Bandera seems to have been a fanatical nationalist in his early adolescence. As a teenager he was said to have slid pins under his nails in order to harden himself for future torture by Polish prosecutors. He was said to have done this to himself in response to a story about the famous female nationalist Basarab who, according to the heroic victimization narrative, had hanged herself in a prison cell, in order not to reveal UVO secrets while being tortured by Polish interrogators. As a university student, Bandera was reported to have continued torturing himself, by scorching his fingers on an oil lamp and by crushing them between a door and doorframe. During the self-torturing sessions, he told himself: “Admit Stepan!” and answered “No, I don’t admit!” Bandera also beat his bare back with a belt and said to himself, “If you don’t improve, you’ll be beaten again, Stepan!”[305]

In his youth, according to his close friend Hryhor Mel’nyk, Bandera felt contempt for fellow-students who were not involved in the nationalist movement. Bandera demonstrated this once in public, when he met a colleague who had previously remarked that he did not support any political camp. While this person was shaking hands with other colleagues, Bandera refused to greet him, turning away and leaving his hands in his pockets. He was, however, very friendly with colleagues who fulfilled his political expectations. Those who worked with him in the OUN praised his humor, determination, organizational abilities, oratory, and a disposition to sing.[306] Klymyshyn commented on Bandera’s behavior in his memoirs:

During our meetings Bandera behaved in two ways. When we discussed organizational matters he talked very seriously, factually, and earnestly. But when the discussion about organizational matters was finished, he became cheerful, talkative, and humorous, and he liked [it] if his interlocutor behaved similarly. He could very [easily] twist or split a word and pronounce it in such a way that it became a funny pun.[307]

Another friend of Bandera’s, Volodymyr Ianiv, remembered him walking in the Carpathian Mountains, talking to birds and praying to trees. Ianiv considered it amusing behavior and a sign of Bandera’s love and respect for nature.[308] Hryhor Mel’nyk mentioned in his memoirs that, during a hike with Plast, Bandera put on a blanket and climbed up a tree. From the tree, he then delivered a fiery speech with “exotic” gestures, pretending to be Mohandas K. Gandhi. Another young nationalist, Lev Senyshyn, climbed behind Bandera onto the same tree and pretended to be a gorilla, eating its own fleas. He also threw some of them on “Gandhi.” Other Plast members found the conduct of the two scouts very amusing.[309]