Dave Emory’s entire lifetime of work is available on a flash drive that can be obtained here. The new drive is a 32-gigabyte drive that is current as of the programs and articles posted by early winter of 2016. The new drive (available for a tax-deductible contribution of $65.00 or more.) (The previous flash drive was current through the end of May of 2012.)
WFMU-FM is podcasting For The Record–You can subscribe to the podcast HERE.
You can subscribe to e‑mail alerts from Spitfirelist.com HERE.
You can subscribe to RSS feed from Spitfirelist.com HERE.
You can subscribe to the comments made on programs and posts–an excellent source of information in, and of, itself HERE.
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 book, 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 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.
. . . . 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.
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.
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
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!
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.
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:
“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:
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.
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:
“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:
“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:
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:
“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’:
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 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:
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 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”:
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”:
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:
“...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:
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:
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:
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:
“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:
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:
“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:
“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:
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.
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?
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.
@ 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