Com­mit­tee for the Defense of Chris­t­ian Cul­ture, an inter­na­tion­al fas­cist intel­li­gence net­work [4] that includ­ed Nel­son Bunker Hunt of the ultra right-wing Hunt fam­i­ly. (Hunt was involved with attempt­ing to cor­ner the sil­ver mar­ket in the ear­ly 1980’s, a gam­bit in which he con­spired with Ali bin Mus­sal­im, who man­aged the Al Qae­da account [5] at Bank Al-Taqwa, an account that had an unlim­it­ed line of cred­it. ICDCC founder Willough­by was Dou­glas MacArthur’s top intel­li­gence offi­cer and was a Ger­man-born fas­cist and admir­er of Fran­cis­co Fran­co.)

“Between Moscow and Berlin (IV)”; german-foreign-policy.com; 6/06/2012. [6]

EXCERPT: Just a few days before the Soc­cer World Cup is sched­uled to open, a reminder of mas­sacres, car­ried out by Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors, has cre­at­ed dis­so­nance between the Ukraine and Poland. In War­saw, gov­ern­ment politi­cians are demand­ing that Kiev final­ly put a stop to pub­lic com­mem­o­ra­tions of Ukrain­ian mili­tia fight­ing on Nazi Germany’s side. They were respon­si­ble for grue­some mur­ders of Poles in World War II. One of those referred to, is the Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tor, Stepan Ban­dera, a leader of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN), whose mili­tia, for exam­ple, attacked a total of 99 Pol­ish vil­lages, mas­sacring count­less inhab­i­tants on July 11, 1943. Ban­dera is hon­ored with numer­ous memo­ri­als, par­tic­u­lar­ly in west­ern Ukraine, where the impris­oned ex-Prime Min­is­ter, Yulia Tymoshenko has her elec­toral back­ing. Through­out the 1930s and 40s, the OUN, found­ed with Berlin’s sup­port in 1929, evolved into the main Ukrain­ian nation­al­ist polit­i­cal orga­ni­za­tion. On sev­er­al occa­sions fol­low­ing the Ger­man inva­sion of the Sovi­et Union, it sought state­hood for a seces­sion­ist Ukrain­ian nation under Ger­man domin­ion. The mas­sacres were car­ried out against the Pol­ish pop­u­la­tion, espe­cial­ly Jews. Most recent­ly, the mem­o­ry of numer­ous Ukraini­ans’ col­lab­o­ra­tion with the Nazis was re-awak­ened by the Ger­man tri­al against the for­mer Ukrain­ian con­cen­tra­tion camp guard, John Dem­jan­juk

Mas­sacre of Poles

As the gov­ern­ing PSL par­ty’s par­lia­men­tar­i­an in the Sejm, Fran­ciszek Ste­fa­niuk explained, the Ukraine should face up to the com­mem­o­ra­tions of anti-Pol­ish mas­sacres by numer­ous Ukrain­ian Nazi col­lab­o­ra­tors in the Sec­ond World War. This is in ref­er­ence to crimes, such as the mur­ders on July 11, 1943, when Ukrain­ian mili­tia engaged in a coor­di­nat­ed offen­sive against 99 Pol­ish vil­lages, killing thou­sands of inhab­i­tants, says Stefaniuk.[1] Stepan Ban­dera, one of the com­man­ders of the mili­tia, is still cel­e­brat­ed today in the West Ukraine with numer­ous memo­ri­als. War­saw demands that a stop be put to this. Declar­ing July 11, the day in 1943, when the Poles were slaugh­tered, an offi­cial day of com­mem­o­ra­tion is now being con­sid­ered. This would refur­bish the mem­o­ry of Ukrain­ian col­lab­o­ra­tionist activ­i­ties, for exam­ple, of the OUN, the most impor­tant of the orga­ni­za­tions seek­ing Ukrain­ian state­hood at the time.

The Spir­it of the Lead­er­ship

The found­ing of the Orga­ni­za­tion of Ukrain­ian Nation­al­ists (OUN) in Vien­na in ear­ly 1929 had been pre­pared at a 1927 Ukrain­ian nation­al­ists’ con­fer­ence in Berlin. The Ukrain­ian Mil­i­tary Orga­ni­za­tion (UVO) was also a par­tic­i­pant at the Berlin con­fer­ence. The UVO had its head­quar­ters in Berlin and had under­gone sev­er­al clan­des­tine train­ing pro­grams pro­vid­ed by the Ger­man Reichswehr.[2] In the 1920s, it had repeat­ed­ly engaged in ter­ror­ist cam­paigns and car­ried out attacks in Poland. Accord­ing to the Pol­ish intel­li­gence ser­vice, six Ger­man sol­diers were also present at the OUN’s found­ing conference.[3] Through­out the years of its exis­tence, while, accord­ing to one of its com­man­ders, “the demo­c­ra­t­ic spir­it” was replaced by “the spir­it of lead­er­ship and the adu­la­tion toward the author­i­ty of the leadership,”[4] the OUN remained loy­al to the Nazi gov­ern­ment, even though the lat­ter was occa­sion­al­ly forced to pub­licly dis­tance itself from the for­mer, for exam­ple after OUN ter­ror­ists assas­si­nat­ed the Inte­ri­or Min­is­ter of Poland June 15, 1934. In any case, in 1939, the OUN had very close rela­tions with the Ger­man Wehrma­cht and orga­nized a small unit of exiled Ukraini­ans for their engage­ment in the inva­sion of Poland. They were dis­ap­point­ed at not being allowed by the Molo­tov-Ribben­trop Pact to march into Lwów (which had been Lem­berg and lat­er Lviv). The OUN began instead to repeat­ed­ly mas­sacre Pol­ish civil­ians through­out the war. These mas­sacres are today the sub­ject of Pol­ish protests.

Hero of the Ukraine

Once the Ger­mans invad­ed the Sovi­et Union June 22, 1941, OUN’s Ukrain­ian mili­tia, or at least its “Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion,” could make good on not hav­ing been able to march into Lwów. Under the com­mand of Theodor Oberländer,[5] who lat­er was a West Ger­man min­is­ter, the Nightin­gale Bat­tal­ion par­tic­i­pat­ed not only in the inva­sion of that town, but was also involved in the dead­ly pogroms against Lwów’s Jew­ish com­mu­ni­ty. That German/Ukrainian mas­sacre left thou­sands dead. Nazi anti-Semi­tes could count on the sup­port of their col­lab­o­ra­tors. As soon as the Ger­mans occu­pied Poland, the OUN declared “open sea­son” on the Jew­ish pop­u­la­tion. “Along­side the Ger­man author­i­ties, our mili­tia is now arrest­ing numer­ous Jews,” the OUN pro­pa­gan­da office in occu­pied Lwów report­ed to Berlin, July 28, 1941. “The Jews are using all means to defend them­selves from liq­ui­da­tion.” The OUN and its troops con­tin­ued anti-Semit­ic mas­sacres in the fol­low­ing years.[6] The mem­o­ry of the com­mon front with the Ger­mans in the war is still alive, at least in the west­ern Ukraine. Octo­ber 12, 2007, the pro-west­ern pres­i­dent Vik­tor Yushchenko declared post-mortem the “Nichtin­gale” com­man­der, Roman Shukhevych, a “Hero of the Ukraine.”

Under Ger­man Pro­tec­tion

The ven­er­a­tion that the OUN con­tin­ues to enjoy in sec­tors of the west­ern Ukrain­ian pop­u­la­tion can be also be explained by efforts to achieve Ukrain­ian state­hood on the ter­ri­to­ry of the occu­pied Sovi­et Union under Ger­man hege­mo­ny — exact­ly as it was attempt­ed back at the end of World War I.[7] . . . .